The one and only Kurt Vile returned to Australia last week for a short tour. While in Sydney he delivered a career-spanning set at the Twilight at Taronga concert series, overlooking Taronga Zoo and the iconic backdrop of Sydney Harbour. Vile’s last album was the critically acclaimed 2015 release b’lieve I’m goin down…, and while we wait patiently for more new music, this set of highlights was more than enough to satiate fans. The crowd braved the rain to catch the renowned solo artist and former War on Drugs member in what was undoubtedly one of this year’s Twilight at Taronga highlights.
Mick Turner
Kurt Vile
The Twilight at Taronga lineup also includes Jet, The Rubens, Peter Garrett, The Living End, Ball Park Music, Teenage Fanclub and Martha Wainwright. Vile also performs at Queensland Performing Arts Centre on March 9, and will play Golden Plains festival this weekend.
Photos: David Cooling for Howl & Echoes
Just when you thought festival season couldn’t get much better, Golden Plains, Meredith Festival’s little sister, just went and announced one of the most eclectic and brilliant lineups of the year.
Yes, the festival is smaller and more niche than Splendour, Falls and the other major events, but this kind of lineup really brings us so much hope that Australian festival promoters are still happy to challenge their audiences and push boundaries
It had previously been announced that Australian great Neil Finn of Crowded House and Split Enz will be headlining the event, along with punk/ska legends The Specials. The full lineup has now been revealed and it is un-fucking-believable. Seriously.
Electronic maestro Nicolas Jaar will be returning to Australia for the first time since he and Dave Harrington blew Splendour in the Grass’ head off in 2014 with Darkside. Jaar has just released a stunning new album, Sirens, and we can’t wait to hear it live in 2017. Hopefully he’ll be announcing sideshow performances as well. Read our review of Sirens here and our feature on Jaar here.
Punk stalwarts The Damned will be delivering a ferocious set, showing off what they can do so many years after first making waves, while Kurt Vile will be returning to Australia after playing Falls Festival just last year (read our interview here). His first ever Australian tour included a trip to the ‘Sup and his return will be welcomed with open arms, as will Chain and the Gang, who were the very first international act to ever appear at Meredith.
The Australian names are running incredibly strong this year, with disco lords Total Giovanni, our fave gals Camp Cope, The Peep Tempel, Olympia, metal trio ORB and more leading the charge.
Check out the full lineup below. If you’ve never been to Golden Plains before, I can personally confirm that it’s probably the best small music festival in the country – absolutely worth a trip down to Melbourne for the weekend.
As always, tickets will be allocated via ballot – you can enter here, it’s open until next Tuesday, October 25.
Golden Plains takes place from March 11 – 13, 2017.
Golden Plains 2017 Lineup
Neil Finn
Nicolas Jaar
The Specials
Chain & The Gang
Total Giovanni
Margaret Glaspy
Kurt Vile
Princess Nokia
Teenage Fanclub
Camp Cope
The Damned
Olympia
Wax’o Paradiso
HABITS
ORB
Cash Savage And The Last Drinks
J A Z Z Party
Ausmuteants
Benny And The Flybyniters
The Dusty Millers
Brooke Powers
The Peep Tempel
Image: Supplied
2015 saw the release of some truly astounding albums, but one of my absolute favourites came from Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile. His sixth album, b’lieve i’m goin down…, saw Vile return to his folky, relaxed roots, and work through quite a bit of inner turmoil. Documenting existential crises, isolation and alienation with his typically hilarious lyricism, he delivered one of the best records of the year with this album.
Since then, he has slowly started to pick up speed with a gradually growing world tour, and now his sights are set firmly on Down Under as he prepares to make his way to Falls Festival and Southbound Festival over the New Year’s Eve period. The once War on Drugs member hasn’t played on Australian soil since last year’s Laneway festival, but his absence has definitely been noted by his loyal fans.
Ahead of his Australian appearances, we had the honour to have a chat with him during a brief break from Christmas preparations for his family to talk about getting back to his roots, dressing up for a country club Santa photo and how he is turning into his father. You can check all tour dates for Kurt Vile and his band The Violators below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=659pppwniXA
What’s going on, Kurt?
Not much, just sitting on my stoop in Philly. I’m sluggishly getting ready for Christmas.
You have young daughters, so are you doing a big Christmas?
I feel like it’s a big Christmas for them. They definitely get spoiled with plenty of presents but being that they’re little and our family is little, it’s also a little Christmas at the same time.
Do you play Santa for them?
No *laughs* It’s funny, I just visited my family with my siblings for Christmas and -it wasn’t my idea but I still ran with it- we all got pictures taken with Santa Claus. We got all the brothers around Santa Claus and it was really funny because we had to get dressed up because it was at a country club or something fucking lame like that. It was at my sister’s country club and she was stressing because we had to dress a certain way, which we did but it’s really funny on us and we’re all around Santa. I put it up on my Instagram and now it looks like it was my idea!
Well I wanted to say, congratulations on the album! It’s one of my favourites for the whole year.
Oh thank you so much! I really appreciate it.
How are you feeling about everything with it? Are you kind of used to this now with so many albums already? Does it get any easier?
I was excited. This record didn’t do as good as I thought. I know it did really well, but I think it’s a really deep and musical record and I feel like a lot of music that people listen to now is not necessarily either one of those anymore. It’s just a different kind of thing and I think the record is dark and deep enough that it alienates some people. But at the same time, some people love it and I’m grateful. Ultimately I’m happy. I’m always happy with the way it turns out. I’m still into the record and I’m excited to play it on tour, but I’m already thinking about the next one. It takes a while for a record to come out so between then and now I’ve already been thinking about new music.
It’s interesting that you say that because I think this record in particular is much more enjoyable as a whole. You can listen to the songs individually, of course, but to listen to the entire record as a whole is how it’s kind of intended, right? That’s not really how albums are made anymore.
Right! That’s how I always make a record. A lot of friends of mine do the same thing too. My friend Adam [Granduciel] from The War On Drugs always makes his albums that way. I feel like, some people still build an album up and have limited tracks for it, whereas I record lots and lots of songs and then I figure out what songs fit where. I’m glad to hear you point that out that it is made to be listened to as a whole. Even myself recently, we all have to use the internet and I do, but I feel like everything I did when it came to lyrics and notes and stuff was put into virtual notes and calendars looked up online on top of everything else- it hurt my brain after a while. I just like writing notes in a notepad, you know? Things that you don’t do anymore. It’s much better. It makes your brain feel better.
Absolutely. The actual physical act of writing something down helps you so much. Do you think it’s good for creativity as well?
Totally. Whether it’s your computer or your phone, you go and try to put a note in there but you have all these dumb alerts and you forget what you’re fucking doing. Everything you’re trying to do is in this little stupid square. It’s the worst.
Well you said this time around you wanted to do a lot of the stuff yourself, instead of going into a studio and having everyone setting everything up for you and do everything for you. This time around you did it differently, is this kind of like that? To get the “real” song?
Yeah I think so. I think you can definitely still create just as great and candid performances under all those circumstances, but I just felt like I got used to sitting around and people setting things up perfectly. You can’t just turn on the inspiration. It was better for me to, in some ways, get back to my roots but in a more hi-fi version of just feeling like you’re in somebody’s house recording. Eventually I had to go to the studio but after a while, but I think ultimately it started without anybody not in the band involved. It keeps it more insular and more natural.
Do you feel like you’ve come full circle going back to your roots in this more polished way?
I think I’ve gone back to my roots. I feel it all the time. Sort of like when I was telling you that I record a lot of songs, I have a crazy memory where I remember all these songs I wrote on a 12-string guitar because I just recently got one, but I used to play it all the time. All these riffs are coming out in songs that I would always play but never did anything with. I feel like I can tap into my roots all the time now. Every time I think about recording, I’m not imagining a perfectly set up studio, I’m imagining starting from the ground up, even if that only ends up being demos. It’s moving from the ground up, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “This is all great!” I know this like the back of my hand, and it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t have to be emotionally executed. You can just go to the hi-fi studio afterwards and really polish it off. Recently, I feel like I’m in a good place.
Totally! Like with I’m An Outlaw which you wrote on the banjo, which you don’t often do but you used to all the time when you were a child – is it a cathartic thing to be revisiting all of that now?
I think I’ve always done it in a way, but it is cathartic. I think I refined it. I always talk about the music my dad played when we were growing up, like bluegrass and old-time, and now I’m starting to feel like i’m just like my dad but an even more obsessive version, like just listening to so much country music. I’ve always been really obsessive. That early American music I listened to growing up is in my DNA, but now I just keep consuming it. That’s where music came from basically. It’s the roots of rock’n’roll. Even just with myself, musically, no one is ever going to be able to quite touch it. A lot of people just stop at rock’n’roll. People say guitar music is dead or that people hardly play it anymore, but I don’t even notice that. There is always going to be guitar music. I do think sometimes that even though there is guitar music, it still comes from a pretty modern place, or at least a “rock” place. But in certain ways you can go deeper and deeper into the roots, and people aren’t going to know why but at least I’ll know it’s untouchable, and I hope a lot of other people will too. Probably a lot of dads! *laughs* A lot of 60 year old grandparents.
They’re the ones who are still buying the records! It really is quite a melancholy record though – were you feeling all this despair at the time of making it?
I think I was definitely feeling despair at the time, but why not? Ultimately it was pretty good to bring me out on the other side. I feel better now than when I was making the record, for sure. I feel like there are a lot of things to be freaked out about and a lot of things to be happy about like a billion times a day. It’s like a rollercoaster!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0p3AiVkWzU
Do you ever feel uneasy thinking about the vulnerability on this record and knowing all these people are listening to that?
No, because it’s heartwarming and/or a compliment when someone really gets it so I know it’s valid. But then, a different type will mock it, so it’s always well-balanced.
How have the live shows been with the new material? I’ve noticed your most recent setlists don’t actually feature the new stuff that much?
I think the only songs we haven’t played so much, because there are a couple of songs in particular that Stella [Mozgawa of Warpaint] played on and she is just such a natural that I know we could get it without her but it just won’t be quite the same, like Lost My Head There and Life Like This. We’re definitely going to mix it up when we come down to Australia and New Zealand.
Awesome! I am so excited see you play again, it’s been a while!
Yeah I’m so excited to come back as well. We’re having a family vacation after the tour, they’re meeting me in Dunedin and then we’re going to come back to Melbourne. Between New Zealand and Australia, I’m chilling out there for another 3 weeks with my family. I’m just so excited.
Kurt Vile tour dates:
Falls and Southbound festivals:
Southbound:
Jan 8-10, 2016
Busselton, WA
Details here
Falls Festival:
Lorne (Relocated to Mount Duneed Estate), VIC
Dec 28, 2015-Jan 01, 2016
Marion Bay, TAS
Dec 29, 2015- Jan 01, 2016
Byron Bay, NSW
Dec 31, 2015 – Jan 03, 2016
Details here
Sideshows with Twerps:
Sunday 3 January – The Forum, Melbourne
Thursday 7 January – Sydney Opera House, Sydney
Details here
An event held this week to celebrate Ground Control Touring’s 15th birthday seems to have ended up as one of the most jealous making jam sessions we can imagine. The showcase at New York’s Webster Hall promised live sets from Kurt Vile, Porches, Frankie Cosmos, Speedy Ortiz and others across the venue’s three stages. But surprise covers and collaborations took the evening somewhere really special.
Inviting Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon onto the stage during his set, Kurt Vile treated the audience to a cover of the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray, also joined by Steve Gunn. If the expected set from Vile following this year’s release believe I’m goin’ down… wasn’t enough, then the fuzzed out, epic performance from himself and Gordon felt like history in the making. Vile also took to the stage with Woods for a rendition of Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, after Woods’ multi-instrumentalist Jarvis Taveniere took his part in the Velvet Underground cover.
Parquet Courts’ Andrew Savage also joined Woods to cover Neil Young’s Powderfinger, who in turn were joined by also member of Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo, on Mote. In what would have been a pant-wetting progression, the list continues with Waxahatchee joining forces with Superchunk’s Mac MacCaughan and the Clean’s Hamish Kilgour, and Perfect Pussy’s Meredith Graves joining Rainer Maria. Watch the videos of Kurt Vile’s performance of Sister Ray and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn501pmzl-s]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtSyDPhr0f0]
Fresh after releasing his sixth studio album, Kurt Vile is wasting no time in making sure his brand spankin’ new music is getting out into the world, and has given one hell of a performance on Conan. Performing not one but two tracks from b’lieve i’m goin down…, Vile showed off just how talented and humble he really is.
Looking almost shy, he hid behind his long mane of hair as he performed lead single Pretty Pimpin’ on the actual show, and later performed Wild Imagination as a web-exclusive in the Conan green room. Passionate, refined and expertly done, Vile really gave both performances his all. You may also recognise the energetic drummer, who is actually Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint fame.
It’s been a busy few weeks for Kurt Vile, who not only released b’lieve last week, but was also interviewed by none other than Kim Gordon last week as well. Gordon, who had previously written about Vile’s new album for a press release, has been open in her admiration for the man, and the interview highlights not only her as his peer and colleague, but a fan as well. You can read more about that here, and catch the man himself in action this coming New Year’s Eve at both the Falls and Southbound festivals.
Kurt Vile has become quite a prodigious singer/songwriter since his early days in Philly with The War On Drugs, gearing up to release his sixth record b’lieve i’m goin down… on September 25th. The melancholic musician recently caught up with none other than Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth fame, to discuss his new record.
The interview ran in the autumn/winter issue of Dazed, and rather than the usual ‘how did you write this song?’ ‘where can we see you next?’ re-tread questions, it’s quite refreshing to read about two friends, and mutual musical admirers, shooting the shit. Having written the bio to accompany the release of b’lieve, Kim has an upbeat and fun dynamic with Kurt that helps bring out his personality. The comfort between the two of them really gives Vile an opportunity to express his musical intellect as well as showing the fun-loving side of him, that is anything but apparent in the soulful, vulnerable wails that sit a-top his low-fi rock and roll guitar playing.
Above all else though, Kim is clearly a fan of Kurt, but not in a way that ever comes across as gushing. Her takes on Kurt’s songs and album comes across more as insightful than fangirl-ish, which makes sense, what with Kim being part of one of the worlds most seminal rock bands, she’s hardly going to be overwhelmed by another musician.
As Kurt talks about the darkness in his records, he articulates about his music ‘I think that some – OK, all – of the lyrics are darker on this album, but I think my lyrics are always pretty dark’ it’s not all darkness though Kurt reveals as he continues ‘It’s not total despair, I would just say they’re melancholy.’ On the idea of darkness Kim shares her own astute thoughts on the record, ‘For me, I didn’t really think of the record in terms of darkness. There are melancholy melodies, but I thought the lyrics were especially good and I thought that they were kind of mature, like someone who knows themselves and who is singing about ‘how it is’, but making that sound poetic.’
As well as getting a glimpse into the musical minds of two innovative and pioneering artists, the interview offers some levity with the two sharing some brief, but amusing anecdotes about Kurt day-drinking at the Jim Jarmusch curated ATP festival in 2010, as well as a missed opportunity to hang out with Neil Young.
If you’re a fan of either artist, the interview is worth checking out, and in case you missed it, b’lieve i’m goin down… is available to stream ahead of it’s release date in four places:
b’lieve i’m goin down… is officially released on September 25th via Matador Records.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmUndmDgNEU
And if you’re lucky enough to nab tickets you can catch Kurt performing at Falls Festival, or at Southbound.
If you, like me, have been physically unable to stop listening to Kurt Vile‘s latest single, Pretty Pimpin‘, since it came out, then this news should fall on very excited Internet ears indeed. If not, you should still be excited as new Kurt Vile is always a good thing. In the lead up to the release of his sixth album titled b’lieve i’m goin down…, Vile has now released another single in the form of the tripped out and blissful Life Like This.
Accompanied by one hell of a cartoon acid trip/studio session for the clip, director Adam Avilla said Life Like This is “a story about getting at the heart of inspiration and the surreal disjointed journey that the pursuit entails.” Vile’s drawl and subtle arrangements carry the narrative of the track, with Vile still having that same pull of an old man sitting by a camp fire, plucking at a guitar and having a yarn. Subtle inflections in his voice break up the almost hypnotic drifting feeling you get from the track, his effortless and nonchalant attitude at a crossroads with just how much he puts into his music.
If you want to have someone plug your album, who better than “long time fan” and lead singer of Sonic Youth/cultural icon Kim Gordon? Gordon said of the new album, “Kurt does his own myth-making; a boy/man with an old soul voice in the age of digital everything becoming something else, which is why this focused, brilliantly clear and seemingly candid record is a breath of fresh air.” She went onto say the album “is a handshake across the country, east to west coast, thru the dustbowl history (“valley of ashes”) of woody honest strait forward talk Guthrie, and a cali canyon dead still nite floating in a nearly waterless landscape.”
b’lieve i’m goin down… is out September 25 via Matador Records/Remote Control Records.