Review: Kurt Vile & The Violators, Oxford Art Factory, 6th December 2011

The What: Everyone’s favourite new singer Kurt Vile is in town with his band The Violators and guests Step Panther and Royal Headache.

And how were the supports? the promoter could have done a lot worse than choosing them. They were decent and suited the general milieu of the evening. Step Panther are a Sydney trio that play noisy garage jamz, Royal Headache is the new buzzband for people that like Eddy Current Suppression Ring and enjoy watching angry singers scowl at the crowd.

Crowd specs: Your usual alt-crowd: lots of beards, black-rimmed glasses, green army jackets and tut-tutting everywhere.

Kurt goes solo for the opening track Blackberry Song, armed with an acoustic geet and an adoring crowd. The band take to the stage afterwards all looking like background actors in Dazed & Confused and the song selection is a nice mix of old and new.

If you only know Smoke Ring For My Halo you would have been a bit dissapointed as there were only a handful of material played from this album (On Tour, Puppet to the Man, Runner Ups to name three). But luckily you’re down with his back catalogue so you enjoyed Freak Train and Hunchback all the same. Kurt goes solo a few more times and gets his inner-Neil Young out on Peeping Tomboy.

For the encore he went Bob Dylan on us and did a rearranged version of Society is My Friend as well as his Springsteen cover of Downbound Train. Very little banter but that’s okay as it didn’t matter. The people were there for the music, maaan. His voice was patchy at times and didn’t quite capture the harmonies as heard on the albums but so what.

The verdict: The best way to spend a Tuesday night. And with his second show sold out too Kurt is on his way to being the next alt-it-guy. Bring it.

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