Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Happy ‘Daze’ with Kurt
Kurt Vile brings his woozy psychedelic magic to SoFla.
Much has changed for Philadelphia rocker Kurt Vile since he last swaggered into South Florida in 2013, full of the hazy, mellow psychedelia that has defined his solo career since 2008.
The single “Pretty Pimpin’,” off the critically lauded 2015 album “B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down,” was Vile’s first Billboard hit, rising to No. 1 on the Adult Alternative Songs chart last March. Vile’s band, the Violators, has gained a drummer in Kyle Spence, who will support rhythm guitarist Jesse Trbovich and multi-instrumentalist Rob Laakso.
Approaching the end of a yearlong tour, Vile and the Violators will perform Thursday at the North Beach Bandshell.
Vile’s sixth album finds the guitarist in a constant state of refinement. His folksy delivery still sounds smoky and lethargic, inspired by Bob Dylan, Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis and Pavement-era Stephen Malkmus, and his lyrics still riff on existential confusion and the art of relaxation. But “B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down” finds Vile in a darker but funnier mood, describing a hangover on the single “Dust Bunnies” as “a headache like a ShopVac / Coughing dust bunnies.” On his banjo-heavy ballad “I’m an Outlaw,” Vile amusingly casts himself as a bizarre outlaw “on the brink of self-implosion / Alone in a crowd on the corner / In my Walkman in a snow globe going nowhere slow.” And in “Goldtone,” Vile again sounds easygoing and lethargic, singing, “You’d think I was stoned / But I never, as they say, touch the stuff.”
In a November 2013 SouthFlorida.com interview, Vile addressed his laid-back style. “It’s this style I’ve tapped into,” he says. “I’m going to write about, you know, not wanting to move, or being completely lazy to the point of not wanting to move. It’s just my personality, and I have clusters of my life where I’m running around like crazy, so who doesn’t want to chill out for the length of an album?”