Kurt Vile | ||
| Allmusic Biography : 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 Viles 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. Kurt Samuel Vile was born in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania in 1980. He was already recording himself at home by age 14, shortly after his bluegrass-loving father purchased him a banjo to encourage his youthful creativity. By age 17, Vile was self-releasing cassettes of his home recordings, which in the earliest days were strongly influenced by the raw slacker pop of the Drag City roster. He would continue to record prolifically, releasing cassettes and CD-Rs of his solo material while holding down a day job as a forklift operator. After a brief move to Boston, Vile returned to Philadelphia in 2003 and began collaborating with singer/guitarist Adam Granduciel, and by 2005 their duo the War on Drugs was morphing from its nebulous beginnings into a fully realized band, growing to include more members, release albums, and tour to critical acclaim and larger audience. By 2008 Vile was splitting his time between the War on Drugs and his solo material, with his album Constant Hitmaker seeing release around the same time as tWoDs breakthrough full-length, Wagonwheel Blues. As tWoDs fame grew, Vile decided to leave the band, predicting their increased profile and expansive touring schedule would ultimately waylay his solo career. Amicably parting with the band, but often still sharing members as backup musicians for his own shows, Vile concentrated on his own thing and released a steady stream of strong and increasingly more adoringly received albums. A 2009 reissue of Constant Hitmaker on the tastemaking Woodsist label got the ball rolling, and was followed shortly by God Is Saying This to You..., a collection of older tracks from CD-Rs as well as various EP releases. Childish Prodigy arrived in 2009 and marked Viles most produced work to date. The lo-fi production and jagged drum-machine rhythms of his earlier self-released fare were replaced in part by fuzzy live instrumentation and songwriting that leaned both on his Drag City-emulating roots as well as the influence of Dinosaur Jr.s guitar tone wizardry and Bruce Springsteens blue-collar rock sentiments. The record drew favorable press and respectable sales, and buzz grew for Vile as he continued to tour. By 2011 he had signed to Matador for the release of his more subdued fourth full-length, Smoke Ring for My Halo. This was Viles best-received work yet, charting on Billboard and meeting with across-the-board critical praise. Ever prolific, Vile released the So Outta Reach companion EP; appeared as a guest on his former band the War on Drugs second album, Slave Ambient; and toured ceaselessly in the wake of his ever-growing success. A fifth album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, was released in 2013. Shortly following this relatively polished and well-produced release, the Jamaica Plain EP surfaced, a vinyl-only 10" release of early-2000s collaborative recordings by Vile and Sore Eros. Wakin on a Pretty Daze turned into a breakthrough for Vile, with its strong reviews and positive word of mouth helping to turn the album into a steady seller; it wound up peaking at 47 on Billboards Top 200 and 41 in the U.K. Vile returned in the fall of 2015 with the hotly anticipated Blieve Im Goin Down.... That same year saw Vile and New York-based guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn collaborate on the three-song Gunn Vile for the Three Lobed Recordings Parallelogram series. In 2017, Vile paired up with Courtney Barnett for the album Lotta Sea Lice. After releasing the album in October, they embarked on a brief American tour. Seventh album Bottle It In arrived in the fall of 2018, recorded at various locations in between tours and family road trips. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 14 Title: The Hunchback Released: 2008-03 Tracks: 12 Duration: 18:58 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 The Hunchback (04:59) 2 Damn You (03:04) 3 Losing It (01:33) 4 Hunchys Back (01:32) 5 Good Lookin Out (05:17) 6 Slick Licks (02:31) 1 On Tour (live) (?) 2 Jesus Fever (live) (?) 3 Freeway (live) (?) 4 The Hunchback (live) (?) 5 Freak Train (live) (?) 6 Peeping Tomboy (live) (?) |
 | Album: 2 of 14 Title: Constant Hitmaker Released: 2008-03-11 Tracks: 13 Duration: 41:16 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Freeway (02:41) 2 Breathin Out (02:57) 3 Space Forklift (05:35) 4 Slow Talkers (03:00) 5 Trumpets in Summer (02:25) 6 Dont Get Cute (03:02) 7 Intro in Z (00:29) 8 Take My Advice (03:15) 9 Deep Sea (05:12) 10 Black Hands (01:43) 11 American Folded (01:28) 12 Best Love (03:22) 13 Classic Rock in Spring/Freeway in Mind (06:07) |
| Constant Hitmaker : Allmusic album Review : Hes no R. Stevie Moore -- yet -- but Philadelphia homebody Kurt Vile is definitely as much of an acolyte to the home-recording mastermind as Ariel Pink: prior to Constant Hitmaker, his first "proper" album, Vile self-released a steady stream of homemade CD-Rs and the occasional 7" single, many consisting of solo acoustic songs, often instrumentals heavily indebted to John Fahey and his acolytes. Theres a little of that on Constant Hitmaker, but overall, this 13-track set features the singer/songwriters lo-fi pop side. The "lo-fi" part of that sentence should likely take precedence over the "pop": not since pre-Bee Thousand Guided by Voices has there been an artist so philosophically devoted to the concept of muddy sound, echoing vocals, bad mixing, and tape hiss as a deliberate musical element. What makes Constant Hitmaker a compelling listen even for those not attuned to such deliberately primitive acoustics is that for every bit of self-indulgent experimental noise like "American Folded" or "Intro in Z," there are three immediately arresting pop gems like "Dont Get Cute," "Freeway," and "Trumpets in Summer." Playful and experimental without getting too pretentious about it, Kurt Vile has the goods to be more than a tiny cult figure for the home recording underground. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 14 Title: God Is Saying This to You… Released: 2009-04 Tracks: 12 Duration: 28:21 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 God Is Saying This to You (00:30) 2 My Sympathy (02:32) 3 Red Apples (04:19) 4 Beach on the Moon (04:23) 5 Can’t Come (01:34) 6 Overnight KV (01:19) 7 Prom King (01:49) 8 My Best Friends (Don’t Even Pass This) (04:38) 9 White Riffs (00:50) 10 Songs for John in D (03:40) 11 Doctor Orgatron (01:38) 12 Frip Job (01:09) |
 | Album: 4 of 14 Title: Childish Prodigy Released: 2009-10-05 Tracks: 11 Duration: 49:39 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Hunchback (04:49) 2 Dead Alive (03:46) 3 Overnite Religion (05:15) 4 Freak Train (07:18) 5 Blackberry Song (03:26) 6 Monkey (03:43) 7 Heart Attack (03:09) 8 Amplifier (04:01) 9 Inside Lookin Out (06:38) 10 Hes Alright (04:35) 11 Goodbye Freaks (02:54) |
| Childish Prodigy : Allmusic album Review : Dont judge a book by its cover. Kurt Viles long-haired hippie appearance may suggest West Coast roots -- even though hes actually a Philadelphian -- but his sound comes straight out of the underbelly of the Big Apple. With a slack-singing style reminiscent of Lou Reed or Alan Vega, and his vocals doused in slap-back reverb, the songs on Childish Prodigy shift between gritty numbers driven by guitar fuzz and steady ballads backed by one-key baritone drones. If this sounds a bit derivative of the Velvets, well, it is and it isnt. Vile and his backing band the Violators are knowledgeable students of the CBGB school of rock, circa Son of Sam, but just when you think you have them pegged as leather-clad street hoodlums on "Freak Train," a shuffling Roland 707 groove topped with a distortion wall and tense yelps ("Ive never been so insulted in my whole life! Shit!"), they double back the other way with the mellow, fingerpicked circles of "Blackberry Song." The 70s New York scene makes up a big chunk of this album, but Viles unique as a visionary with his own sound and a wide range of voices that turn from rambunctious to innocent in a blink. Childish Prodigy is split between drunken caterwauling and quiet hangover-recovery sessions, and both sides of the spectrum are fantastic. The bands spirit is captured perfectly, courtesy of Jeff Zeiglars open-sounding recording style, and the indie underground rarely seems this fresh and free. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 14 Title: Square Shells EP Released: 2010-05-25 Tracks: 7 Duration: 27:26 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Ocean City (02:48) 2 Invisibility: Nonexistent (07:36) 3 Losing Momentum (For Jim Jarmusch) (02:15) 4 I Wanted Everything (03:13) 5 I Know I Got Religion (04:38) 6 The Finder (03:33) 7 Hey, Now Im Movin (03:23) |
 | Album: 6 of 14 Title: Smoke Ring for My Halo Released: 2011-03-07 Tracks: 11 Duration: 46:54 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Babys Arms (03:56) 2 Jesus Fever (03:46) 3 Puppet to the Man (03:52) 4 On Tour (05:26) 5 Society Is My Friend (05:39) 6 Runner Ups (04:00) 7 In My Time (03:47) 8 Peeping Tomboy (04:24) 9 Smoke Ring for My Halo (04:35) 10 Ghost Town (06:23) 11 (Shell Blues) (01:01) |
| Smoke Ring for My Halo : Allmusic album Review : Philly-based singer/songwriter Kurt Vile lit up the indie rock radar in 2009 with his cynical, lo-fi, classic rock-meets-N.Y.C. proto-punk Matador debut. Fans of the visceral, D.I.Y. fuzz-folk that dominated Childish Prodigy may be taken aback by the production upgrade on Smoke Ring for My Halo, but the cleaner sound doesn’t mean that the floors aren’t still filthy. Channeling everyone from the Dead to Mellow Gold-era Beck to Lou Reed, Vile comes off as malcontent, but there’s an oddball warmth behind his laconic sneer that echoes the late slacker comedian Mitch Hedberg; for every “I wanna write my whole life down/burn it there to the ground” ("On Tour"), there’s an “If it ain’t workin’, take a whiz on the world” ("Runner Ups"). Sweeter and a little more soulful than Prodigy, Halo leans harder on the urban folk side of Viles disposition (the album opens with a straight-up love song), but tracks like the churning “Puppet to the Man” and “Society Is My Friend” pick up where Prodigy stompers like “Freak Train” and “Overnight Religion” left off. Viles guitar work remains predictably strong, especially on the fingerpicked “Peeping Tomboy” and the shimmery title cut, but it’s his efforltess, serpentine melodies and amiable, burnout wisdom that keep the listener so enthralled. In an age where angst is delivered with the subtlety of a laser light show, it’s nice to hear some good, old-fashioned, smokin’-and-drinkin’-cheap-beers-on-the-porch-with-your-friends-style pessimism. [The two-disc, deluxe edition of Smoke Ring for My Halo adds six bonus cuts to the set, including "The Creature", "Its Alright", "Lifes a Beach", "Laughing Stock", "Downbound Train" and "(so outta reach)". | ||
 | Album: 7 of 14 Title: So Outta Reach Released: 2011-11-07 Tracks: 6 Duration: 30:59 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 The Creature (05:38) 2 Its Alright (04:49) 3 Lifes a Beach (05:36) 4 Laughing Stock (06:33) 5 Downbound Train (03:48) 6 (So Outta Reach) (04:33) |
 | Album: 8 of 14 Title: Wakin on a Pretty Daze Released: 2013-04-08 Tracks: 18 Duration: 1:38:35 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Wakin on a Pretty Day (09:30) 2 KV Crimes (03:56) 3 Was All Talk (07:41) 4 Girl Called Alex (06:19) 5 Never Run Away (03:24) 6 Pure Pain (05:08) 7 Too Hard (08:03) 8 Shame Chamber (04:46) 9 Snowflakes Are Dancing (03:22) 10 Air Bud (06:29) 11 Goldtone (10:25) 1 Never Run Away (string synth) (03:24) 2 NRA Reprise (01:33) 3 Feel My Pain (06:19) 4 Snowflakes Extended (05:41) 5 Wedding Budz (04:14) 6 The Ghost of Freddie Roach (06:22) 7 (reprise reprise) (01:53) |
| Wakin on a Pretty Daze : Allmusic album Review : Philadelphia songsmith Kurt Viles 2011 album Smoke Ring for My Halo was a definitive shift for the artist away from home-recorded overexposed fuzz pop toward a more sprawling, textural, and most markedly introspective style. The follow-up, fifth album Wakin on a Pretty Daze, continues in this direction, but pushes the changes begun on Halo with even more articulate production, extended exploration in lengthy songs, and even deeper looks inward, if all approached through Viles one-of-a-kind fog. Beginning with the nine-plus-minute "Wakin on a Pretty Day," the album immediately takes the mantle from its predecessor, offering up wistful interplay between acoustic and electric guitar tones, Viles dour mumbled vocals, and an overall emotional sense caught somewhere between the hope and promise of youth and the exhaustion of everyday life. Its this deceptively complex perspective cloaked in seemingly lunkheaded guitar heroics that makes Vile so interesting and helps keep the compositions on Pretty Daze captivating even as many of them stretch past the six-minute mark. "KV Crimes" comes on with a lazy classic rock riff but beneath its stony shuffle and sneery vocals lies a heart of both melody and a palpable sense of diminished excitement being reborn. Longer tracks like "Girl Called Alex" and "Goldtone" capture the dark wistfulness of Where You Been-era Dinosaur Jr. or the dreamy driftiness of Neil Young at his most guitar-centric peaks. Much like his former/sometimes band the War on Drugs, theres an undercurrent of working-class rock à la Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen here (Vile even drops the lyric "Springsteen... pristine" in one song). However, with the spaced-out vaporous jams of Wakin on a Pretty Daze, it becomes clear that Kurt Vile isnt aiming to ape or even update the canon of classic guitar-based songwriters, but is very much his generations chapter of the evolution of rock. Easily his most focused and accessible work, Pretty Daze is the strongest so far in a chain of releases that seem to suggest there are even greater heights to be reached. | ||
 | Album: 9 of 14 Title: Jamaica Plain Released: 2013-11-04 Tracks: 3 Duration: 16:04 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Jamaica Plain (06:42) 2 Serum (03:06) 3 Calling out of Work (06:15) |
 | Album: 10 of 14 Title: Its a Big World Out There (and I Am Scared) Released: 2013-11-18 Tracks: 7 Duration: 28:58 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Never Run Away (string synth) (03:24) 2 NRA Reprise (01:33) 3 Feel My Pain (06:19) 4 Snowflakes Extended (05:41) 5 The Ghost of Freddie Roach (05:54) 6 Wedding Budz (04:14) 7 (reprise reprise) (01:53) |
 | Album: 11 of 14 Title: blieve im goin down... Released: 2015-09-25 Tracks: 18 Duration: 1:29:48 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Pretty Pimpin (04:58) 2 Im an Outlaw (04:21) 3 Dust Bunnies (04:38) 4 Thats Life, tho (almost hate to say) (06:26) 5 Wheelhouse (06:14) 6 Life Like This (04:04) 7 All in a Daze Work (04:59) 8 Lost my Head there (06:55) 9 Stand Inside (05:12) 10 Bad Omens (02:50) 11 Kidding Around (04:27) 12 Wild Imagination (05:50) 13 Blieve Im Goin Down (05:12) 14 Less Talk (More Walkin Away) (03:59) 15 Nicotine Blues (04:56) 16 Bad Omens (No Faders) (05:17) 17 No Stranger To The Ball Bust (09:30) 18 Sax Omens (J Turbo) (?) |
| b'lieve i'm goin down... : Allmusic album Review : Kurt Vile scored a genuine word-of-mouth hit with his fifth album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, its elongated rambles conjuring hazy half-memories of Laurel Canyon while feeling uniquely situated to modern confines. Blieve Im Goin Down..., released two years after that 2013 breakthrough, whittles away some of the excesses while retaining eccentricity, trading ten-minute sprawls with six-strings for woozy five-minute vamps on a piano. Electric guitars arent entirely absent but theyre used for coloring -- arriving unexpectedly as a wash of distortion or perhaps a bit of percussion -- on a record anchored by acoustic guitars and banjos. Such instruments may suggest Blieve Im Goin Down... is an exercise in introspection, another exposed nerve from a sensitive singer/songwriter, but Vile often favors feel over form, so this unfolds with the logic of a dream, details falling into a place so subtly theyre felt, not heard. Often, Blieve seems simple, rolling along with fingerpicked rhythms or barroom piano, and while its certainly emotionally direct -- and, occasionally, musically direct too, nowhere more so than on the opening sequence of "Pretty Pimpin," "Im an Outlaw," and "Dust Bunnies," a trilogy of precision that eases into a shifting stoned daydream -- Blieve Im Goin Down... is an impeccably arranged album beneath its soothing, sleepy surface, with every element assisting in an illusion of deep, shimmering, and alluring melancholy. | ||
 | Album: 12 of 14 Title: Parallelogram Released: 2015-12-11 Tracks: 6 Duration: 28:55 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Pretty Boy (04:12) 2 Way Back Then (03:35) 3 Red Apples for Tom Scharpling (04:21) 4 NPR Reject (01:32) 5 60/40 (05:09) 6 Spring Garden (10:06) |
 | Album: 13 of 14 Title: Lotta Sea Lice Released: 2017-10-13 Tracks: 9 Duration: 44:37 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Over Everything (06:19) 2 Let It Go (04:33) 3 Fear Is Like a Forest (04:47) 4 Outta the Woodwork (06:21) 5 Continental Breakfast (04:53) 6 On Script (03:59) 7 Blue Cheese (04:37) 8 Peepin’ Tom (04:14) 9 Untogether (04:50) |
 | Album: 14 of 14 Title: Bottle It In Released: 2018-10-12 Tracks: 13 Duration: 1:18:44 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Loading Zones (03:23) 2 Hysteria (05:22) 3 Yeah Bones (04:44) 4 Bassackwards (09:46) 5 One Trick Ponies (05:21) 6 Rollin With the Flow (02:59) 7 Check Baby (07:53) 1 Bottle It In (10:39) 2 Mutinies (05:52) 3 Come Again (05:44) 4 Cold Was the Wind (04:51) 5 Skinny Mini (10:26) 6 (bottle back) (01:38) |