I have a friend who has a thing against EPs. One reason is that something that stands for “extended play” should not be shorter, yet it is. I would add the cost (often more per song) and the fact that some artists release an EP, only to release a longer LP with the same songs plus a few more a year later.
I generally avoid them, but sometimes they’re just too good to pass by, which is the case for this next review.
Disc 1912 is… Speed, Sound, Lonely KV
Artist: Kurt Vile
Year of Release: 2020
What’s up with the Cover? Kurt looks about as relaxed here as he ever does, which is to say, not very. We can forgive him, as this album was released in the height of Covid Times.
Relaxed or not, the man has one of the finest heads of hair ever. The kind of hair that requires no product or complicated styling to be awesome. Seventies hair.
How I Came To Know It: I have been a fan of Kurt Vile since he released “B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down” back in 2015, so I tend to check out whatever he’s up to (n.b. not yet reviewed because of the whole “random selection” thing).
How It Stacks Up: I am not always a fan of Vile’s work. In fact, I’m as likely to not like one of his records than to like it. As a result, even though he has released eight solo albums and twenty (yes twenty!) EPs, I only have one of each. I don’t stack EPs against LPs and hence, there’ll be no stacking today of any kind.
Sorry for that buried lede. Let’s move on.
Ratings: 4 stars
Kurt Vile has a guitar to sink into, and the light production touch on “Speed, Sound, Lonely KV” lets that guitar shine. Listening to this record was a balm in the midst of a stressful week. I drove slower and gave plenty of room to merging traffic. I walked with less purpose and stared at the sky a lot. When it rained, it felt peaceful, and when it was sunny it felt reassuring. Was this all due to Kurt Vile’s guitar? No, but it sure helped.
Vile’s picking style rolls light and carefree and he pulls tone from his guitar that fills the room with a diffuse energy, weak and strong at the same time. If gravity could be expressed as music, Kurt Vile’s guitar might be it.
The opening track, “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” is classic Vile, as he plays a light trill of notes in and out with an accompanying piano. There is tension in the lyrics of the song, and even some exploration of the damage that loneliness can do, but it is hard to get anxious about it because the delivery is so chill.
While a rocker, Vile has a folksy streak through his music, and “Speed, Sound, Lonely KV” doubles down on this aspect of his work. “Gone Girl” has a lilt to the melody, and this alongside Vile’s slightly flat vocal style evoked Townes Van Zandt. Like Vile’s hair, the sound is a bit of a seventies throwback to a simpler time where folks smoked grass and pined for unattainable girls with summer in their hair.
“Dandelions” is much more in the wheelhouse of Vile, with its meandering tune and almost stream-of-consciousness approach to the lyrics. It is OK, but at 6:35 it meanders for about two minutes longer than I would have preferred. This is a known hazard of all Kurt Vile records, however.
The weakest song on the record is “How Lucky”, a duet with John Prine that sounds very Prine. I don’t mind that sound, but I’ve got a lot of John Prine albums and this isn’t his best work. It is bittersweet, however, as Prine died in 2020 making this some of his last work. We miss you, John.
The album ends strong with “Pearls” a song which has Vile incorporating a bit of western style guitar picking into his repertoire. It is a strength of Vile that his work is so relaxed that he can pull in influences from many different forms of music and they all feel at home with one another. He has a way of giving different styles the elbow room they need to live alongside one another in the same song and not feel like they’re competing.
My friend is right about EPs, and at only five songs I found myself wanting more, but at the end of the day, that’s the sign of all good records, regardless of length.
Best tracks: Speed of the Sound of Loneliness, Gone Girl, Pearls
No comments:
Post a Comment