Kurt Vile

I stumbled across Kurt Vile off of a recommendation, and I'm glad I followed through, because he's making really good music. He's just about to release his second album, Childish Prodigy, the follow up to Constant Hitmaker. Creative Loafing in Atlanta had a good piece on him yesterday too, which revealed that Vile is in fact his real last name.



I'd give him props just for the album titles, but the music is worth talking about too.

This is a cut off the new album, "Freak Train."



The musical output pays homage to a lot of different styles. I think there's a lot of similarities to The Replacements, some muted tones of Richard Hell and, also, right before the first solo, when he's chanting 'freak train' and gives a little 'whoo' there's some Springsteen in there, which, if you grow up in proximity to Central Jersey is all but impossible to avoid.

I also love how train-like the percussion is: Steady, droning, it falls behind everything else, but permeates throughout, just like riding on a real train. This makes me think that while Vile makes this stuff seem easy, there's a lot of conscious effort and careful crafting that goes into this. It shows, because it's awesome.