Acclaimed Singer-Songwriter Kurt Vile to Perform at Tango on Oct 16

Local fans of slow grooving, masterful guitar playing are in luck – six string virtuoso Kurt Vile will be performing at Tango on October 16.

Citing influences as varied as Pavement, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young, the acclaimed indie singer-songwriter first broke out in 2009 (after leaving the then fledgling, now monstrously successful The War On Drugs) with his sophomore solo release, Childish Prodigy. The LP (which, like all of his releases, Vile recorded with his backing band The Violators) made a significant enough impact in alt-rock circles that vets like Dinosaur Jr, Thurston Moore, and Fucked Up decided to recruit Vile as an opening act on tour.

He kept that momentum going in 2011 with Smoke Ring for My Halo, which landed on many magazines year-end best of lists including twelfth on Mojo's "Top 50 albums of 2011" list, fourteenth on Uncut's top 50, and sixteenth on Pitchfork's top 50. That latter music blog also said that, on Smoke Ring, Vile "showers everything with cosmic, harp-like harmonics," before going on to praise the track "On Tour," in particular: "It's a song that's both monastic and vast all at once, the kind of curiously rich work that seems like it was crafted by forty longhairs instead of just one." He's stayed prolific since then, putting out Wakin on a Pretty Daze and b'lieve I'm goin down ... in 2013 and 2015, respectively, along with several EP's in that timeframe.

And while Vile is now best known for all those successes, his beginnings were far more humble. Hailing from Pennsylvania, young Kurt began strumming a banjo that his father had given him at the age of 14, all the while dreaming of one day becoming a famous guitarist. In the early 2000s, when he was in his early 20s, Vile worked as a forklift operator by day, while habitually chipping away at his home recordings by night. "I got depressed so many times by my blue-collar life, and self-conscious about the fact that I didn't go to college," he said in a 2013 interview with The Guardian, adding: "I was always working super low-end jobs, being the complete opposite of what I wanted to be. But I just fell into it, and I was also sorta shy. It was definitely a pretty rough time."

When I interviewed Vile in 2011, he put a more positive spin on his working class past, telling me that operating a forklift was an engaging challenge and also "a real tight squeeze, like an art ... It’s super subtle, a little turn here, another little turn with the forks to get it in ... and things move really fast, you put all this freight in the smallest spot, stack it on top of something else. Sometimes I’d make a turn and not see, knock things over. It could be [crates of] beer, could be a TV.” Vile went on to describe his equally restrained approach to many of the songs on Smoke Ring, including the title track: “It’s a subtle song, just three chords, but you notice more with repeated listening, when at first it just seems relatively ordinary."

Aside from his Beijing gig, Vile will also perform in Shanghai on October 14. Split Works is coordinating the tour. This will mark the songwriter's first foray into China, though he has performed in Japan in the past.

Kurt Vile will perform at the HIT FM Live stage in on October 16 at 8.30pm with support from Uncle Hu. Tickets are RMB 260 presale, RMB 300 on the door. For more information, click here.

Photos: Under the Radar, Matador Records