Philadelphia might well lay claim to Kurt Vile, but The Ottobar (and Baltimore) could just as easily assert adoption rights. Kurt Vile rode the back of a world-altering thunderstorm to Charm City on a Tuesday night, breezing into our streets and onto our favorite stage.
Kurt’s touring Bottle It In, released last October, a long-legged record celebrating exploration, of the self, of life, of the passage of time. It’s unapologetically existential music, like many of Kurt’s songs, with notes stretched wide and spread over time. Hooks subtle, slightly disorienting, it becomes a kind of sonic guide to getting lost.
I mean that as the highest praise.
Kurt often plays venues that hold somewhere between one and four thousand people, stages chest or face high. Ottobar maxes somewhere around 400, offering an intimacy rarely seen before. No bars separated the audience from Kurt and his band – they stood less than an arm’s length from the fans, who crowded (kindly, I might add) to the stage, eager to watch these songs unfold in-person.
He has an easy kind of humility onstage. He says thank you often, nods frequently; he lets his guitar and body language do most of the talking, though, the only signs of any anxiety in his lyrics and the moments he lurches the songs into feedback.
I remember the first time I listened to KV. I didn’t get it right away, finding it ponderous and confusing, almost circular. I kept returning to the music, though, and with Smoke Ring for My Halo, I became a thorough convert. That circularity stretched like rubber bands over long-spun chords affords a weird sort of clarity, like koans for the modern age. Logic doesn’t make as much sense as we pretend it does.
Bottle It In featured on the night (though not exclusively at all), beginning with “Loading Zones”, a song reasonably close to a hit single in the modern age, an exploration of his affection for the City of Brotherly Love, for learning how to own your hometown so well you can break little laws safely (like parking in the loading zone before cops can ticket you). “Jesus Fever” from Smoke Ring followed, a little exploration of growing apart from the world that raised you – leaving religion – juxtaposing it neatly with musical moments tangential to gospel and blues.
“Bassackwards” soared, a song built for spacesuits, drifting on and on and on until it ended. Kinda like life. It still has some of that backend anxiety, but in the human humidity of Ottobar, the acceptance in the line, “Just the way things is these days” percolated truer than worry. He pulled out the banjo once on the night, rippling into and through “I’m an Outlaw”, a standout track from the 2015 record, “b’lieve i’m goin down”.
He changed guitars more times than I can remember, only repeating a few times, capturing a different tone again and again. From Bottle In In, he also played “Check Baby” (an extended joke riffing on soundchecks), “Cold Was the Wind” (a deceptively chilling-sounding song with withdrawal and baseball references), and “Yeah Bones”.
Kurt also played songs from his other more recent records, including the masterful “Girl Called Alex” from Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze, its little “I wanna” repetitions acting as ellipses, his guitar punching the space between, and this little ode to friendship flickered beautifully in the club’s red lights. He closed the set with the incisive and almost aggressive “Puppet to the Man” (entirely too topical right now) and the slow-burn beauty of “Wild Imagination”, a little takedown of our social media culture (an irony, then, that many of my photos will land on more than one platform).
For the encore, Kurt and the band continued the theme from “Wild Imagination”, meditating on overconnectedness (or maybe just stringing together words that sound really good together). “Pretty Pimpin’” and its oscillating moods followed, with night ender “Baby’s Arms” featuring Kurt’s deft fingerpicking over melancholy lyrics about the push and pull of loneliness, aloneness.
These songs all offer opportunities for exploring, primarily the self and the immediate world around us. You should take every opportunity to go listen to them live. Kurt expands his sonic palate to allow for even more scrutiny, more journeying. It’s a little easier to get lost in the songs when they fill the entire space around you.
Here are some photos from the show. All photos courtesy and copyright of Matt Ruppert.
