Kurt Vile played two shows in Philadelphia last weekend to celebrate this week’s release of Childish Prodigy. Friday he played a free in-store show at AKA Music, and Saturday night the band performed to a sold-out crowd at Kung Fu Necktie alongside fellow Philadelphians Birds Of Maya and New York’s Coconuts. Two of the more popular weekly papers — Philadelphia City Paper and Philadelphia Weekly — both devoted a few pages to Vile last week, the latter making his the cover story. Given the national attention that has been swarming around Vile for the past year, and this parochial buzz, he most likely could have sold out a much larger hometown venue. His decision to play at a record store and Kung Fu Necktie — a bar/performance space in Fishtown that maxes out at just over 100 people — is in alignment with the organic, working-class story that he has constructed thus far.
In order to properly experience the raucous energy and crucial guitar-antics of Birds Of Maya, an enclosed space packed with meltable bodies is necessary, and Kung Fu Necktie was perfect. They ripped through about 30 minutes of head-nodding tempo shifts and thrashing guitar-damage, producing the highest energy-vibe the club would feel for the night. An apt contemporary comparison of their sound can be made with San Francisco’s Wooden Shjips. However, while both bands embrace a hypnotic and repetitive drone structure, Birds Of Maya never remain settled in one groove for too long, practicing more frequent riff and beat transitions to keep things fresh and spontaneous. All those grumpy squares who whine about how rock is dead should be forced by the Rock Leviathan to stand up front at a Birds Of Maya show so that the band can unleash supreme justice and rip their fucking heads off.
{Coconuts}’ overuse of a piercing treble tone on every instrument made for one of the most unlistenable performances I’ve seen since I somehow ended up at a Belle & Sebastian show a few years ago. Anything negative that could be said — e.g., that my brain split in half from the stabbing tone, or that my ears unhappily bled from the incessant screech of poorly modified amps and guitars, or that the dub-echo on the drum was nauseating and puke-inducing, etc. — would likely please the band. They’d think those descriptions are more “cool” than negative. There’s no possibility of critiquing this aesthetic, which is what makes it more conservative than its devotees will ever admit.
I was expecting {Kurt Vile} to either open or close the show with a few solo songs, like “Blackberry Song” or “Heart Attack” from Childish Prodigy, but he did neither. Instead, he played a full set with The Violators (the ferocious Mike Zeng on drums, Jesse Turbo on guitar/bass/saxophone/harmonica, and Adam Granduciel on guitar). The band locked into a deep blues-groove on Childish Prodigy’s “Inside Lookin’ Out,” which is a modified version of “Good Lookin’ Out” from The Hunchback EP. Turbo’s reverb-drenched harmonica work gives the one-chord drone a glowing sonic dimension and, having seen the band perform several times now, I think his harmonica and saxophone contributions are an absolutely crucial element to the experience. Turbo played saxophone on Blues Control’s Local Flavor, namely on “Rest On Water,” and he provides a similarly profound and floating vibe that is essential to Vile’s vision of American rock music. One of the aspects of the band’s live performance that Childish Prodigy captures well is Vile’s confident vocal delivery — while at times on past recordings his singing is soft and intimate, his stage presence is much stronger and declarative, particularly with the vocal outbursts on tracks like “Freak Train.”
Toward the middle of the set, the band stumbled through an almost unrecognizable version of crowd favorite “Freeway.” I’m sure the stumbling was not intentional, but to interpret it so might be interesting. Many people likely attended just to hear that song, so the awkward version might have puzzled single-minded fans. Earlier in the evening, at another nearby bar, I overheard someone singing “I’ve got a trumpet and I know where to dump it,” and then express their excitement about the night’s show. While the band did experience a few more off-moments — at one point they had to restart a song after some confusion — there was enough rollicking action to keep energy and spirits high.
[Photo: Jenna Wilbur]
