Album: Wakin On A Pretty Daze
Record Label: Matador
Kurt Vile turns his hazy jams into meandering epics on album No. 5
Kurt Vile, like Destroyer's Dan Bejar, is a man whose music feels (in the most positive sense possible) of a certain time and place. It's secretive, seductive, idiosyncratic. It feels like a blissful, remote Island in the pacific; in some ways it's entirely of itself, but as songs like "Society Is My Friend" from Vile's 2011 opus "Smoke Ring For My Halo" prove, it also has a much more universal appeal.
The magic of "Wakin On A Pretty Daze" is both the ever stonery, surrealist haze of Vile's story telling, but also the fact that almost every track here is a bout of euphoric, near perfectly- structured loveliness. "Air Bud" is a succulent 6 minute journey into swirling, lucid yet tightly performed bliss. The longer passages like "Was All Talk" and the deliriously pretty closer "Goldtone" lure you in to serene but virtuosity drenched soundscapes without losing focus. "Pure Pain" flits effortlessly between punchy, improvisational chord sequences and indulgent, meandering acoustic interludes.
Kurt Vile's elegant marriage of epicness and cryptic social and personal analysis is more prolific than ever on "Wakin On A Pretty Daze." It's one of those rare records that is both musically engulfing and often catchy. No other record should be the primary soundtrack to your summer.
Key Tracks: "Air Bud", "Pure Pain", "Goldtone"
For fans of: Destroyer, Bruce Springsteen
8/10
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