kurt vile: childish prodigy (matador)
always felt that kurt vile was rather unfairly connotationally lumbered with the same tags as yr times new vikings and eat skulls and all that noised up siltbreeze lot when, as has become increasingly obvious, his music’s got a distinctly westerberg (on overnight religion particularly) or van zandt bent. or when the violators are involved (kurt vile & the violators it’s all a bit oi! ain’t it…) they raise a distinctly crazy horse-esque squall.
so the electronic excursions and abstractions from the god is saying this to you record are gone. and in their bedroomed place is a rather cocksure muscular swagger. which isn’t to say this shit is all seventies fm rock (not that there’s anything wrong with that kindofthing) as the whole thing’s slightly warped, swamped in fuzz and a hazy roky erickson trad-psyche fug. reverb and echo and fx a-go-go-go. but the heart that beats at it’s murky core is a distinctly rock and roll one. the same dark cardiology that powered suicide as much as it did creedence as it did blind lemon as it did neu as it did the ramones. y’dig?
once you get yr noodlesac round that philosophy it’s easy to get to grips with the scattershot jumps from hunchbacks lurching slo-mo garage moves to the thurston moore / mick jagger chimera of dead alive to the seven minute drawling fried krautrock of freak train to the fingerpicking loveliness of blackberry song to the monged blooze throb of inside looking out.
all of which brings to mind the filthy squall of royal trux. which in turn brings to mind keith richards narcotics ingestion and pre-war record collection taken to its natural conclusion. and all of which says to me that warping, jiggering, fucking with and reconstructing the traditional is as much of a tradition itself.
so essentially a decidedly tasty record. as forward looking as it is backward looking. and as succinct a musical statement as i can recall since the wand born bad lp. yup, that good.
vilespace / matador / testotertunes / thewarondrugs
