KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS
SATURDAY 3/23. THE HALL. 8 P.M. $32-$50.
Right around the time “Waking on a Pretty Daze” — Kurt Vile’s fifth record — came out in 2013, I was a college kid discovering weed for the first time. Fortuitous, one might say. If the title doesn’t already give it away, the album is — like all of Vile’s indie rock discography — supremely mellow. As is the case with the best stoner music, though, Vile’s songs are as peculiar and thought-provoking as they are chill and spacious, rooted by a craggy voice full of nooks and crannies. When, on “Too Hard,” he alternates between jokingly quoting the Boy Scout oath (“I will promise to do my very best / To do my duty for God and my country”) and solemnly embracing fatherhood (“There comes a time in every man’s life / When he’s gotta take hold of the hand / That ain’t his but it is), Vile proves that irony and sincerity are comfortable bedfellows. Get tickets here.
