{"id":375924,"date":"2026-07-16T20:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T20:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/375924\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T20:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T20:20:11","slug":"kurt-vile-brought-his-unique-psych-sound-to-the-longhorn-ballroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/375924\/","title":{"rendered":"Kurt Vile brought his unique psych sound to the Longhorn Ballroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKurt Vile, the leading voice in modern psych rock, played the Longhorn Ballroom on July 15. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Madison Truscan \/ @madisonfromdallas<\/p>\n

If Neil Young is the dust by which God made modern rock music, then Kurt Vile is the rib he\u2019ll use to make the next generation. Vile and his band, the Violators, are leading the charge for a few psych-rock purists, honoring the ethos and energy of the genre\u2019s pioneers. Vile\u2019s show at the Longhorn Ballroom<\/a> on Wednesday night was a mellow display of his hallmarks: stoic delivery backed by intricately layered strings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the blue-collar Neil Young and Crazy Horse,\u201d Vile said to the Observer when we caught up with him ahead of the show. \u201cI really like to think we fill this niche, that we fill this void that is true to traditional rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vile\u2019s sound, identifiable within seconds, is uniquely his \u2013 a monotonous prose that comes from the very back of his throat as if it\u2019s crawled from his heart, and a unique playing style marked by a fingerpicking technique he picked up playing the banjo<\/a> and translated to a six-string. It\u2019s raw and irreplaceable, try as they might.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Vile has a unique playing style that sets his music apart. <\/p>\n

Madison Truscan \/ @madisonfromdallas<\/p>\n

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THANK YOU!<\/p>\n

You’re all set.<\/p>\n

CLOSE\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I broke new ground as I feel like I always do,\u201d he said. \u201cI have been exploring this sort of hypnotic psychedelic thing that\u2019s just mine, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Touring his 10th album, \u201cPhiladelphia\u2019s Been Good to Me,\u201d\u00a0 his show was a s\u00e9ance, calling on his psych forefathers.<\/p>\n

\u201c[This album] is epic, but this one turned into a little bit more of a mellow epic, psychedelic,\u201d Vile told us. \u201cThis is psychedelic and pretty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vile, whose camp must travel with a conservative estimate of more than a dozen guitars, plays for a diverse audience who have found his music at any point in the last 20 years and stayed to watch the artist metamorphose. But he\u2019s never fully departed from his origins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Without a curtain of tresses, psych rock is just regular rock. <\/p>\n

Madison Truscan \/ @madisonfromdallas<\/p>\n

\u201cThe record would be a little more mellow if we didn\u2019t have weird but catchy infectious psychedelic rockers, which [are] more or less just chorus earworms over and over,\u201d he said when we spoke with him. \u201cIn between, it\u2019s just all kinds of psychedelic hijinks and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll throwback hijinks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vile, who confessionally loves Dallas, particularly his former openers, Dallas-based band True Widow<\/a>, last played the Kessler Theatre, and the smaller venue quickly sold out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDallas is special to me,\u201d he said to the Observer.<\/p>\n

Upgrading to the Longhorn Ballroom presented technical issues on Wednesday night, though, as the venue\u2019s sound system crashed for the opener, Being Dead, a well-worth-it band from Austin.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The band played two songs before realizing no one could hear them, and after 45 minutes of unexplained silence, they were allowed to play one acoustic song before wrapping up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s one lesson I\u2019ve learned: something is better than nothing,\u201d said Being Dead\u2019s frontwoman, Falcon Bitch, on Wednesday. The artist legally changed her name and made a selection we couldn\u2019t help but write about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Being Dead\u2019s lead singer, Falcon Bitch, and multi-instrumentalist Cody Dosier were forced to share a mic for one song after the Longhorn Ballroom suffered severe tech issues.<\/p>\n

Madison Truscan \/ @madisonfromdallas<\/p>\n

An apology from the venue would have been nice, but then again, we may not have even heard it. The malfunction was a great disservice to the fans who bought tickets specifically for the growing band, and a greater disservice to the newly minted fans they would have gained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With technical issues in the rearview, Vile took the stage, giving flowers to his openers. Running through the playful and anecdotal \u201cZoom 97,\u201d before playing the grimier and soulful \u201c99 BPM.\u201d The Violators abandoned their leader centerstage, with just an acoustic guitar, to cover John Prine\u2019s \u201cHow Lucky.\u201d In stunning moments like these, Vile reveals his greatest attribute as a musician: his unrelenting joy of being a fan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He finished the show with his classics, \u201cPretty Pimpin\u2019,\u201d and all 10 minutes of \u201cWalkin\u2019 On a Pretty Day,\u201d the latter half of which displays Vile and his band at their absolute best and most psychedelic. With abundant thanks, Vile and his band left the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Vile, 46 and on his 10th album, will be cited as an inspiration for decades of musicians to come. <\/p>\n

Madison Truscan \/ @madisonfromdallas<\/p>\n

To their credit, there\u2019s not a seat in the Longhorn Ballroom where the sound systems, when they work, falter for even a second, allowing for Vile and his backing bandmates\u2019 hypnotic skills to surround the room, creating a sonic trip without the assistance of hallucinogens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After an extremely short wait, which was a wise choice considering most of the audience had likely already had its patience exercised to the limits, Vile and his -olators returned to play a three-song encore. For \u201cBassackwards,\u201d Vile surprised the uninitiated, flexing his trumpet chops, a skill he\u2019s been building since childhood, before returning to his claim to fame, the strings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If his latest show in Dallas proved anything, it\u2019s that Vile is the patron saint of modern psych rock, awaiting canonization.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kurt Vile, the leading voice in modern psych rock, played the Longhorn Ballroom on July 15. Madison Truscan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2171,102,104,103,4660,3503,2174],"class_list":["post-375924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-concert-reviews","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-interviews","tag-rock-music","tag-touring-artists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}