It was actually Kurt Vile’s second visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers last week, but there was still a kind of incongruous magic to seeing him on that stage. With his country twang and signature shaggy curls, a less in-the-know viewer might’ve wondered who let this guy with a guitar and his band into the building.
Of course, Vile isn’t just some guy; he’s the Constant Hitmaker of Philadelphia, who put out his new record (watch my moves) in April of this year, and was interviewed for XPN by Sean Fennell that same month. Vile and his band, The Violators, opted for “Hey Like a Child” from the new album, where he played with some extremely charming bends in his phrasing (“In a duh-ream I drew my buh-lue-print” jumped out right away). It was a deft choice—a song about all the things an innocuous word like “Hey” can mean to highlight the subtle power of Vile’s own lowkey lyricism.
Kurt Vile doesn’t have any local tour dates lined up, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been keeping busy. He performed on Colbert in June, and played a WXPN Free at Noon concert over the summer; photos plus a recording of that show can be found here.