Live Review: Kurt Vile & The Violators, RVG

Melbourne's RVG make music that could best be described as Scott & Charlene's Wedding but with guitar solos. It's strummy garage-rock with a strong Go-Betweens influence, mostly carried by the passion of the band's frontwoman, Romy Vager, rather than the tunes themselves. They're a good time, but nothing you'd skip the wedding for.

RVG @ The Forum. Photo by Nathan Goldsworthy.

With his face characteristically hidden behind a mane of knotty hair, his jeans impossibly tight and his posture crooked, Kurt Vile steps out of the shadows and up to the mic for a quick, "Yiew!" before launching into the recent, Tom Petty-esque single, Loading Zones. With a boot-tapping, urban cowboy beat, it's a great start to the night that quickly sets the tempo for Vile's brand of surreal lyricism, nimble fretwork and extended song structures.

Kurt Vile & The Violators @ The Forum. Photo by Nathan Goldsworthy.

Our main man and his backing band, The Violators, are on a roll from the get-go. After powering through Jesus Fever and I'm An Outlaw, Vile and friends bust out the acoustic instruments and slow down the groove for Bassackwards, a tranquillised fan favourite from last year's Bottle It In. While Vile's latest experiments with lengthy, repetitious tunes most definitely owe a lot to classic krautrock, there's also a big curly hair in his new musical soup, courtesy of Blonde On Blonde-era Bob Dylan.

Kurt Vile & The Violators @ The Forum. Photo by Nathan Goldsworthy.

It's not long before we kick back into gear for more rockin' tunes like Cold Was The Wind and Check Baby, the latter seeing Vile breaking his relaxed, cartoony twang for a quality scream here and there. After a few more songs from the recent album, this reviewer suddenly remembers 2017's Lotta Sea Lice, a funny, little collaborative album from Vile and his unlikely Melbourne mate, Courtney Barnett. It was at this moment that Vile unceremoniously mumbles, "Aight, I wanna bring Courtney on," into the mic. And out she comes!

With The Violators retreading into the shadows, Courtney and Kurt (not the grunge ones) share the stage for a tender duet of Continental Breakfast and a cover of Belly's Untogether. With Vile taking a backseat on the acoustic guitar, Barnett covers the simple finger-picking duties on her Jaguar with a charming lack of pretension.

Watching Vile share a nice laugh and a bit of banter with his intercontinental friend, you're reminded of that great chorus from Pretty Pimpin: "All I want is to just have fun, live my life like a son of a gun/I could be one thousand miles away, but still mean what I say."

We'd say tonight's a pretty good indication that Kurt Vile's living that mission statement. 

Kurt Vile & The Violators @ The Forum. Photo by Nathan Goldsworthy.