PHOTOS: NICK NEMPHOS | Ah, Kurt Vile: The on-his-way-up Philadelphia musician’s guitar playing could just constitute the loudest noise to emanate from the City of Brotherly Drugs since the day in 1981 a nail bomb blew mobster Philip “Chicken Man” Testa into a thousand Chicken McNuggets. Or the day in May 1985 Philly’s Keystone Kops decided to drop a bomb from a helicopter onto the row house headquarters of the raw-chicken-eating radical group MOVE, only to wind up incinerating an entire city block, presumably in accordance with the old adage that if Life hands you lemons, just level the whole fucking neighborhood. (I distinctly recall seeing the smoke over Osage Avenue and thinking God has finally done it—he hates The Hooters so much he’s decided to pull a Sodom on us.)
Vile, who recorded one album with Philly’s The War on Drugs (2008’s Wagonwheel Blues) before deciding to go it solo, falls firmly into the slacker tradition of J. Mascis, Pavement, and Beck, what with his flat-as-a-pancake stoner delivery and shambolic, often folk-tinged songs, which feature both lots of pretty guitar work and raging solos and bear distinct echoes of Neil Young and Tom Petty. Since 2008, Vile and his backup band The Violators have released five albums and four EPs, although The Violators are credited by name on only one, 2009’s The Hunchback EP.
It’s a trifle odd, seeing as how I’m from friendly Philadelphia—where an irate vegetable vendor once nearly took out my first wife’s left eye with a hurled potato (it’s a long story), I was once pelted with popcorn (and worse) at long-gone Veterans Stadium for refusing to stand for the National Anthem, and my brother and I found once ourselves in a full-scale brawl with children (hey, we were outnumbered six to one!)—that I managed to go so long without ever giving Vile a listen.
And now that I have, I find I’m ambivalent at best. I don’t care much for Vile’s first four LPs (2008’s Constant Hitmaker, 2009’s God Is Saying This To You…, 2009’s Childish Prodigy, and 2011’s Smoke Ring For My Halo) because, to put it as nicely as possible, they could bore hair. Oh, I exaggerate. If I were Robert Christgau, or TVD’s own great Joseph Neff, I’d probably give them all C’s, or C+’s at best.
Why so harsh? Because Vile’s albums contain far too many slow (and sluggish even) tunes for my liking, and too few intriguing lyrics to keep me listening. And where are all the raging guitar solos? Which is why when all is said and done I’d much sooner ponder the mysterious correlation between Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb—and whether that makes Mr. Pibb an evil and stunted soft drink that tramples innocent little girls in the street—than listen to Vile’s LPs, which remind me of the famous story about Oscar Wilde, whose friends once managed to coax him into accompanying them to a whorehouse. Asked afterwards what having sex with a woman was like, he replied, “Cold mutton.” That said, I enjoy The Hunchback EP a lot, because it actually rocks, by which I mean actually condescends to play his guitar really loud, just as I enjoy the occasional track such as the brilliant “Freeway,” “Freak Train,” “Monkey,” and “Inside Looking Out.”
Deciding I must be wrong about Vile and needing a second opinion, I shipped his entire body of work to my close personal friend Charles Manson, who in addition to being a convicted murderer also happens to be a top-notch music critic. He responded, “Where’s the Helter? Where’s the Skelter? If you’re going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy. Vile does his thing well enough, but rarely leaves something witchy, by which I mean that too many of his songs just sit there, and there’s nothing—in the melody, dynamics, or lyrics—to make me want to listen to them any more than I’d want to listen to Lady Antebellum. Seriously, I’d love to do a creepy-crawl through this guy’s mind to find out why he doesn’t write more songs like “Freeway” or “Damn You.” That said, I love the lines in “Snowflakes Are Dancing” that go, “Comfort of codeine, and Springsteen pristine/ You should sing just whatever” because, like I always say, no sense makes sense, and besides—anybody who name-checks The Boss is hunky dory with this homicidal Bruce devotee.
But if it seems as if I come not to praise Vile but to tear him a new asshole, hold the presses, because it looks as if he’s done something truly witchy at last. His latest release, 2013’s Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze, is more than just a superb album—it’s a revelation, and almost justifies all the hype he’s received since Constant Hitmaker. The new one is lively, varied in sound but largely uptempo, and might as well have been called “Vile Comes Alive.” From the long and lovely slacker classic “Wakin’ on a Pretty Day” (which grooves along like Pavement on something narcotic and really mellow and currently holds the No. 2 spot on my personal Top 10, hot on the heels of Redd Kross’ lovely “Dracula’s Daughter”) to the Crazy Horse crunge of “KV Crimes” to the exquisitely beautiful “Girl Called Alex,” Vile demonstrates that he possesses range, mad skills, and maybe even a touch of genius. The percussion-happy “Was All Talk” bounces and percolates wonderfully and has a perty melody to boot, while the perky (and bona fide radio friendly) “Snowflakes Are Dancing” is actually danceable; why, not even its laughable sub-“Horse With No Name” opening lines (“Bought a ticket from the Tin Man/ He is my main man”) can keep it from going about its business of putting a smile on your face.
And so it goes: The uptempo “Shame Chamber” boasts a cool hook and some nice drumming that keeps things cooking, not to mention some neat “Wooo!’s” that provide definitive proof Vile is no perpetual bummer, while “Never Run Away” has a winning simplicity and timeless feel, like good Tom Petty without Petty’s skeleton face. “Air Bud” boasts some cool synthesizers and a propulsive groove that’ll have you nodding your head like one of those bobble-head Tupac Shakurs you see in the rear windows of ghetto hoopties, while the 10-minute-plus closer “Goldtone” (a salute to Pavement’s great “Gold Soundz”?) establishes a mellow groove that goes on and on, like a great dream or life without the high suck factor. Which leaves “Pure Pain” with its exquisite guitar work and the slow, hypnotic “Too Hard,” which alas goes on a good two minutes too long and features some lyrics (“I will promise to do my very best to do my duty for God and my country”) that I can only hope are ironic, or Vile and I are quits. Because I’m of the Devil’s Party, and have no use for God, Flag, or Country, and agree with Ambrose Bierce that patriotism is the first refuge of a scoundrel.
Anyway, I was looking forward with some trepidation to seeing Vile and The Violators on July 20 at the 9:30 Club. I couldn’t help but wonder: Would Dr. Pepper show up, or the evilly dull Mr. Pibb? Unfortunately, I missed the opening act due to a quirk of fate–I foolishly got into a cab being driven by an elderly German gentleman with one arm and a Hitler mustache, who obviously had no clue where the 9:30 Club was located but responded to my every attempt to provide directions by shrieking, “Silence! I am Führer of cab!” and “Halt’s Maul, Subhuman!” He finally dropped me off in front of a rowhouse in the Southeast, where a not-so-welcoming committee of gangbangers greeted me with an, “Iz you trazy?” “Yes, I be trazy,” I responded, shaking like a castanet. Fortunately one of the crew had jacked me a while back, and we’d rather bonded over the experience. And to show there were no hard feelings, he kindly drove me to the 9:30 Club—in a car that reeked so strongly of reefer I’m sure it must have formerly belonged to Cheech and Chong—where he promptly (but very politely) jacked me again.
As for the show, it was largely excellent but marred by Vile’s decision to perform four songs solo, ruining them in the process. What’s worse, the solo tunes included (in addition to “He’s Alright” and “Peeping Tomboy”) two of my faves: the snappy “Snowflakes Are Dancing,” which the solo Vile managed to drain of every ounce of perkiness and—I may never forgive Vile for this—“Freeway.” I ask you: Who takes their best song, drains it of all momentum and even alters the melody, besides Bob Dylan of course? But he’s Bob Dylan, and can do any fucking thing he wants. He can play Black-Eyed Peas covers all night long, and the crowd will still suck it up, because once upon a time he used to be a genius.
Fortunately Vile, whose general stage stance I would describe as “Modified Hunchback of Notre Dame,” played lots of songs off the new one, opening the show with “Wakin’ on a Pretty Day,” which featured some great guitar solos, most likely had more “yeahs” in it than any song in the history of song (I lost count at 642), and was much louder but not quite as seamlessly smooth as the recorded version. Also off the new one were “Was All Talk,” with its propulsive beat (provided by a killer drummer) and a great gee-tar solo; “KV Crimes,” which had The Violators sounding like Crazy Horse on crack; “Girl Called Alex,” which was every bit as beautiful as on record, despite its bigger sound in the form of some Stonehenge power chords; and “Shame Chamber,” which was loud but a bit ragged, a fact I was able to overlook thanks to Vile’s to-the-tenth power screams.
I was glad to hear “Freak Train,” which chugged along the tracks of ecstasy and was fueled not by coal but lots of distorted guitar, and ended in mayhem, anarchy, and carnage, followed by a good five minutes or so of feedback, just as I was to hear the heavy metal “Hunchback,” which boasted great vocals by Vile (whose J. Mascis Jr. voice was in good form all night), lots of pile driver guitars, and another feedback ending that sounded like the electrical short that catapulted Uriah Heep’s Gary Thain into a Texas audience back in 1974, making him the first human ever to fly.
I also liked the very pretty “Baby’s Arms” off Smoke Ring For My Halo, which featured with some nice folky guitar I have reason to suspect was secretly actually written by an elf. And I loved the mid-tempo homage of sorts to the rock life, “On Tour,” which had Vile singing, “On tour, lord of the flies/ Aw, hey who cares? What’s a guitar/ Watch out for this one/ He’ll stab you in the back for fun.” As for “Ghost Town,” I didn’t much care for it until the end, when Vile started screaming while playing one heavenly and heavily distorted bastard of a guitar solo, at which point the drums kicked in, and there followed the best and most extended guitar freakout of the show. He also played “Jesus Fever” off Smoke Ring, which had a propulsive beat and rocked hard, even if his guitar solo sounded a bit off, like it may have had one too many hits on the old bong before the show.
And that was it. The show ended on a down note, with two of the acoustic numbers I mentioned previously, which is no way to end a show, with a yawning descent into nothingness. A Beckett novel, sure, but not a rock show. He might have saved the thing with an encore, but he didn’t play an encore, he was obviously in such a hurry to get to the vegan wraps backstage. Shit, the Philly cops would have known how to close things, with an explosion that would have flattened the 9:30 forever. But hey, I’m sure Vile had his reasons, even if they’re inscrutable to this guy.
Afterwards I got a soundboard copy of the show and sent it to Manson. One listen to “Freeway” and he shouted, apoplectic, “That did it! Helter Skelter is back on! Call Squeaky! Call Tex! Call Sadie Mae Glutz! Call Leonard Maltin!”
“The mild-mannered and exceedingly bland movie critic?” I asked.
“Lethal Lenny?” said Manson. “At Spahn Ranch he was one exceedingly hard dude. He liked to secretly dose visitors with 5,000 mics of acid for fun. And you should have seen him with a machete!”
“So what do you think?” I asked. “Is Vile the best thing to ever come out of Philadelphia?”
“Fuck no,” said Manson. Then he began to sing: “I wouldn’t if I were you/ I know what she can do/ She’s deadly man/ And she could really rip your world apart/ Mind over matter/ Ooh, the beauty is there/ But a beast is in the heart/ Oh-oh, here she comes/ Watch out boy/ She’ll chew you up/ She’s a maneater.” He paused, played with his beard with both hands, then said, “But a beast is in the heart. Now that’s some far out, witchy shit. No, Vile’s cool, but I’ll take Hall and Oates any time.”
