by Roy Scopazzi
Kurt Vile’s hair gets in his face a lot. That’s not the surprising thing, the surprising thing is how many times in the show he’ll swing his head to get it out of his face multiple times a song. That isn’t exactly surprising, unless you’re like me and completely expected his head to be down, shaded by his locks the entire time, drowsily mumbling his lyrics. That’s a big part of what surprised me about this show, despite Kurt’s overall extremely laid back sound, the energy at The Castro Theatre was overall at a moderate tempo. Not a rip roaring rock show, but as him and his band worked their way through his new album, Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me, along with a spattering of older tunes, he was often expressive and funny, even bantering with the audience at time between songs. To be completely honest, my original idea for this review before I went to the show was to do the whole thing in lowercase like I’m overtly chill from just having come back from what I expected to be an extremely low key affair, but I’m glad that Kurt was able to add some pep to his songs live.
Okay, full disclosure: a good chunk of the reason I wanted to cover this show was because of the opener, Ryan Davis. We are all extremely fortunate they were given a 45 minute set in which they were able to cover a good chunk of their wonderful last album, New Threats from the Soul, and it’s twangy country flair perfectly fit the vibe for Kurt Vile.
