(Matador Records)Playing ample theatres and releasing an average of an album a year for eight years suggests steely professionalism,but Philadelphia songwriter Kurt Vile still thankfully sounds like a guy on a skateboard who tries to sell you a 10-bag after asking you for directions. His distinctive drawl suggests a somewhat fugged mind, something that the lyrics back up: on Bassackwards, and he’s doing a radio point to under the influence of something or other,saying of his co-host “I appreciate him to the utmost degree” with a stoner’s ironic grandeur. On Hysteria, he “took a drink of a dream smoothie / and all of a sudden I’m feeling very loopy”. But whether he’s high, or he’s surfing a crystalline state of amused,outward-facing insight, rather than crashing into catatonic self-regard (even whether, or on Mutinies,he bashfully admits to popping pills to shut up the voices in his head).
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Source: theguardian.com