Kurt Vile

Kurt Vile, the man with the punk rock name, grungy mane, and classic rock sensibility has had a good year. His own brand of classically American slacker balladry has garnered many plaudits, with Uncut recently deeming Smoke Ring For My Halo their best album of the first half-year. I'm inclined to agree.
      This set of songs has slowly, incrementally, embedded its way into my consciousness, as befits a truly awesome work. If an album grabs you by the throat on the first listen it's seldom able to do so past another half dozen or so airs. The specious charms of the first listen are overrated - it's the test of longevity that distinguishes the fireworks from the flash in the pan.
   Smoke Ring For My Halo is an album full of songs rather than singles. Songs that take melodic left turns and benefit as much from druggy atmospherics and ambience as from conventional melody. Take the opener, 'Baby's Arms'; bleary synths and hushed drums played with maracas create a woozy cocoon for Vile's lyrical meanderings. Hypnotic, repetitive de tuned guitar lines encircle Vile's murmurings about his "one true love", and how aside from this he has "nothing to latch on to." It's all circular melodies and smoke filled rooms, queasy sounding, yet comfortable. Like a drugged sleep. It goes nowhere fast, and doesn't really evolve into anything as orthodox as a chorus/ verse structure. Yet this is what is so charming about both the song and Vile generally.
          Though by far his most crisp sounding offering and a long way from the four track sensibility that informed past efforts such as, God Is Saying This To You, there is still an endearing lo fi sense of spontaneity. Each lyrical observation and non sequitur arrives as if Vile has just stumbled upon it himself. As in the great "On Tour", where he begins, memorably, with this arresting juxtaposition, "On tour, Lord Of The Flies." Each affirmation comes swiftly followed by its own hesitant negation, as seen in the above quoted line... "I'm just playin', I got it made, Most of the time." It's this stumbling after meaning and melody that makes both the music and the lyrics appear so sincere. Vile's greatest strength is the illusion of transparency his songs create, the sense the listener gets of them unfurling before their eyes. As if we are following Vile's ruminations step by step.
     Vile is also an obvious student of rock with an enviable record collection. One minute he can sound like blood heir to Dylan's crooked throne of obliquity, the next, a dead ringer for Neil Young. But at his heart Vile is something less grandiose, but no less interesting. He has an uncanny ability for being candid without sounding in any way theatrical or rehearsed. For being introspective yet not morose. Despite the frequent moments of doubt and equivocation, the overall mood is one of optimism. As on "In my Time", when Vile muses on his past and future, greeting mortality with phlegmatic shrug: "I know when I get older / I'm dying / But I got everything I need anyway, that's fine now / That's fine now."
     "In My Time" is also a good summation of his musical style too, containing, as it does, elements of his lo fi past (the drum machine intro), some multi layered chiming guitars with folky tunings, and even a solo during the bridge that could grace both a Dinosaur Junior track or even be an early Zeppelin riff. All these disparate elements are held together with Vile's nonchalant ease creating one of the poppiest moments on the LP.
       So, as with friends and fellow contenders for best album of 2011 title,  The War On Drugs, Vile can make music that while not going anywhere very fast, gets to where it is going in great style. Even if that is exactly where it started. It is this drone like repetition that aligns the two acts as kindred spirits drawing from the same pool of classic and psychedelic influences. Here's to the year of the slacker ballad.
    Vile's music may at first seem a little amorphous and lacking in the hook departmet, yet over time it will reveal its ample charms. Don't rush these slacker types, man.

Woods + Kurt Vile & The Violators @ The Fleece

 Equipped with a raincoat and camera I sought out a night of psych-folk sunshine from Bristol's sodden streets. I also wish I'd brought something else, but more of that later.
           I'd missed most of the opening act by the time I'd found the place- right by the station yet up an alley no-one would ever think existed, including, seemingly, the non-plussed newsagent I asked.
So on to openers- Woods. For those unfamiliar they are a fantastically unpolished and unpredictable NYC folk outfit. By unpredictable I mean kind of schizophrenic- one minute they sound like The Byrds or CSNY, and the next come over as bleary eyed proggers, unafraid of wigging out like a Neil Young on mescaline with a dark edged psycho blues. But they are startlingly adept at both styles.
         What is immediately striking is the unassuming way they take the stage, which is in stark contrast to the racket that they make. Singer, Jeremy Earl sports a rabbi beard with librarian specs and his diminutive size again seems at odds with the noise his frame is just about to unleash. He looks as if he spends a long time indoors, and he probably does, for not only is he founder of Woods, but he also runs Woodsist, their Brooklyn record label. 

Songs such as "Blood Dried Darker", opener of last year's At Echo Lake, pack a more visceral punch live with Earl playing his guitar as if on fire whilst soloing, stabbing away at it like a man possessed. The alluring, stately melodies of their LPs become something darker, as the acoustic parts are dropped in favour of electronic experimentation. And the laid back ambling demeanour of the personnel belies a tight musicianship which sees Earl adopt a variety of guitarist personae, sounding like an eastern sitar player during the improvisational 'Out Of The Eye', and like J Mascis of Dinosaur Junior elsewhere. Such histrionics are coupled with his shrill tenor, reminiscent of any number of the many venerable singers who sound a bit like Neil Young. However, Earl's voice is sweeter than Young's, less anguished, yet still a formidable instrument that held up well against the rigours of a live airing.

                Switching between blissed out hymnal folk of "Say Goodbye," and the krautrock of their more experimental numbers, everything is coated in a slacker sense of spontaneity. Each song, however accomplished, feels like a jam session. This suits a live performance well, though for all the intrigue of their lengthier, tie-dyed experimentalism it's the more conventional moments where Earl's subtly hooky songwriting shines that most please this writer's ear. Such as new album stand out, 'Pushing Onlys', where they truly fit the description of 'sunshine pop' which has been given them. Here, with their gorgeous, swelling guitar arpeggios they recal The Byrds at their least grandiose.
          So all in, a compelling performance from an accomplished set of musicians who, just as each member swaps instruments, cannot quite decide what musical style to use. Though each they choose seems beamed in from outer space- or the heady 70s at least- with a bug eyed psychedelia.
       This is the thread that links to the headline act Kurt Vile, though I see it more of a double A Side lineup, and also to what I forgot to bring. He takes the stage like a younger incarnation of  "the dude" from The Big Lebowski. "Everyone ok", he asks, which is greeted by a chorus of affirmative grunts, "Nice", he drawls in response, with a massive grin on his hair enveloped face. It's at this point, and during my interval ciggy break, that I realise what would aid my enjoyment of the night: weed. Not a lot- just a smidgen, enough to put me nearer the ambling, leisurely gait of Vile and his Violators, and the blissed out Woods.

about as close as possible to a mugshot of Mr Vile

Vile recently signed to indie major, Matador, after years with The War On Drugs (also awesome). His most recent album, Matador debut, Smoke Ring For My Halo, has all his trademark hesitant, somnambulant hooks, but with a deeper array of textures. Thus seeing him slowly emerge from his lo fi four track cabin, it seems. 
            Open tuned guitars and circular swirling riffs predominate on acoustic only opener, "Blackberry Song", creating a narcotic haze of sound. Then 'Baby's Arms' arms kicks in and his band The Violators emerge from the shadows, similarly hirsute and spacey looking. As oblique as Dylan and with a speak-sing vocal style not dissimilar to BRMC or Jesus and The Mary Chain, Vile also sounds  bizarrely like Richard Ashcroft. Yet his resolutely lo fi scuffed jeans slacker aesthetic differs to all the above. Womb-like synths and subtle textures accompany Vile's incantatory outpourings. I saw one fellow fledgling journo write into his iphone "off beat.hair. free verse", as some kind of reminder. As if his hair is forgettable (?!)- check it out above. I spent ninety minutes or so trying to see behind it. As to the free verse- I didn't realise blank verse was the norm for troubadours du jour. I think free association is more on the money, or maybe even stream of consciousness. But that is as far as the Dylan comparisons go - Vile is refreshingly devoid of pretension. He sings about the everyday not the eternal, "She was a Tom Boy, I was a peeping Tom, more than it seems, I was a peeping Tom, (you know what I mean)", exhibits a humour rarely seen in indie climes.

       This is also seen in his engagement with the crowd. "Can't remember that one- it's a decade old and sounds too much like the other one", he gently rebukes himself with. "I'm older than you think, you know." Audience: "How Old!?" Vile: "Old enough to be your mother!"
            He is incapable of sonority, treating the metaphysical with a keen awareness of our own inconsequence: "Christ was born, I was there, You know me I'm around, I got friends." A line that wouldn't sound out of place in the mouth of a Coen Brothers' narrator. So the new Dylan he is not, ditto Springsteen (I can't really understand that oft made comparison).
      There is no dark core of tortured truth underneath all that hair. No angst. The tempos are sloooow (dude), and beneath all the hazy atmospherics and lyrical obliquity, is a man alive to the ridiculousness of life with a peculiar ability to evoke a languorous state of mind through insidious hooks.
              So a fantastic night of music brought to life by the humour and warmth of Vile's stage presence. A night where, though only outside, the rainy streets of Bristol seemed light-years away, and the ether a lot nearer. A trip I won't forget.