When Kurt Vile finished his new album, he was nervous about playing it for his wife. This time she had barely noticed anything about the creation process – practically nothing at all – and so he was even more curious to see what she would think of it. He she left the record with headphones at home in Philadelphia and sat down in the next room.
“I didn’t know what to think,” says Vile, 46, describing the tense experience of sitting within earshot as his wife listened to the recordings for the first time. “But then I heard her laughing at something and I knew it was good.”
Family, home and laughter are recurring themes on “Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me,” his latest record. The album is a relaxed document of contentment and creativity in midlife – and at the same time permeated by Vile’s typical, goofy stream of consciousness, which makes family and fans alike smile. Tender lyrics about home and family sit alongside meandering excursions into the comfort of starting tours in Baltimore, experiencing cover bands playing “96 Tears,” and Vile’s ambivalence when heroes like “Neil and the Boss” write songs about Philadelphia even though they’re not from there.
Balance of seriousness and silliness
It is precisely this balance of seriousness and silliness, of impeccably crafted guitar music that sounds like it was thrown down, that has catapulted Vile into the rare position of being one of the few mainstream acts firmly rooted in the indie rock world of the noughties. “Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me” is the second studio album that Vile has released for a major label. After realizing his teenage dream of recording for a respected indie label like Matador while still in his twenties, he set the bar even higher.
“I remember saying to myself, ‘I have to do like Neil Young and just focus on the music because I have nothing else,'” he tells ROLLING STONE. “The Pavements, the Sonic Youths, the Neil Youngs – that’s what I strive for. And I ended up somewhere between them. I’m kind of the Neil Young of the working man, the little man.”
Distilled sound
For Vile, “Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me” is his clearest self-identification to date as a forty-something rocker, family man, dad and Philly native. The record sounds like a distilled version of the controlled yet meandering melodicism that has characterized Vile’s best work in years. “I lean towards the beautiful,” he says. He puts it most succinctly in the final jam of “99 Bpm”: “Yeah!” Vile shouts. “Twang Pop!”
Even though the album’s creation process “cost him a lot,” as he says, and even though a song like “Holiday OKV” touches on dark themes – “fast-acting” medications and the death of his long-time band member Rob Laakso from cancer in 2023 – Vile prefers to focus his attention on the final line of the first verse: “Man, it feels so good to be alive.”
“The stress, the psychedelia and everything that you have to deal with in life – as a musician or just as a sensitive person – I take that in and turn it into a kind of positivity at the other end,” he says.
Relaxed, but not self-reflective
In a recent conversation with ROLLING STONE, Vile was willing to talk about some topics (the recording process, his musical heroes) and be less forthcoming about others. When asked which song he’s most proud of having written, he quickly deflects and instead raves about how great Neil Young is. When asked about the heavy lyrics in “Holiday OKV,” Vile initially deflects: “What’s so cool about the song,” he says, “is that Steve Gunn plays on it.”
In conversation, Vile is exactly as you would expect from his songs: relaxed, grounded, quick to laugh at himself, with a fondness for words like “epic” and “stupidly simple” – the latter a phrase that he uses with obvious pride for the structure of his new songs.
Vile’s shaggy spirituality reaches new heights of simple, wonderfully narrow-minded simplicity on his latest work. Several songs (“Zoom 97,” “99th Song,” “99 BPM”) are, at least in part, about how great it felt for Kurt Vile to play around with the various gear and instruments used to record each song. (The chorus of “Zoom 97,” a song Vile recorded on a Gold Tone mandolin, goes: “Check out my hands, my chimin’ chords / On a Gold Tone mandolin guitar.”)
Warmth as a foundation
But the foundation of Vile’s latest album may be that it contains his most sincere confessions. Several people close to him have told him that the record sounds like the most exuberant thing they have ever heard from him. When I point out that among these funny songs about beautiful Philly I hear a man in his mid-50s singing about family, stability, security and safety, Vile nods. “I think it’s nice that you see all this,” he says. “It’s true. I sing a lot about my family, my surroundings, everything that I am.”
He continues in a philosophical tone: “Whatever I did, I’m still fucking doing it. I’ll do it again. That’s where I am right now, that’s where I live now.”
That’s where I am right now. This is where I live now. Doesn’t that sound like an apt summary of Vile’s entire new album?
“Right,” says Vile, returning to one of his favorite topics of conversation: Philadelphia. “It’s interesting, and it’s actually where I live.”
__________________________________________________________________
Why does Campino think that sometimes it’s good to just keep your mouth shut? Why does he sometimes feel like a drinks delivery man? He provides the answer in our cover story about the Toten Hosen’s big farewell, exclusively in issue 06/26. And that’s not all: the magazine includes the world exclusive 7-inch single “Always just loved” – on which Sven Regener from Element of Crime also contributed. You can easily order the ROLLING STONE edition here.
