Originally published in Notion 063.
Unruffled singer-songwriter KURT
VILE describes the creation of his latest record, Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze, as
a simple piece of cake. Ringing out a newly ambitious classic rock sound, Huw
Oliver meets him just as he scores the winning goal.
Vile is more laid-back and more
confident than ever before. ‘There are certain double records that
people always regard, you know. There’s Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, there’s
Bruce Springsteen’s
The River, there’s the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, there’s Blonde On
Blonde... there are all these records you can compare Wakin’ On A Pretty
Daze to in one way or another. Sure, this is a fair amount different,
but not really that different’.
Poised to win over even more fans with
his fifth full-length, a 69-minute double album of unhurried,
laissez-faire psych rock songs, Vile has clearly harboured a penchant
for the
grandiose since we last crossed paths.
Initially ‘lumped into that DIY, lo-fi,
psychedelic kinda scene’, it was his last album, 2011’s Smoke Ring For
My Halo, which broke him free of that tag and ushered him straight
into the public eye. With a cleaner, more direct sound, these were
songs of sun-kissed, lackadaisical excellence, and the critics had come
screaming.
Building upon everything that came
before it, his new record is just as loveable as the rest of his work,
but ten times as ambitious.
‘It’s a proper epic’, he tells me over
the phone from his Philadelphia home. ‘I now have more control with it,
so it can get pretty trippy but it’s still like I had a classic rock
control switch on it or something. You know, it’s more solid where in
the past it would be more, like, freaky style, like psychedelic pop with
a lot of echo on the vocals. Now it’s more about making this really
solid, epic thing’.
Working once again with prolific
producer John Agnello (Springsteen, Sonic Youth), a man who describes
Kurt as ‘the son he never wanted’, he was certainly offered the right
tutelage,
and the result is eleven songs of gauzy, effortless perfection.
A case in point: meandering opener
‘Wakin On A Pretty Day’, the standout and tone-setter for the entire
record. ‘I was really into familiar kind of chord progressions, putting
my
own stamp on them, by playing them all the time so every little guitar
hammer-on is my own, but it’s still, like, very familiar. That came
about from touring and just being at one with my guitar and music in
general, just like I’ve always been. But it was
more of slow process, and less urgent. I wasn’t like suffocatingly
trying to get a song.’
In spite of having to juggle
professional and family life (he now has two kids, a situation he
describes as a ‘lucky kinda busy’), the song-writing still comes freely.
‘It’s not
like I just sat there and did a prog thing, like King Crimson or
Captain Beefheart, where I’d be forcing myself to rehearse these parts
eight hours a day, or something. It’s more like the complete opposite,
where you just come back to them whenever you want.
It’s just crazy because all of a sudden you’ll just know. Months and
months later I wrote the end part of ‘Wakin On A Pretty Day’ when I was
on vacation in Puerto Rico and it’s not like I’m sitting there
purposefully composing this master thing, it’s just
like whenever it feels right, all these others riffs suddenly come out.
And you just know they belong.’
As ever, his lyrics deal with the
quotidian. ‘I write about living my life. I just write about walking
down the street, or daydreaming about my family or about being in
transport,
in transit, in a sort of daydreaming state of flux, one way or another.
Just kind of like, sitting here, looking out of the window’.
Sometimes, though, he also riffs on the
metaphorical, and this happens most often when he’s feeling ‘kinda
low’. There’s a song called ‘Shame Chamber’ whose chorus (another day
in the shame chamber / living life to the lowest power / feeling bad
in the best way a man can) ‘applies to everyone in that psychological
doghouse of complete shame. Everyone’s been there at one point or
another’. And another one called ‘Goldtone’, which
is ‘basically about concentrating your pain, whether it’s a lot or a
little, whatever it is. Alone, late at night, or whatever, just
concentrating it into something, making a sweet chord out of it’.
The artwork is an eye-catching
commission by world-renowned Philly graffiti artist Steve Power, who got
in touch with Vile. ‘He was just serendipitous and it was just
synchronous
to the work on the record I guess. It just totally fell into place. I
told my manager, ‘you know this guy?’ He had sounded familiar to me
already, and my manager had some of his art books, so I got really
excited because I’ve always wanted to have a connection
with artists of our time.’
‘He did an amazing job with the mural.
He basically had total creative control. He was making drawings of the
lyrics, interpreting the lyrics through drawing. Once in a while he’d
misquote a lyric, but it didn’t matter, you know, it’s just his
interpretation. I just let him do his thing, for sure. I suggested
drawing some pink sunglasses on there, but that’s it.’
Wrapping up, I ask Vile whether the
boastful quip which closes album track ‘Was All Talk’ (‘making music is
easy / watch me’) was a sincere statement or not. ‘Oh, yeah, making
music
comes totally natural to me’, he confirms. ‘That was me in the moment,
writing that line, feeling it really good, feeling it easy’.
