Kurt Vile – (watch my moves)

27-04-2022

Kurt Samuel Vile (born January 3, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, multi - instrumentalist, and record producer. He is known for his solo work and as the former lead guitarist of rock band the War on Drugs. Both in the studio and during live performances, Vile is accompanied by his backing band, the Violators." Philadelphia artist Kurt Vile is a songwriter of epic proportions, evolving a laid-back yet transfixing psychedelic indie rock sound over a career arc that grew from self-released CD-Rs to major-label releases. Vile takes notes from masters like Neil Young, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr., exploring inventive guitar tones on meditative and sometimes self-reflective songs that often drift at their own deliberate pace. 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 on his own music. He released several albums for various indie labels, finding new levels of mainstream success with 2013 album "Wakin on a Pretty Daze". His blurry-eyed musings and signature songwriting style broke through to a worldwide audience from at that point, and he continued working with a multitude of special guests on his own records as well as co-creating albums with Steve Gunn and Courtney Barnett. After the release of 2018's "Bottle It In", Vile signed on with Verve Records for the release of his major-label debut "(Watch My Moves)" in 2022. "(watch my moves)", is the ninth studio album by American indie rock musician Kurt Vile, released on April 15, 2022 on Verve Forecast Records. Co-produced by Vile and Rob Schnapf, the album's initial recording sessions began in 2019, during the tour in support of Vile's previous album, "Bottle It In". The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, resulted in Vile building a home recording studio, OKV Central, at which he, Schnapf and his backing band the Violators worked on the majority of the album's songs across lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Preceded by the singles "Like Exploding Stones", "Hey Like a Child" and "Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)" the album was released to generally favorable reviews. Work on "(watch my moves)" began in 2019, with Vile feeling inspired by the full-band performances of his backing band the Violators during the tour in support of his eighth studio album, "Bottle It In" : "I was really into touring as a band and playing live and then because we're all together, somehow get into the studio wherever we are, in a Neil Young kind of way. You just go in there and play live." In the Autumn of 2019, Vile recorded new material for the album with singer-songwriter and producer Cate Le Bon, with one of the tracks from these sessions, "Jesus on a Wire", ultimately appearing on the album. In early 2020, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vile was in the midst of recording and co-producing Dinosaur Jr's twelfth studio album, "Sweep It Into Space", and had performed and recorded with John Prine for his "Speed, Sound, Lonely" KV EP. Vile and the Violators completed a six-day recording session with Rob Schnapf in California, with Vile planning to work on a studio album with The Sadies and embark on a solo Euorpean tour in the summer. Reflecting on this time, Vile remarked : "I remember I was so exhausted". The COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in Vile putting his 2020 plans on hold. Throughout the year, he built a basement studio at his home in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, called OKV Central, and took his time writing and recording new material across 2020 and 2021 : "If I didn't have some solid songs in my pocket I guess I would have been more stressed out during lockdown, but because I knew I had some solid things to fall back on I knew I could take my time and make this record." Over the next year-and-a-half, Vile balanced home life with his family alongside recording "(watch my moves)" with co-producer Schnapf and the Violators : "I thought about this record every single day obsessively since I've been making it. I would just wake up thinking about just wanting it to be amazing." The album was recorded at Vile's home studio OKV Central, in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, with Vile playing alongside his backing band The Violators, as well as Rob Schnapf and James Stewart. It was self-produced by Vile in collaboration with Schnapf. Additional contributors to the album include Cate Le Bon, Chastity Belt, Stella Mozgawa, and Sarah Jones. The album also includes a cover of Bruce Springsteen's song "Wages of Sin". "(watch my moves)" is Vile's ninth solo full-length studio album and first since 2018's Bottle It In, which Rolling Stone named #9 on their "50 Best Albums of 2018" list praising, "The long-haired poet-king of Philadelphia surveys his realm in high style on this 78-minute whopper...virtually no one else was making rock records like this ..." Additionally, The New York Times calls him, "indie rock's charming riddle," while The Guardian praises, "such an instinctive facility for melodic logic that behind the shaggy locks and purple haze, there's a clear-headed, big-hearted songwriter at work." Recorded mainly at OKV Central, Vile's newly created home studio in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, (watch my moves) was self-produced along with help from longtime collaborator Rob Schnapf (Richard Thompson, Elliott Smith). "When Waylon Jennings became an outlaw country artist, he liked to record at Hillbilly Central, which was Tompall Glaser's studio," Vile shares. "OKV Central is my version of that in Mount Airy. I've come into my own here, and at the same time I'm getting back to my home-recording roots." In addition to Schnapf, Vile's longtime band, The Violators, and James Stewart, the album features special guests Chastity Belt, Cate Le Bon and percussionists Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint, Courtney Barnett) and Sarah Jones (Hot Chip, Harry Styles). Across the album's 15 songs, which includes 14 originals as well as a version of Bruce Springsteen's 'Wages of Sin', Vile pulls his talents in unexpected directions. The result is a vibrant, yet meditative album propelled by his trademark laid-back charm and curious spirit. Every lyric has been chiseled down into an aphorism, every bloom of distorted guitar or murmuring synth helping create that "fried" pop. "It's about songwriting. It's about lyrics. It's about being the master of all domains in the music," he says. "I'm always thinking about catchy music, even though it's fried, or sizzled, out. It's my own version of a classic thing, it's moving forward and backward at the same time." When The War On Drugs makes its successful march to the general public, Kurt Vile has been out of the band for quite some time. That they still make that link is all so understandable, the spirit of Kurt Vile still keeps watch over the The War On Drugs sound. His crucial psychedelic-drenched guitar playing is more daring than those elongated current panorama fields. The predilection for eighties Fleetwood Mac work and Bruce Springsteen song structures still play an essential song experience role with Kurt Vile. So convincing, in fact, that he has left the phase of shameless stealing behind him and is now boldly attempting a Bruce Springsteen cover again after the edited 'Downbound Train'. Wages of Sin is originally on the Tracks box and is leftover material from his Nebraska period, previously recorded by Damien Jurado. Bruce Springsteen's narrative vivacity is infused with a lucid, dreamy, spiritual injection, and transcends those tempting deadly sins even more. Songsmith Kurt Vile throws his hands in the fire to reforge this newly discovered classic into a sharp druggy song. Love paid in dim hotel rooms, with Bruce Springsteen with an underlying guilt, with Kurt Vile with that adventurous fear of being caught. And in this Kurt Vile also differs from the somewhat safe-minded genius The War On Drugs, it is just a bit bolder, more humane even. Secretly, this sturdy, daring edit is the absolute highlight of "(watch my moves)". "(watch my moves) has a dubious folky lo-fi demo opening. 'Goin on a Plane Today' is simple in design, almost deliberately childish. The drunken bass stumbles into the room only to be blown over by the dominant horns. This is also Kurt Vile, the beauty tucked away in miniscule clunky playful experiments. Off-tuned guitars, a pre-programmed Bossanova beat, maybe just a little too flashy. 'Flyin (Like a Fast Train)' in slow motion. A progressive track with a conservative starting point , all nice but in the end you long for some more depth and complexity. You can certainly hear those layers in the beautifully stacked 'Palace of OKV in Reverse'. Deformed guitar samplers form the basis for this, over which storyteller Kurt Vile carefully creates a charcoal landscape. The real coloring only starts with the seven-minute 'Like Exploding Stones'. Screaming guitar lines, James Stewart's tenor sax drowning in effects, light ear whooshing disco and an eclipse of tripping illuminating Krautrock light rays. Transforming eternal campfire flames into resigned purple auras. From the same under the Milky Way class is the 'Stuffed Leopard starry sky', the startling closing track of "(watch my moves)". The warm country side dominates the evocative 'Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)', stretching the vocal cords as far as possible to get those high-pitched female howls. Not his forte, typical American artistry and probably more appreciated there too. Like 'Palace of OKV in Reverse', a fine tribute to the OKV Central home studio located there in Mount Airy Hill, with the foresight of a morning awakening after a long overnight recording session. That home, garden and kitchen cosiness mainly produces a lazy plate. The casualness does not provide sufficient sharpness. The trigger points are within easy reach and sometimes horribly hinder creativity. Fortunately, there are the lovely guitar twinkles in the beautiful Cate Le Bon 'Jesus on a Wire' gospel duet. An indictment of the senseless battles of faith. With a battle-weary Jesus as the iconic overarching supervisor, who can effortlessly shake off the deeply sad misery. The grief that has been lived through is given an encouraging, optimistic, instrumental pat on the back. In any case, it is a pleasure when Kurt Vile omits his often mediocre singing voice, and especially lets his amplified guitar do the talking. 'Cool Water' is a strong example of how lonely against the moon in howling prairie dogs country rock tragedy. Fatherly 'Hey Like a Child' happiness in dry boring vintage Kurt Vile accompaniment, it's all spread too long and just too much of a good thing. This electronic flirtation works fine in the solid rocking 'Fo Sho', although I doubt whether the track gets any better because of all that experimental knob-turning. Kurt Vile sometimes tries too hard to make it a long uncompromising record, so the skip button comes into play more and more. The same pitfall that disturbs The War On Drugs is also about to close at "(watch my moves)". Because of the often energy-consuming long song build-up you lose your concentration halfway (watch my moves) and then start to feel that Kurt Vile bond again. This musician could do better, the evil mask on the album cover is now causing the most commotion. Don't leave out any instrumental tracks like 'Kurt Runner' and concentrate on the mature album tracks. It is unnecessary to divide your story into fifteen chapters, if the message is clearer in a dozen stories. Like so many touring musicians, Kurt Vile was thrown completely off his axis by the COVID-19 pandemic. With the consistent cycle of recording, album release, and extensive touring upended, Vile spent much of 2020 and 2021 sculpting "(Watch My Moves)", his ninth solo album, major-label debut, and perhaps simultaneously the most considered and most fractured reading of his meditative slacker pop. Vile's wandering songwriting often veers off in unexpected directions, but with some extra time on his hands, he uses "(Watch My Moves)" to linger on weird ideas and expanded textural experimentation. "Like Exploding Stones" has the same lackadaisical tempo and simple kind of chord progression as many of Vile's songs, but its bumbling groove is padded by cosmic synths and broken up by noisy guitar outbursts and heavily processed saxophone. Detuned synth tones take up almost as much space as the layers of woozy slide guitar on "Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)," with Vile riffing demented stream of consciousness lyrics over an instrumental that could pass for a more animated Beach House. Vile duets with Cate Le Bon on "Jesus on a Wire" (a track Le Bon also produced) for one of the album's most pop-friendly moments, and gets into rustic folk-rock with the swaying acoustic guitars and mournful violins of "Chazzy Don't Mind," abstract synth detours on a few instrumental interludes, a heavy-lidded cover of Springsteen's Born in the USA outtake "Wages of Sin," and puts together sing-song melodies, rudimentary piano, a full horn section, and self-referential lyrics about opening up for Neil Young on the childlike opening track "Going on a Plane Today." Some of the claustrophobia and cloistered feelings of the early COVID-19 lockdowns surface in "Flyin' (like a fast train)," where Vile paints psychedelic scenes of being stuck in his house while his mind is traveling through unknown galaxies and acid flashbacks. Many of Vile's albums are lengthy statements, and "(Watch My Moves)"'s 15 tracks and hour-plus runtime follow suit, but the blend of manicured production details and Vile's commitment to follow every idea wherever it leads makes the album feel more epic. The sounds will be familiar (even comforting) to longtime fans, but there are so many unpredictable turns and head-scratching moments that Vile ends up taking his music somewhere new by approaching the same kind of songwriting he's been doing since he started from unlikely angles.

A1 Goin On A Plane Today 2:29

A2 Flyin (Like A Fast Train) 4:46

A3 Palace Of OKV In Reverse 2:54

A4 Like Exploding Stones 7:18

B1 Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone) 5:32

B2 Hey Like A Child 5:46

B3 Jesus On A Wire 5:15

B4 Fo Sho 4:52

C1 Cool Water 5:05

C2 Chazzy Don't Mind 5:33

C3 (Shiny Things) 0:58

C4 Say The Word 5:48

D1 Wages Of Sin 7:34

D2 Kurt Runner 3:16

D3 Stuffed Leopard 6:39

Kurt Vile - vocals (1-10, 12, 13, 15), piano (tracks 1, 9, 10, 13), trumpet (1), acoustic guitar (2, 4, 9, 10, 12, 15), drum machine (2), electric guitar (2-4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15), synth bass (3, 4, 11, 14), keyboards (5, 13), slide guitar (5), synthesizer programming (8, 12, 13)

Rob Laakso - bass (2-5, 7-9, 12, 13), electric guitar (9), background vocals (12), acoustic guitar (13)

Jesse Trbovich - bass (4, 6), keyboards (4), electric guitar (5, 9, 13), acoustic guitar (12, 13), harmonica (15)

Kyle Spence - drums (3-5, 9, 12, 13), percussion (4)

Matt Schuessler - bass (1), upright bass (15)

James Stewart - tenor saxophone (1, 4)

Sarah Jones - drums (2, 6, 8, 10, 15), percussion (2)

Stella Mozgawa - drums, percussion (7)

Chris Cohen - electric guitar (7), background vocals (15)

Cate Le Bon - vocals, piano (7)

Craig McQuiston - bass (10)

Julia Shapiro - vocals, electric guitar (10)

Lydia Lund - vocals, electric guitar (10)