Kurt Vile reconfigures the classic guitar album into an effortless and singular moment. His laid-back cool and sprawling, drawn-out vocal delivery are the perfect foil to his ambling guitar passions. The songs feel tossed off and unfinished and at the same time so perfectly executed. The record's amalgam of folk, blues, and psychedelia, rooted in stoner-tinged classic rock, burrows deep within each song, revealing a hazy world of living-room couches, garages, tour buses, and, significantly, friends and lovers coming and going.
"Baby's Arms" opens the album as the most honest rock'n'roll love song in years. "Jesus Fever" then jangles into the record's most catchy chorus, a surprise given that Vile's vocal hooks simply roll by with the music's nonchalant undertow. "Puppet to the Man" thrums with power-chord crackle, and it has the feel of the perfect kiss-off: Well i bet by now you probably think i'm a puppet to the man / well, i'll tell you right now, you best believe that i am.
Vile's overarching confession is perhaps summed up best in that song: Sometimes i'm stuck and then i think i can't unglue it. Not surprisingly, he searches for ways to get out of a jam or, at the very least, he talks himself into the necessary confidence. Consider the haunting "Runner Ups": My best friend's long gone / but i got runner ups.
Despite the personal discord, Vile breaks through with what appears to be his hoped-for mantra in "On Tour":
I wanna write my whole life down
burn it there to the ground
i wanna sing at the top of my lungs
for fun, screaming annoyingly
cuz that's just me
being me, being free
That exultation leads him to this: i'm just playing, i got it made, most of the time. Fortunately, Vile's gorgeous finger-picking reaches for the beauty in the gloom, and as a result, this dark and personal album sounds nothing short of transcendant.
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