Jennifer Castle and Kurt Vile & The Violators
Bell’s Eccentric Cafe // Kalamazoo, MI // July 19th, 2019
Photos by Kendra Petersen Kamp // Review by Jordan Petersen Kamp
Jennifer Castle
Kurt Vile & The Violators
“It’s hot out. Certain people in my crew can’t take it. I don’t see the big deal,” said Kurt Vile, barely looking up from tuning his guitar, during his show in the beer garden at Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan last week.
It was hot— the hottest day of the year in Michigan so far— and miserably humid, but it’s hard to imagine anything so circumstantial affecting Vile’s mojo. The Philadelphia songwriter, performing with his band the Violators, gives the impression that he knows exactly who he is and what his art is about. There’s a clarity in Vile’s songwriting and performances that makes him unflappable. The second he started singing the set-opening song— “Loading Zones” from his latest album Bottle It In— the mood was set for the song and the entire night. And seemingly nothing could change it.
In fact, environmental factors for the show just seemed written-in. By the third song, the hot and sticky air felt like part of the show’s aesthetic, making a swampy song like “Bassackwards” even swampier. The two trains that blared their horns as they drove by on the tracks just behind the stage provided the perfect Americana texture to complement Vile’s heartland-rock twang. Even accoutrement like the garden-bazaar metalworks sun that adorned the gazebo-like stage felt like a perfectly off-kilter production detail. I wouldn’t even be if surprised the band packed it up to bring with them for the rest of the tour.
Vile is often characterized as an indie-rock, slacker version of Tom Petty, which is mostly because he has long hair, wears flannel and plays rock music with a country-twang in beer garden’s instead of arenas. It’s not a very accurate comparison— Tom Petty wrote anthems, Vile writes daydreams. He builds soundscapes for listeners to be lulled into, live in and explore for minutes at a time. He is not a songwriter that builds to any particular moment in a song or uses twists to subvert audience expectations; Kurt Vile’s songs reveal themselves instantly. Why wait three minutes to make your point when you can do it in thirty seconds?
Despite being elusive, winding and ethereal, Vile’s music remains undeniably catchy. The first song during the encore, “Pretty Pimpin” off 2015’s b’lieve i’m going down… could have gone on for hours before it’s bluesy, traveling-song jaunt would have sounded stale. It’s perhaps the purest distillation of Kurt Vile’s strengths as an artist— a five minute song inspired by a simple look in the mirror that is somehow infectious and consequential. It’s tiny but life-giving; a Kurt Vile show is full of such moments.
