Seeing Kurt Vile on New Year's Eve will be a great way to RING IT IN. But in fairness, there are a TON of other bands we could have recommended for 12/31/09. Did you know Jens Lekman is playing at The Empty Bottle? And Girl Talk at Congress Theater? And Disappears (with The Jesus Lizard!) at The Metro? We could have picked those shows to go see too. But we didn't. We picked KURT VILE! It helps that he's opening for THE BLACK KEYS!

Haunting or happy? Who knows! Philly's Kurt Vile makes hazy lo-fi psych-folk that's perfect for the nights you're feeling rather lazy; club music, this is not. Using guitar pedals, guitar reverb and plenty of amplified guitar distortion (see a theme here?), Vile's music can come across as mostly melancholic. But the mood can just as easily be one of carefree blissfulness. It's kind of like how you feel when you're drifting on an inflatable raft in an empty backyard swimming pool. Are you lonely or incredibly content? It's tough to tell sometimes.

Anyway, Vile's space-dream-denseness reminds some of Animal Collective, Ariel Pink and The Tallest Man on Earth. But he has also has received comparisons to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Woah. But when you have strong songs that are slow and layered and perfect for easy cerebral dreaming, you can be compared to just about anyone who doesn't have thunderous riffs in their repertoire.

Oh yeah, when Vile isn't writing songs on his own, he's strumming it up for The War on Drugs (an excellent band).

BUY TICKETS TO SEE KURT VILE (WITH THE BLACK KEYS) AT THE RIVIERA!

Kurt Vile plays the Riviera Theatre, on Thursday, December 31st.