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KURT VILE

Kurt Vile

Back To Moon Beach

    Back to Moon Beach (Verve Records) is an EP by no one’s definition but Kurt Vile’s. For Kurt, this collection is an expression of just how deep his well of non-album material runs.

    The vinyl edition includes six tracks culled from various sessions over the last four years, representing a wide swath of the inspirational musical community Kurt surrounds himself with.

    “[Kurt Vile is] the beloved and reliable purveyor of a hazy, zoned-out, weirdo brand of classicist rock.” - Stereogum.

    “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.” - Rolling Stone.

    “Loose, sprawling, and filled with spacey but intimate jams that couple drum machines, smoke-curled guitars, and off the cuff vocals, [(watch my moves)] feels like being invited into Vile’s head to sit down and hang out a spell.” - Aquarium Drunkard.

    “Vile’s sprawling new album captures the magic, loss and wonderment of being alive.” - AV Club



    STAFF COMMENTS

    Barry says: Is it an EP? Is it'nt? It really doesn't matter, it's classic Vile, lagging instrumental groove and slow guitar twangs below KV's stoned drawl. Rich, melodic and heartfelt.

    TRACK LISTING

    CD (9 Tracks)
    1. Another Good Year For The Roses (5:34)
    2. Touched Somethin (caught A Virus) (6:31)
    3. Back To Moon Beach (8:15)
    4. Like A Wounded Bird Trying To Fly (5:29)
    5. Blues Come For Some (5:09)
    6. Tom Petty’s Gone (but Tell Him I Asked For Him) (8:15)
    7. Must Be Santa (5:12)
    8. Passenger Side (3:10)
    9. Cool Water (Single Mix) (4:29)

    VINYL (6 Tracks)
    Side A:
    1. Another Good Year For The Roses (5:34)
    2. Touched Somethin (caught A Virus) (6:31)
    3. Back To Moon Beach (8:15)
    Side B:
    1. Like A Wounded Bird Trying To Fly (5:29)
    2. Blues Come For Some (5:09)
    3. Tom Petty’s Gone (but Tell Him I Asked For Him) (8:15)

    Kurt Vile

    Wakin On A Pretty Daze - 10th Anniversary Matador Revisionist History Edition

      10th anniversary of his fifth full-length and first 2xLP, ‘Wakin on a Pretty Daze’ (2013).

      To celebrate this milestone, it has been brought back as a yellow vinyl version of the record.

      Where previous albums alternated between gorgeous fingerpicking and heavy guitar workouts, ‘Wakin’ blended the two into dreamy and expansive songs that frequently stretched well out beyond the five-minute mark.

      Back then we said: “It’s a record that would have sounded great 30 years ago, sounds great today, and will still sound great 30 years from now.” Ten years down the line, we’re still confident that ‘Wakin’ will deliver the goods – yesterday, today, and in 2043.

      TRACK LISTING

      A1. Wakin On A Pretty Day
      A2. KV Crimes
      A3. Was All Talk
      B1. Girl Called Alex
      B2. Never Run Away
      B3. Pure Pain
      C1. Too Hard
      C2. Shame Chamber
      C3. Snowflakes Are Dancing
      D1. Air Bud
      D2. Goldtone

      Kurt Vile

      (Watch My Moves)

        On his major label debut album, Kurt Vile pulls his talents as a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer in unexpected directions — and the result is a vibrant, yet meditative record propelled by laid-back charm and curious spirit.

        Kurt Vile’s signature brand of laid-back and meandering rock takes center stage on the lead single off his first major label album, (watch my moves). Produced by Kurt Vile & Rob Schnapf.

        Ravenously creative songwriter Kurt Vile broke through to mainstream success after years of steadily working on his craft. His laidback and drifting guitar rock took notes from masters like Neil Young, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr., exploring inventive guitar tones on meditative and often self-reflective songs. He co-founded the War on Drugs with friend Adam Granduciel in 2005, but quit shortly after the band got off the ground to focus more on his own music. After several albums on various indie labels, Vile signed with Matador in 2009 and would find increasing success with each new album. His 2013 album, Walkin' on a Pretty Daze, broke through bigger than anything before it, taking Vile's blurry-eyed musings and signature songwriting style to a worldwide audience. He would continue frequent collaborations, working with a multitude of special guests on his own records as well as co-creating albums with Steve Gunn and Courtney Barnett.

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Barry says: This latest offering sees Vile in a perfectly laid back, tranquil mood, slowly moving from shimmering, country-lite into classic Kurt psychedelia. It's a perfectly composed and unsurprisingly brilliant twist to his established sound. Dreamy, evocative bliss.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Goin On A Plane Today
        2. Flyin (like A Fast Train)
        3. Palace Of OKV In Reverse
        4. Like Exploding Stones
        5. Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)
        6. Hey Like A Child
        7. Jesus On A Wire
        8. Fo Sho
        9. Cool Water
        10. Chazzy Don’t Mind
        11. (shiny Things)
        12. Say The Word
        13. Wages Of Sin
        14. Kurt Runner
        15. Stuffed Leopard 

        Kurt Vile

        Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (EP)

          Kurt Vile’s Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) was recorded and mixed in sporadic sessions that spanned four years at The Butcher Shoppe studio in Nashville, TN. It includes five songs —covers of John Prine and “Cowboy” Jack Clement as well as two originals —and was recorded alongside a cast of local heavies like Bobby Wood, Dave Roe, and Kenny Malone with Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) and Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Superwolf) tossed into the mix as well.

          Most importantly, it features what KV has called "Probably the single most special musical moment in my life” –a duet with the late John Prine on the songwriter’s well-loved tune, “How Lucky.” “The truth is John was my hero for a long time when he came into The Butcher Shoppe to recut one of his deepest classics with me. And, man, I was floating and flying and I couldn't hear anything he told me while he was there till after he was gone for the night,” notes Vile in a personal statement that accompanies the record. “A couple nights later we were playing ‘How Lucky’ together again; this time onstage at the Grand Ole Opry on New Year's Eve at the turn of 2020. Nothing like seeing John and his band of musical brothers and family and friends playing into the new decade in front of an adoring audience on that stage in Nashville, TN... and, yup, that's just how lucky we all got that night."

          TRACK LISTING

          Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness
          Gone Girl
          Dandelions
          How Lucky (with John Prine)
          Pearls

          Travel can inspire in surprising ways: Kurt Vile discovered as much making his first record in three years, the eclectic and electrifying Bottle It In, which he recorded at various studios around the country over two very busy years, during sessions that usually punctuated the ends of long tours or family road trips.

          Every song, whether it’s a concise and catchy pop composition or a sprawling guitar epic, becomes a journey unto itself, taking unexpected detours, circuitous melodic avenues, or open-highway solos. If Vile has become something of a rock guitar god—a mantle he would dismiss out of humility but also out of a desire to keep getting better, to continue absorbing new music, new sounds, new ideas—it’s due to his precise, witty playing style, which turns every riff and rhythm into points on a map and takes the scenic route from one to the next.

          Using past albums as points of departure, Bottle It In heads off in new directions, pushing at the edges of the map into unexplored territory: Here be monster jams. These songs show an artist who is still evolving and growing: a songwriter who, like his hero John Prine, can make you laugh and break your heart, often in the same line, as well as a vocalist who essentially rewrites those songs whenever he sings them in his wise, laconic jive-talkin’ drawl. He revels in the minutiae of the music— not simply incorporating new instruments but emphasizing how they interact with his guitar and voice, how the glockenspiel evokes cirrocumulus clouds on “Hysteria,” how Kim Gordon’s “acoustic guitar distortion” (her term) engulfs everything at the end of “Mutinies,” how the banjo curls around his guitar lines and backing vocals from Lucius to lend a high-lonesome aura to “Come Again.”

          These journeys took Vile more than two years to navigate, during which time he toured behind his breakout 2015 album b’lieve I’m goin’ down, recorded a duets album with Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist Courtney Barnett, opened for Neil Young in front of 90,000 people in Quebec, famously became a clue on Jeopardy, hung out with friends, took vacations with his wife and daughters. “I’ve been bouncing around a lot and recording all over. My family would meet me in the middle of America, and we’d go on a road trip somewhere. I would record in between all that stuff.”

          As Vile prepares for another round of lengthy tours and countless shows, these songs should prove good company, reminders of the love and responsibility he has toward those he leaves at home and those
he meets along the way. That makes the sentiments resonate more strongly and lends Bottle It In an emotional weight. “It’s like that moment on the airplane,” Vile says, “when you’re on your way somewhere and you have that burst of panic. When you’re terrified of dying, that’s when you want people to know you love them.”

          STAFF COMMENTS

          Andy says: Everything we love about KV in one superb LP. More dynamic than his last outing and the most beautifully produced of all his albums, Bottle It In also features a cover of Charlie Rich's Rollin With The Flow: a massive, classic, country-pop beaut, which is possibly the prettiest thing he's ever committed to tape.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Loading Zones
          2. Hysteria
          3. Yeah Bones
          4. Bassackwards
          5. One Trick Ponies
          6. Rollin With The Flow
          7. Check Baby
          8. Bottle It In
          9. Mutinies
          10. Come Again
          11. Cold Was The Wind
          12. Skinny Mini
          13. (bottle Back)

          A conversation between friends, documented in raw, unvarnished song form, brimming with personal history, crackling with energy and shot through with humour - this is the collaborative album of Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile. Two of the most acclaimed and gifted song writers of our generation “Lotta Sea Lice” also sees them roping in friends such as Dirty Three, Stella from Warpaint and Mick Harvey to create a body of work that sounds organic & candid.

          The shared chemistry is immediately apparent in the breathtaking jam of opener and first single “Over Everything”, with dovetailing vocal lines and intricate, shimmering guitar stylings from the pair. The lyrics play out as a rambling dialogue as they compare notes about song-writing and inspiration – it was the first song written for this project, and comes accompanied by a beautiful black and white video from Australian director Danny Cohen which features Courtney and Kurt swapping lines over series of jaw dropping backdrops in rural Victoria and New Jersey as well as Melbourne and Philadelphia. It’s deceptively simple but incredibly effective.

          Other tracks include the bluesy “Let it Go”, which itself was inspired by texts and emails between the duo, and the drop dead gorgeous ‘Continental Breakfast”, which showcases a more melodic side as the two harmonise over finger-picked acoustic guitars.

          There are even more surprises in store, however, when the pair tackle each other’s tracks, with Vile delivering a delicious, souped-up version of “Outta the Woodwork” backed by Barnett herself, and Barnett taking on Vile’s “Peepin’ Tomboy” completely solo, to spine tingling results. The overall effect is that of Barnett and Vile throwing open the doors to their house to listeners - this is certainly Courtney and Kurt’s party alright, but this time, everyone is invited.

          TRACK LISTING

          Over Everything
          Let It Go
          Fear Is Like A Forest
          Outta The Woodwork
          Continental Breakfast
          On Script
          Blue Cheese
          Peepin' Tom
          Untogether

          'b’lieve i'm goin down…' is Vile’s sixth album, and shows Kurt both deeply introspective and briskly self-assured. As longtime fan Kim Gordon wrote in her bio for the album: “Kurt does his own myth-making; a boy/man with an old soul voice in the age of digital everything becoming something else, which is why this focused, brilliantly clear and seemingly candid record is a breath of fresh air.

          Recorded and mixed in a number of locations, including Los Angeles and Joshua tree, b’lieve i'm goin down… is a handshake across the country, east to west coast, thru the dustbowl history (“valley of ashes”) of woody honest strait forward talk Guthrie, and a cali canyon dead still nite floating in a nearly waterless landscape. The record is all air, weightless, bodyless, but grounded in convincing authenticity, in the best version of a singer songwriter upcycling.”

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Pretty Pimpin
          2. I’m An Outlaw
          3. Dust Bunnies
          4. That’s Life, Tho (Almost Hate To Say)
          5. Wheelhouse
          6. Life Like This
          7. All In A Daze Work
          8. Lost My Head There
          9. Stand Inside
          10. Bad Omens
          11. Kidding Around
          12. Wild Imagination

          B’lieve I’m Goin Down *
          Less Talk (More Walkin Away) *
          Nicotine Blues *
          Bad Omens (No Faders) *
          No Stranger To The Ball Bust *
          Sax Omens (J Turbo) *
          * = Bonus Tracks On Deluxe LP Only.

          Kurt Vile

          Wakin On A Pretty Daze

            Five and a half minutes into ‘Was All Talk’, the third track off his new album Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Kurt Vile murmurs in his beatific, laconic burr, “Makin’ music is easy / Watch me”. If that sounds like an empty boast it’s likely you’ve just not listened to enough of Vile’s music yet, as the way Kurt’s songs fall into place suggests that his art is entirely and convincingly effortless. That these songs zero in on a hazy perfection with such laser-guided precision shows that behind this veneer of lackadaisical creativity, beavers a songwriter toiling hard to make music so beguilingly laid-back.

            Kurt Vile (his real name) is one of ten children, born in 1980 and raised in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. As a teenager, his bluegrass-lovin’ father gifted him a banjo, when what Kurt truly craved was a guitar. So, with a ‘can do’ spirit that’s a boon to any independent musician, he simply played it as if it were a guitar. Along with his passion for the 4-track-toting titans of early 90’s indie-rock, Vile also harboured a love for classic rock of substance – Creedence, Tom Petty, Neil Young, artists with their roots in ‘Roots’, but with enough vision to carve out an Americana of their own. Within the footprints he was following, Vile began carving a path of his own, making an art of dipping from introspective mellow rambles, to sky-scraping anthems; eager to rock out, equally unafraid to sing low and sweet.

            Fast-forward some years and with The Violators in tow (the Heartbreakers to his Tom Petty, if you will) barnstormers like ‘Freak Train’ from the full-length Childish Prodigy [2009] were contrasted with more reflective and sun-dappled tunes from his break-through album Smoke Ring For My Halo [2011], as Kurt quietly became one of the great American guitarists and songwriters of our time.

            Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Vile’s fifth full-length, is an album that builds on all Kurt has done before, that makes sense of the supposedly contrary impulses of his previous work. Learning whilst ascending, he’s crafted an album that would have sounded great 30 years ago, sounds great today and will still sound great 30 years from now.

            Realising he’s in no rush to prove anything to anyone, songs on Wakin On A Pretty Daze unfurl at their own extended and unhurried pace, but not a second of this loveliness is wasted or surplus. The likes of ‘Air Bud’, ‘Was All Talk’ and ‘Gold Tone’ could keep on ringing out, exploring every possible wrinkle in its chord sequences and expounding with wisdom on the simple pleasures of a beautiful day, for as long as Kurt could stand to play them. These aren’t jams; these are songs that glide as they unwind, with a natural charm that’s enough to convince you that, yes, for Kurt, Makin’ music is easy. So, seriously: Watch him.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Wakin On A Pretty Day
            2. KV Crimes
            3. Was All Talk
            4. Girl Called Alex
            5. Never Run Away
            6. Pure Pain
            7. Too Hard
            8. Shame Chamber
            9. Snowflakes Are Dancing
            10. Air Bud
            11. Gold Tone

            Kurt Vile has a way of tying time in knots. You can hear it on his new album "Smoke Ring For My Halo" from the get-go – the pinwheeling guitars and reaching atmospheres of "Baby’s Arms" are as strange as they are familiar: a demonstration of how Kurt can put worn methods and sounds through himself and end up with something that isn’t emotionally or sonically obvious. Instead we’re left with a record that contains traces of the past but doesn’t waste precious time in the now being reverent.

            Once compared to Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, Psychic TV and Animal Collective in the same review, Kurt can bring to mind anything from Suicide to Leo Kottke to My Bloody Valentine, Bob Seger, Nick Drake and Eastern ragas. Still, he pieces together these disparate elements so seamlessly and unpretentiously that such reference points are rendered pointless by the singularity of his sound. Kurt Vile might belong to a long lineage of classic American songwriters, but he’s the only one who’s alive and in his prime today.

            This is the fourth time Kurt Vile has put an album’s worth of songs together and stuck a name on it, but in a sense "Smoke Ring For My Halo" is his first real album - every flinching guitar arpeggio and vocal wander was made to be here, made with this record in mind, to sit alongside another in situ and in sequence. It’s a record that is perfect for any given day during whatever season, to satisfy all moods in every possible scenario, be that first thing in the morning or last thing at night; today, tomorrow or five years from now.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Baby’s Arms
            2. Jesus Fever
            3. Puppet To The Man
            4. On Tour
            5. Society Is My Friend
            6. Runner Ups
            7. In My Time
            8. Peeping Tomboy
            9. Smoke Ring For My Halo
            10. Ghost Town


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