Good morning!
We hope you had a nice weekend and if you didn’t, don’t worry about it, it’s gone now, it’s over, Kurt Vile is here to make everything OK. Shrug it off, that’s what Kurt would do. He’d listen to music for a bit. He’d read The New Cue, he’d share it with his friends, he’d subscribe if he wasn’t already, he’d encourage his friends to subscribe, he’d write a lengthy post on Reddit about it, he’d hire a plane to fly a “I Love The New Cue!” banner across the city, he’d hijack a national radio stat—— sorry, gone too far.
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Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Kurt Vile
Kurt Vile is often depicted as the slacker-rocker supreme of modern indie-rock. Perhaps it’s due to the laid-back drawl that characterizes both his singing and speaking voice, or maybe it’s the leisurely way his music unfurls – his songs are very much of the ‘you go ahead, I’ll be there in just a minute’ variety. But all that blows a smoke ring in the face of just how much music he’s got through over a career that began with the Philadelphia singer-songwriter handing out tapes of his songs to friends and kicked off proper with his 2008 debut Constant Hitmaker. At that point, Vile was still a member of The War On Drugs too, with The War On Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel also a part of Vile’s backing band the Violators. Vile’s eighth album (ninth if you count Lotta Sea Lice, 2017’s excellent collaboration with Courtney Barnett) will be released in April. It’s called (watch my moves) and it’s one of his best yet, a collection of woozy, psychedelic folk tales beamed in from Planet Vile, which is located in the Philadelphia suburbs in case you were wondering. Niall spoke to Kurt on the phone a few weeks ago to hear all about it.
Hey Kurt, where are you at the moment?
I’m just at home, in my studio zone. Conveniently, I had two years to put it together without that many interruptions.
Was that the plan, or was that something you did on the hoof when you had lots of time at home?
I mean, I was planning to do it anyway but then all of a sudden, there was plenty more time to take care of it. But that was the plan before this all went down. It still took a while even with being home every day, because I’m not the handyman myself. A good friend of mine moved to Philly at the right time and he started working with me. He’s an engineer and also good at building, my buddy Adam. It was good having somebody to bounce off, going from the point where I don’t really know what a compressor is to buying way too many, getting excited for the gear to come and then loving the way it looks and never touching it.
Are you a newly-converted gearhead then? I would’ve assumed you’d be all over that stuff from the start.
Well, I’ve always loved gear but all my friends and older bandmates, like Adam in The War On Drugs, they’re talking about gear all the time. I join in but I get more romantically or emotionally attached to something, I like the way it looks, it’s beautiful and I play it but I rarely learn all of its functions. Same with that I buy lots of records and CDs. I’m obsessive and whatever I’m obsessed with, I get a lot of. A Jaguar was my favourite guitar a few years ago and I would just get a lot of them. Now, conveniently, Sun Ra’s my favourite band so I’m good forever. I finally have somebody that I’ll never run out of things to get!
Was the new record done in your new home studio?
It was half and half really. It was more having a place that’s like my temple. Most other records I had multiple producers and this one, since there was time to think about it and also to keep things simple because you can only do so much, I was like ‘well I’m going to work in Philly with my friends and then I’m going to work with Rob Schnapf over in LA when I can get over there’. He was supposed to come over here twice to help produce but he ended up just coming once for almost two weeks and I went back to him in LA multiple times. So it’s really an even split between Philly and LA with Rob Schnapf, I would say.
Congratulations on the new record, it’s brilliant. Where did it begin?
Oh man, thank you so much. First of all, I knew I wanted to start just by building my own studio and working like I used to in the old days in a more hi-fi way. Towards the end of touring Bottle It In, I did a couple of recording sessions on the West Coast. One was the very last Violators show and we recorded Cool Water, which I knew was a great song, and the other one was the Springsteen cover Wages Of Sin. I knew that was cool when I did it but hearing it back months later I realised, ‘alright well even though things are crazy now and nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen, I know that Wages Of Sin is awesome and Cool Water is done, so I know I have the start of a good album’. Then there was one other session while there was still touring happening before the pandemic that I did with Cate Le Bon and Chris Cohen and other people in San Francisco. I recorded a bunch of songs there, maybe five songs, but one song made this record. I knew I had some stuff in the can so I wasn’t super stressed. Just being on a new label, it was a new energy and being able to take my time was all pretty inspiring.
Does it feel like the start of a new phase for you?
Yeah, for sure, because it is. Even the neighbourhood we moved to, it’s been four years but I feel like I’ve really come into my own here. I’m in the city but I’m by the woods and I can just get lost in my own world. This record is definitely capturing all that. You can see it’s 17 tracks but it doesn’t feel that way, at least to me, granted some are segues but it’s taking its time. My last record was really long too and I like it but there was multiple songs over 10 minutes long. Something about this record, it’s totally comfortable. I think that’s just a result of everything, coming into my own and also not having anything to prove other than what I do have to prove, you know? I definitely come out swinging, I wanted to come out swinging for the fences but I also want to stay true to my roots. I think it’s got all that in there, it’s got more confidence but it’s also completely laid back and psychedelic and it sounds really classic but it’s not trying too hard to be too slick. But it is all those things at different times.
You mention the Springsteen cover, which totally fits in and sounds like it’s on a Kurt Vile album rather than a Springsteen tribute.
Thank you. Well, I always want those certain covers, they speak to me, they’re usually deep cuts. I’ve done a cover of Monkey on the first Matador record, which is a Dim Stars song which is written by Richard Hell with members of Sonic Youth. That song spoke to me. And I did another Springsteen cover, I did Downbound Train and that was a Violators spin on that one. I did a weirder cover on the last record, a Charlie Rich song called Rollin With The Flow, I’ve done some Randy Newman. I always put myself in there but I stay true to the original at the same time. But yeah, I’m also aware that no-one would know it’s a Springsteen song if they didn’t know.
What was it about that song?
Well, actually, I tried early on to get cover Wages Of Sin with the original line-up of the Violators back in 2007 or something, when Adam [Granduciel, The War On Drugs frontman] was in the band. I did record it then, there’s a version somewhere. I turned my latest drummer Kyle onto it on the last bunch of touring and kept saying how we needed to dig up that old cover and he was like, ‘well, we should just do our own version’. I’m glad we did.
Do you and Adam ever play together now, or bounce ideas off each other?
Oh, Adam G? I mean, he’s in LA, he’s real busy. I’m not saying we wouldn’t jam one day but he’s on the West Coast. Honestly, sometimes I think of him when I get so busy, when I want to talk to so many people, so many old friends but there’s so many times where there’s just no time for anything and it gets depressing, there’s been times in my life where I wonder what they’re up to. But we talk.
In that regard, was it good for you being forced to be at home for a bit?
It was good for me because I would come home from tour and be inspired and sit down at my piano and look out at the woods and this record has been in me for a long time, and then I would get rudely awakened to the reality that I have to all of a sudden go out and do something again. I have all these hardly finished notebooks from so many different times in my life where I’m inspired and then all of a sudden it’s just all white paper, a few pages and all white pages and it gets lost. But when you wake up in the morning with your routine, I love to just wake up and have breakfast and coffee and listen to Sun Ra or jazz music or whatever, just read for at least an hour or so before I do things. I’m just stoked to be able to have some kind of routine that I never had, not to mention being a normal dad. I remember vividly from growing up, my parents being normal parents, always there, and these past couple of years, I got to be that same kind of dad. You know, I was always a good dad and it was nice to always miss somebody and be able to come home to somebody all the time but it turns out we were all missing something. I feel like all that lends itself to the music and the music lends itself to being a dad, it’s all one and the same.
Apart from making music, what have you been getting up to that you wouldn’t have previously?
Oh, man, I think just having the time to even clean out your garage or something. Just getting organised, it just seemed impossible. It’s kind of beautiful. That said, it’s really good to be playing concerts again and seeing concerts again. Concerts are the new drug, seeing them around town. You don’t even need to get high anymore, it’s like, ‘wow, this feels almost unnatural and simultaneously so euphoric’. I saw Bob Dylan into Ween into Steve Gunn, I’ve seen a lot lately. I go out to all of them.
The first two tracks on the record have the theme of travel, it almost feels like the album starts with you having itchy feet.
Yeah, it’s funny. The first song Going On A Plane Today was actually written when I was literally about to open up for Neil Young. At that time, I was stressed to fly, I would literally just obliterate my senses with beer or whatever and then get out there. And then you get to the other side and it’s all inspiring.
What are your memories of opening for Neil Young?
Well, that was incredible. It was just once, it was for this festival in Quebec. It was Promise Of The Real, then me and the Violators, then Neil with Promise Of The Real. It was in front of 80,000 people or something, it was insane. I opened with the song Wheelhouse and I was feeling pretty cocky and then I flubbed one note and it made me shut down a little bit, so I didn’t move anymore. I got through the show. I was cocky until that moment, but the intro of Wheelhouse is very serpentine.
The new album is called (watch my moves). Have you got any moves?
Yeah, my moves are kind of like... even with my contemporaries who are all like family or certain people in my world that have been making music maybe as long as me, but I have more records than a good amount of my peers and I’ve been doing my own thing for a long time on my own, so I got a lot of moves. I’m always silently hustling so people better watch out in one way or another, I’m always gonna come around the bend!
Are you one of those people who are bad at sitting still?
Well I like to sit still, but my brain’s always flying. I think about that concept all the time and then I realise that Willie Nelson already wrote a song about that. My songs are usually about that, sitting down but the mind is travelling a million miles an hour, songs like Bassackwards are like that. But Willie Nelson’s got a song Still Is Still Moving To Me, such a good song. You know, “I swim like a fish in the sea all the time/If that’s what it takes to be free I don’t mind, still is still moving to me”. I feel the same way. Because yes, sometimes I am talking a mile a minute or moving around. My left hand is always moving, playing air guitar, imaginary guitar.
How did you feel when you got to the end of making this record?
I felt good. I felt really good. It’s just classic made. Usually by the time I get to mastering there’s a lot of a lot of fires to put out and a lot of me changing my mind about a million things. Sure enough, there was all kinds of things I didn’t foresee and every step of the way, it’s like a soap opera. You know, it takes me a while to find out what it’s supposed to be but that’s the beauty. There’s always two or three records left on the cutting room floor to come back to later, things like that. I’ve got to keep going!
You do. Last question: what would it take for you to have your hair cut short?
Man, I think I would just look like a working stiff or something. I better not do it. I’d probably just look as old as I really am!
ND