The Scene

Kurt Vile (real name) has over the past five years become one of indie rock’s brightest guitar wizards. The Philly fella’s back with a new long-player that continues his wonderful hit-streak of slacker daze magic. Few can sparkle on the guitar like this lad, though it’s his ability to string a song out of any old idea that makes him such a compelling listen.

His breakthrough was 2011’s Smoke Rings For My Halo which played like a late-night folkster drawling away after a couple too many tequilas. It was lo-fi banter with a taste of Lou Reed, pessimistic yet pretty all the same. That in itself was a change in direction from the harder, fuzzier stuff he’d done in the past but he stepped from the path again in 2013 with Wakin On A Pretty Daze, a sunny, jamming classic where he let himself sprawl out over the songs. That was a beautiful record, more electric and more cleverly arranged. The new one is more in Daze’s mould but he’s stretching himself out even further now, especially as a producer. It’s tighter and yet more expansive, covering a greater range of ideas.

He’s still the same old slacker, chilling with his instruments as he spins the yarns about his life, one part funny, one part melancholy and the rest all the kind of world-weary wisdom that you’d typically pick up from a homeless guy in a movie. Or maybe a stoner outside the liquor store. Perhaps that surfer dude, or maybe that bloke on the skateboard.

The Songs

Pretty Pimpin – The opener chugs and pops with a sweet riff and a thumping beat. Almost relentless in the way Vile spits verse into chorus. Gotta stay pretty pimpin.
I'm an Outlaw – Badass banjo bard. He’s going nowhere slowly and you kinda wanna hang around and do the same.
Dust Bunnies – Some riffage and thudding bass guitar, complimented with a warbling vocal and some firm delivery.
That's Life, tho (almost hate to say) – Sweet acoustic-plucked malaise. Tambourines and finger squeaks on the fret board. Take a chillax, man, forget about it.
Wheelhouse – Maracas and repeated git-runs. Gets to settle into a deep groove by the end once the wisdom’s been extolled.
Life Like This – Short guitar stabs adorn this semi-funky, semi-wispy jam like a thrust on every fourth beat. The layered production is quite cool too.
All in a Daze Work – Bit of lo-fi throwback to an album past. And the Daze/Days pun also got used on another record. The way he teases tempos is captivating. All in a day’s work and all at his own pace.
Lost my Head there – 80s keyboard chords almost throw you off but the back loaded beat lets you know you’re still on track.
Stand Inside – More folksy guitarism. The walking bassline is just sly enough to slay you.
Bad Omens – All instrumental. Kinda sounds like maybe he just ripped the vocal track off at the last minute because why would you wanna bury that lovely music? Let those mournful six-strings sing in the mix.
Kidding Around – Resonant pickings as Kurt just kids around. More like showing off, really, but that’s fine by me.
Wild Imagination – A gorgeous waltzy stumble through a kind of beleaguered acceptance. Pensive but not worried. Wild but not lost.
b’lieve i’m goin’ down – b’lieve i’m, b’lieve i’m, b’lieve i’m, b’lieve i’m goin’ down…

The Vibe

If you ask Mr Vile how he’s going, he seems like the type to say: “I’m okay”. Nothing too good, nothing too bad. Life’s a drag sometimes but ya do it anyway coz it’s fun, you dig?

There’s something about how casual he comes across that lends a real honesty to what he says and that’s a massive talent, even if it’s meant by definition to sound like it’s not. But seriously, how many people are able to write like they talk and not have it sound tacky? Not very many. I mean, it’s a poet’s skill, really. No rules or boundaries, just words and feelings and like, y’know, whatever.

Vile’s singing about himself, usually, but he does it in a way that’s pretty generalised. Which makes it so accessible. Plus he’s always second-guessing his own wisdom and that makes him both an empathetic and down-to-earth dude to listen to. I’d bet loves The Big Lebowski.

Also, apparently he laid down a lot of this album late at night in his basement after the wife and kids were asleep. There’s a for-sure insomniac feel about it in places. The late night ramblings, where the philosopher in all of us emerges among the shadows. When the senses are both heightened and dulled in that particular way.

Kurt Vile is a rock star but he’s not Robert Plant or Mick Jagger. He’s way more like a Stephen Malkmus type, which is actually an influence that shines through more than a few times. Not necessarily in a musical way either, more the slacker prophet thing. Kurt Vile’s an avowed Pavement fan, so that won’t come as a shock. It’s a pretty obvious connection anyway. But it is cool to see that lineage shining through for such a cool band. Funny how the canon switches after 20-odd years from popularity to influence.

The Music

Pretty Pimpin’s a bit more charged than most of WOAPD, but it still feels like a natural musical progression from there. Except that the very next song (I’m An Outlaw) kicks in with a digital beat and then a banjo. A couple tracks later That’s Life swoons and shrugs over a pretty plucked guitar and then Wheelhouse cracks in with some distinctive rhythmic cracks and maracas. He mixes it up more than he ever has before, his last two albums especially have been sorta of defined by an overall sound. This one still has that but it’s because of the strength of the tracks, not the consistency of the instrumentation.

The one thing you can say about most Kurt Vile songs is that whether it’s down to the rhythm or the pulsating guitar lines he endlessly plucks from the ether, they have a heartbeat to them. Drumsticks and thumb picks all the same.

All in a Daze Work and Stay Inside tread the lo-fi folksy path he’s previously walked. It’s fair to say he’s not averse to going back to the well, though it’s also fair to say these are hardly derivative songs, nor are they steps back in any way. In fact they’re two of the strongest here.

You can tell he’s put the time into getting this one right. So many of the arrangements have these clever little ideas, unorthodox but so perfect. It’s laidback and it’s sincere. And he’s got that idiosyncratic way of phrasing the words that he sings into something more than what they are on paper. Not as many people can do that as you’d think. It’s like vocal origami, when most go for fireworks.

Penultimate track Wild Imagination signs off the album with a looped beat and some weary, late-Sticky Fingersy chord changes. The vocals are a little more to the front. That little warble in his voice gives it that ragged imperfect feel. He does as he asks, he gives it some time. The song gets to take itself out, crawling along on that sweet groove until it decides to pick up the pieces and go home. Then all we have left is the title track to close, a recurrent, repetitive march, featuring only those words, over and over and over:

B’lieve i’m, b’lieve i’m, b’lieve i’m, b’lieve i’m goin’ down…

What does it mean? Well if you haven’t learned just to go with the flow by now then you should probably start over again from the first track. You probably should anyway.

Revelations

This from Kim Gordon in a press release 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 singer songwriter upcycling."

"Who’s this stupid clown blocking the bathroom sink?"

He shouts out Gene Clark and Clarence White in ‘I’m An Outlaw’, easily everyone’s two favourite underrated Byrds. White was a genius of a bluegrass guitarist, so he swoops right in comfortable to nest in a song driven by banjo. While Clark is one of the finest forgotten songwriters in rock ‘n’ roll history. He can make you cry with a twist of a line of a quiver in his voice.

"There ain’t no manual to our minds, we’re always looking, baby, all the time."

“What's there to feel but totally whacked”

“I wanna run into the rolling hills along some mid-western highway but there are scorpions out there”

Pour one out for Stay Puft. And shout out to Ghostbusters while we’re at it.

Since I didn’t mention it in the Vibe, it should be said that Vile is really, really funny at times. Not in a hilarity-ensues way but definitely in a wry smirk way. He lets the listener in on the joke too which is part of the charm.

“What's the meaning of this song/And what's this piece of wood/I don't care it sounds so pretty/It's change is so sublime/What was the meaning of that last line?”

“I’m afraid that I am feeling much too many feelings simultaneously at such a rapid clip.”

“Give it some time.”

Finale

This is technically Vile’s sixth full length albums (plus some scattered EPs – he does a wicked cover of Springsteen’s Downbound Train on one of them). His first few were good, but his last three have been great and that’s opened him up for more fanfare with each one. These days the world’s too wide open for a guy like Vile to crack the proper mainstream but that’s hardly a problem.

By playing to his own vibe, he’s forged what might be his best album yet. I’m gonna go on the record and say that it is – it’s already one of my favourites of 2015. There’s just something enticing and engaging about a warm shrug of the shoulders. B’lieve isn’t always happy and it isn’t always sad. It rides that wave of emotional peaks and valleys until it crashes to the shore, levelled off somewhere in between. Which is where we live, day to day. In between the lines. Kurt Vile knows that better than we do.