Kurt Vile @ The Riverbank Palais, Adelaide 14/3/2017
The Riverbank Palais! Wow! What a venue and it really doesn’t get any better than that with the picturesque Adelaide night time skyline as the backdrop. Tonight was all about Kurt Vile and it has been a while in the making but finally he is playing in Adelaide. Even better still two shows as part of the Adelaide Festival and if show one wasn’t sold out it would have been very close. Kurt is a prestigious talent – singer, song writer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and former lead guitarist in the indie rock band The War On Drugs. It was pleasing to see so many fans there who were more than ofey with his works and were hanging to hear their favourite Kurt Vile tune.
It was a low key build up to the show and then Kurt weaved his way through the crowd to get to the stage. He wasn’t overly chatty early on letting his music do all the talking. The set list crammed in to an hour and a quarter was a really good representation of his career to date opening with Feel My Pain. Everything is minimalist and it was one of those shows that is hard to know what to expect and what the fans are going to get.
It was a strong leaning to the 2015 album b’lieve I’m goin down with the likes of All In A Daze Work, the uber popular Pretty Pimpin’, Wild Imagination, Stand Inside and the song about cleaning one’s house Dust Bunnies featured prominently. There’s no denying that Vile is a guitar genius and the set show cased his guitar noodling, big intro jams, electric riffage with plenty of reverb. Runners Up which morphed in to Blackberry Song was the highlight for me as was My Best Friends (Don’t Even Pass This). Banjo 1 (well that is how it appeared on the set list) was great proving how underrated the banjo is these days. Many will argue that Kurt Vile is acquired taste but experience it for yourself and check out the final show of the Australian tour on Thursday.
Review by Rob Lyon
Set List
Feel My Pain
All In A Daze Work
East Coast
Pretty Pimpin’
Wild Imagination
Wakin’ On A Pretty Day
Banjo 1
Runners Up / Blackberry Song
My Best Friends (Don’t Even Pass This)
Stand Inside
He’s Alright
Dust Bunnies
Peeping Tomboy