Kurt Vile
Kurt Vile’s latest album (Watch My Moves) is a pathway, one that listeners are meant to wander. Maybe you’ll forget where you’re going for a moment as you become immersed in the psych-folk-rocker’s dazed melodies, whimsical strumming and characteristic cooing. You’ll observe a few things along the way and maybe glean some insight. Regardless, the journey will be mellow.
Released in April 2022, (Watch My Moves) is Vile’s ninth studio album — counting Lotta Sea Lice, his 2017 collab with Courtney Barnett, but skipping his work with The War on Drugs — and his first album for jazz-centric label Verve, a recent shift from his longtime relationship with Matador. It offers a glimpse into the experience of constantly touring with his backing band The Violators. The opening track “Goin on a Plane Today” considers the titular activity while casually — if a bit existentially — considering Vile’s life and career. In “Say the Word,” Vile layers meta-lyrical reflections atop smooth-as-as-silk picking: “I wrote the words to this song / Drivin’ from Philly to Amherst / I wrote the words to this song / Sittin’ still in Saskatoon / Words to this song come and go and fly away.”
The theme of movement carries over to our conversation: Vile spoke to the Scene from France, an ocean away from his next visit to Tennessee. Sunday, he and The Violators — with support from alt-country rockers Florry — will be at The Caverns in Pelham, Tenn., a little more than an hour southeast of Nashville.
“We cover ‘Punks in the Beerlight’ pretty much most nights since this record’s come out, so I’ll definitely be thinking about that,” Vile says, noting a tribute to Silver Jews and the late, great David Berman. In 2009, that band played their final show at McMinnville’s Cumberland Caverns, a different Middle Tennessee cave; it’s about the same distance from Music City as The Caverns, in a slightly different direction. “I love Tennessee, anywhere near Nashville,” Vile continues. “The fact that [our show is] in an actual cave, underground — that is ridiculous. In the best way.”
Despite the album’s theme and the extensive traveling Vile has done supporting it, much of (Watch My Moves) was recorded at Vile’s home studio in Philadelphia. It was a matter of necessity, due to COVID, but it gave Vile an excuse to upgrade the studio and settle in. “I didn’t know there was gonna be a pandemic hitting,” he says, “but I could feel something on the horizon, and I was looking forward to woodshedding.”
Some of the songs — including “Jesus on a Wire,” “Cool Water,” which nods to Hank Williams’ rendition of the classic Western tune, and a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s moody deep cut “Wages of Sin” — were already tracked before lockdown, but more followed. While the album doesn’t directly comment on the tumultuous time in history, it’s reminiscent of those early-quarantine days, when we were stuck at home and forced to look more closely at things around us, both physical and not, that we’d been too distracted to pay close attention to. Nearly every track gives you space to get lost in these considerations, especially instrumental tracks like “Kurt Runner” and “(Shiny Things),” which feel like being stuck in a record’s locked groove.
However, the album was not a solitary endeavor. Alongside contributions from The Violators — including longtime multi-instrumentalist Rob Laakso, who sadly died in May — there are top-notch collaborations throughout. Among others, Sun Ra Arkestra’s James Stewart makes a couple appearances on tenor sax, Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa drums on “Jesus on a Wire” and Julia Shapiro & Co. from Chastity Belt sing with Vile on “Chazzy Don’t Mind.” Rob Schnapf, who’s worked with Vile on previous albums, produced the record.
“It’s just friends that I want to play with often,” Vile says. “I get people involved because they inspire me.”
Speaking of working with people who inspire you: In October 2020, Vile released an EP called Speed, Sound, Lonely KV. That record was made in Nashville with producer David R. Ferguson at The Butcher Shoppe, the Germantown studio and office space Ferguson shared with John Prine. It includes two Vile originals, one song by the late Cowboy Jack Clement and two Prine covers, namely “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” and “How Lucky.” The second of those is a duet with Prine himself. Vile also got to sing it with him when Prine played the Grand Ole Opry House on New Year’s Eve, just a few months before Prine died of COVID complications.
“Coming to play Nashville, it was always my dream to get to know John Prine just a little bit,” says Vile. “He showed up, and we got it in two takes. I mean, that’s the beauty of a great song — and I guess the way they work in Nashville. He’s got a laid-back style, but he certainly knows how to play guitar, and he certainly knows how to punch you in the guts and then get you in the heartstrings.”
Whether he’s performing for an audience or focused on doing his best work in the studio, the ability Vile has cultivated to go with the flow continues to serve him well.
“I might have preconceived things I want to do and influences — but it never comes out like you thought it would. I feel like you’re just sort of following it as you go. That’s sort of the excitement. So you never really know until you get there.”
