CD Odyssey Disc 1912: Kurt Vile

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

CD Odyssey Disc 1195: Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile

Over the last couple of days I explored a “best of 2008” album list with limited success. I picked ten albums on the list that intrigued me and gave them a chance to wow me. I was less than wowed. I only made it through three of them and only one – James McMurtry’s “Just Us Kids” will one day end up in my collection. The experience got me thinking what my favourite 2008 albums are. Here are ten that you should check out in no particular order:

• Bonnie Prince Billy “Lie Down in the Light”
• Drive-By Truckers “Brighter than Creation is Dark”
• Frank Turner, “Love, Ire & Song”
• Hayes Carll, “Trouble in Mind”
• Imelda May, “Love Tattoo”
• Laura Marling, “Alas, I Cannot Swim”
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!”
• Okkervil River, “The Stand Ins”
• Pack AD, “Funeral Mixtape”
• Sera Cahoone, “Only as the Day is Long”

OK, technically that was in alphabetical order. But check them out, and while you’re at it check out that James McMurtry record – it is also good. On with the next review!

Disc 1195 is… Lotta Sea Lice

Artist: Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile

Year of Release: 2017

What’s up with the Cover? The artists in question with their preferred weapons. See how all the black and white is opposite, even down to the guitar design? It’s art! Vile is even holding his guitar backward to further the mirror effect. That’s right, dear reader: to southpaws like me and Courtney, it is the rest of you who are playing backwards.

How I Came To Know It: I like Kurt Vile and I like Courtney Barnett so when they put this album out it seemed a natural winner. I bought it having heard one song.

How It Stacks Up:  This is the only album they’ve put out together so it can’t really stack up.

Ratings: 3 stars

With its dreamlike layered sound and slowly developing songs “Lotta Sea Lice” is best enjoyed either stoned (like the National Post’s Marie-Danielle Smith explores here) or on headphones on a rainy day. I opted for the latter.

When I first saw that Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile have done an album together my immediate reaction was “of course they did!” The style of both artists - from their monotone vocal delivery to the big echoing sound of their guitars - is remarkably similar.

Listening to them play together is like hearing two awkward but thoughtful people find a friend. No more sitting in the corner of the cafeteria alone! The songs are full of raw explorations of uncertainty but it is done as if you are floating in warm water. A little duet here and there, and some complementary guitar work and suddenly you’re not so alone after all.

For the listener, the record creates a rainy day whimsy that absorbs you. The lyrics here are not terribly creative, but they have a stark honesty that perfectly matches their plain language. When on “Continental Breakfast” they throw in a funky metaphor like:

“Like better luck performin’

Telekinesis on a priestess”

Or the slightly quaint, slightly uncomfortable image of

“I was friendly with this girl,

Who insisted on touching my face”

That serves as the opener for “Untogether” the words stand out all the more; a sudden epiphany of language that then subsides into the gentle roll and pick of the guitar work.

For me the star of the record is the guitar work, particularly on the Kurt Vile numbers. His guitar is a sort of anti-siren that instead of leading you onto the rocks, just leads you out to sea where you find yourself a little lost, but chill with the experience.

While all this made for a pleasant listening experience, there were also times where the songs meandered a bit. To be fair, this sort of indie stoner rock is designed to meander, but there were times when I wanted a bit more out of the melody. At some point I wanted to stop just floating in the current and catch a wave into shore, and that isn’t what “Lotta Sea Lice” is about.

I think this music would be great to just chill out to while you are doing something else, but most of the time I think of music as an active listening experience and so for me “good when doing something else” is less of a selling feature than for some people. For all that, “Lotta Sea Lice” is a good record with some great guitar moments on it and worth a listen.

Best tracks: Over Everything, Continental Breakfast, Peepin’ Tom