The annual Seattle music and arts festival Bumbershoot has locked in its 2024 performance lineup. Returning during Labor Day weekend on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, the event will feature headlining appearances from Pavement, James Blake, and Kurt Vile. Courtney Barnett, Kim Gordon, Freddie Gibbs, and Aly & AJ will …
Read More »Kurt Vile Previews His LP-Length EP With Lengthy 'Another Good Year for the Roses'
Kurt Vile, whose prolix verbosity and augmented guitar solos do not lend themselves to brevity (much like this sentence so far), will release a record this fall, on Nov. 17 to be exact, that he has titled Back to Moon Beach, which he heralds today with a new song called …
Read More »Kurt Vile, Nikki Lane, and Skynyrd's Ex-Drummer Help Asheville Get into the Festival Game
It’s early Saturday evening and contemporary bluesman Cedric Burnside — the grandson of the great R.L. Burnside — is sitting on a large rock along the banks of the French Broad River. A hot mid-summer sun falls behind the Blue Ridge Mountains cradling his current location in Asheville, North Carolina. …
Read More »Kurt Vile Honors 'Musical Genius' and Late Violators Bandmate Rob Laakso
Rob Laakso, a longtime guitarist and multi-instrumentalist in Kurt Vile and the Violators, died on Thursday, May 4. His wife Mamie-Claire Cornelius confirmed his death following a battle with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of bile duct cancer. Laakso was 44. “I am lost without you but I promise …
Read More »Mitski, Bartees Strange, Wet Leg: Your Guide to the Best Indie Albums of 2022 (So Far)
Mitski released the soaring, melodic Laurel Hell; Bartees Strange jumped genres and blew minds with Farm to Table; Wilco went warm and melodic, if not truly country, with Cruel Country; Wet Leg revived the post-punk revival with their endlessly entertaining self-titled debut, ending up on Glastonbury’s main stage. And those …
Read More »Kurt Vile's 'Watch My Moves' Is a Majestically Mellow Zone-Out Session
The new Kurt Vile album begins, like many great yarns, in medias res. The poet-king of Philadelphia is at an airport somewhere in North America, pondering the prospects of his own mortality and a cold beer, when an epiphany hits him: “Listenin’ to ‘Heart of Gold’/Gonna open up for Neil …
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