One track cuts through the fog, and it’s Vile’s cover of “Wages of Sin,” an eerie Bruce Springsteen outtake written between Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. More playful and atmospheric than 2018’s Bottle It In, the music sometimes recalls Vile’s earliest material, when his songs were distinguished more by their textures-the muted horn arrangement in “Goin on a Plane Today,” the descending slide guitar in “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone),” the woozy synth in “Fo Sho”-than the actual songwriting. He works well with duet partners- Cate Le Bon on “Jesus on a Wire,” Chastity Belt on “Chazzy Don’t Mind”-and remains a singular guitar player, even as his loose, major-key melodies become harder to differentiate. In both his music and lyrics, Vile conjures images of dreaming and traveling, moving forward and getting lost in thought. On the other hand, you are less likely than ever to hear a new Kurt Vile song and think, “Wow, maybe I didn’t have this guy all figured out.” For large swaths of the record, if you’re not paying close attention, you might wonder if he set a loop on the drum machine, picked up a guitar, and forgot the tape was running. Nowadays, Vile’s singing leans toward the deadpan spoken word of late-career Lou Reed, an approach that helps the stoner-dad observations land harder (“That teapot sings in a beautiful falsetto”) and melodic outliers like “Jesus on a Wire” stand out from the pack. On one hand, it makes minor updates feel more rewarding. The result of this consistency is two-pronged. All the while, Vile seems no further from his muse than he was back in his early lo-fi days, when you could only barely see the shape of his singer-songwriter ambitions through the pot smoke and amplifier fuzz. He’s written a block of slow-motion anthems to form the staples of a festival set and developed the kind of sprawling discography that feels more akin to the classic rock era he adores than the fickle streaming era, even as playlist curators and commercial music directors have embraced his vibed-out sound. He’s inked a new deal with the prestigious jazz label Verve and met some of his heroes. His message from the future? Guess what, things turned out pretty OK.Īt 42, Vile has worked hard for this kind of self-assurance. “Thoughts become pictures become movies in my mind/Welcome to the KV horror drive in movie marathon,” Vile announces in “Like Exploding Stones” before downplaying his invitation with a sheepish aside: “But I’m just kidding and I’m just playing.” Within the first two minutes of opener “Goin on a Plane Today,” he announces plans to chug a beer, listen to some Neil Young, and try a mindfulness exercise of checking in with his younger, more insecure self. Anyone accustomed to soundtracking their routines with little made-up songs for their cat or houseplants will immediately recognize the tone.

Smoke on the water lyrics