Every once in a while, you go to a show where you feel lucky to have been there. Often times, these shows tend to happen at small venues and feature bands that are under-appreciated, and the Kurt Vile show at The Roxy at Mahall’s on Tuesday night was EXACTLY that kind of show.
The crowd was elbow-to-elbow in the 800-capacity venue, but it felt like more than that, spilling back into the bar area, pressed together in that hot room, sweating it out just to make sure they didn’t lose their spot for the coveted set. “Cleveland rocks,” as Vile said at one point early on in the evening, and on this night, Cleveland proved the point.
Opening the evening was The Sadies, the veteran Canadian quartet who go back with Vile quite a ways. Vile appeared on their 2017 album ‘Northern Passages,‘ and the two acts have been crossing paths and collaborating for years. Here, they delivered a rocking 45-minute set that was confident and tight, mentioning at one point that they’ve played Cleveland for 25 years, but this was the first time they weren’t at the Beachland Ballroom.
Then came Vile and his band, the Violators. They opened with “Red Room Dub,” the spacey album cut from ‘Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me,’ his tenth studio album released last month on Verve Forecast. The record is a love letter to his hometown, recorded largely at his own studio in Mount Airy, and the songs translated beautifully live.
The set drew quite a bit from the new album while rewarding longtime fans with deep cuts and catalog favorites. “Zoom 97” and “Rock o’ Stone” kept the new material front and center, and then“99 BPM” gave the crowd a boost of energy. A solo acoustic “Blackberry Song” followed, pulling the room into a quiet stillness. Vile has this quality when he plays: the vibe of a friend saying, “hey, check out this song I wrote,” except the song turns out to be a sprawling and complex piece of guitar music. That quality was on full display during this solo song.
The set moved through “Girl Called Alex,” “Chance to Bleed,” and “Like Exploding Stones” before arriving at “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone).” “Pretty Pimpin” remained one of his most crowd-pleasing songs, and “Wakin on a Pretty Day” showed why it’s the track that broke him through to wider audiences back in 2013. It hasn’t aged a day.
The mix was the night’s one rough patch. Vile’s vocals occasionally got swallowed depending on where you were standing, especially early on in the set, which was a shame, as his delivery is central to what makes these songs work. It eventually got worked out after a couple of songs, though.
Between songs, Vile was his endearingly awkward self. Shy and visibly more at home with an instrument in his hands than without one. He didn’t speak much, and when he did, it was brief and slightly halting in that way that fits his persona. But he didn’t need to say anything. His songs are a sort of modern-day thread between the Replacements and Jonathan Richman, sort of self-aware but never precious, lo-fi in sensibility, even when they’re anything but. He’s so underappreciated in the modern rock scene, but sitting in that room on Tuesday night, it was easy to see why the people who get it really get it.
The encore was a three-song closer that ended when Travis Good of The Sadies came back to the stage for “Cool Water,” bringing the evening full circle. This is something he’s been doing on the tour, and it’s a nice touch.
Since he only tours sporadically and unpredictably (this was his first time in Cleveland since 2019), this tour has been a long time coming. ‘Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me‘ is the kind of record that deserves to be heard loud, in a room full of people, and this is a massive tour, so go out and catch him if you can.
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