“Life can sure be fun/Imagine if I knew this when I was young,” indie rock’s most endearingly down-to-earth stoner guitar mystic offers near the opening of “Watch My Moves”. Vile remains our era’s great inheritor of the Neil Young/Meat Puppets/Dinosaur Jr. tradition of bending chords, spooling out hypnotic solos, and chilling with your demons until they start feeling like drinking buddies. Kurt noodles, he choogles, he burns and he blazes. He sings about jamming out at home in his underwear, and about listening to “Heart of Gold” while he waits to get on a plane, and about how playing his guitar makes him happy when he starts feeling bad. “Probably gonna be another long song,” he jokes on “Fo Sho.” In a world of immediate-gratification trash, this 73-minute anti-opus is one hell of an argument for taking the long way round to wherever the hell you may or may not eventually end up.
Just listened to the “Square Shells” EP after listening to this one, and Kurt has always been such a journeyman musician in tune with his craft and his influences… His attitude is one of deep appreciation. For music. For community. For family. For being. His music exists somewhere in-between the gritty mortality of the world, and a comfortable dream world re-imagined and personalized. Perhaps, this is what gives some of his tunes a nostalgic and hopeful quality. Kurt’s world is coming alive more and more with each new album, transforming from the lonely, wandering savant of Philadelphia to the beloved family man with collabs and projects under his belt (TWOD); it’s a playful and cozy existence that’s both inclusive and contagious. I really see him honing in onto his own self-assured wisdom with these new singles and videos, similar to the trajectory of “Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze“. Will this album be another shelter (mansion) from the world’s woes?.
Check out the new single “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)” by Kurt Vile off his new album (watch my moves).
The Fat Angel Sings 