Philly rocker Kurt Vile recently paid a visit to the Hudson Valley to play a free gig at SMOG, a student run club set in the woods off of Bard College. The graffiti-splashed room filled quickly with young college students pushing their way to the front to get a glimpse of the long haired rocker.

After the openers—Philly garage band Caboder and Brooklyn-based electro rock band, Bear Hands—Kurt Vile and the Violators came on at 11pm sharp and got off to a complicated start with some sound issues that were in part due to the limitations of the space. However, the effect was rather interesting alongside the distortion effects Kurt likes to use. As the band played on, the sound got better, and it became easy to get lost in the heavily saturated psychedelic sounds of songs like “Puppet To The Man,” “On Tour” and “Ghost Town,” all off his new album, Smoke Ring For My Halo. Nicely mixed in were some older songs, like the delightful rock/pop song “Breathin Out,” off the album Constant Hitmaker.

— Elizabeth Cintron

Photo by Elizabeth Cintron