Kurt Vile

I once read that genius is not that which is not an imitation, but that which cannot be imitated.  By that definition, I don't doubt that Kurt Vile (yes, that is his real name) is a genius.  Countless reviewers have pointed out the similarities to Tom Petty, Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen in his latest album, Smoke Ring for My Halo, but it never quite seems to explain what you are listening too.  Ordinarily, when we say that an artist has a certain 'influence', it's because we find a specific element of their music to sound like the prior artist.  Tom Petty's voice sounds like Bob Dylan's which sounds like Woody Guthrie's.  Kurt Vile sounds like Tom Petty played wrong.  The simple chord structures are there, the half-sung, half-intoned vocals are there, but it's been picked apart at the seams - the memorably pointless guitar licks have been replaced with wandering fuzz that shifts and falls over the beat; the glibly simple melodies are reduced to repetitive, almost a-melodic drawls that slur out like an afterthought;  the faux-hardscrabble lyrics (think of the empty nostalgia of Mary Jane) scorched away by a Cobain bleakness that doesn't even try for redemption.

It's easy to hate this album on first listen.  It's so painfully uncool - the FM rock influences are so... sincere.  Even the lyrics seem to come from the wrong decade:

I bet by now
You probably think I'm a puppet
To the man
Well, I'll tell you right now
You best believe that I am

Who talks about 'the man' in this day and age?  The guy has hair past his shoulders, for crying out loud. I mean just look at him - he should be playing for the Meat Puppets in 1986, or a mid-90's Vaselines cover band, or for Pearl Jam, well, ever.  He just has no right to be relevant in 2011, and yet somehow he is.

There's nothing ironic about any of it: no pop-inspired hooks and no 'I'm cool for being so bored' lyrics.  Instead he's singing "I get sick of just about everyone / And I hide in my baby's arms / Shrink myself just like a tom thumb / And I hide in my baby's hands" and then on the next track he's straight into a beautiful, catchy guitar melody for 'Jesus Fever' (my favorite on the album so far) that sounds like the love child of Fleetwood Mac and REM.  It's a beautiful finger-picked line that seems to stretch out just two bars too long.  But that's what you start to fall in love with on this album - nothing has been sanded flush.  The joints are all visible, the flaws left exposed - one guitar part too many here, a syllable drawn out too long there, it's the polar opposite of my last obsession.  Just listen to the rattled bass note at the beginning of every four bar phrase on On Tour. It sticks out.  It shouldn't be there - it's too heavy, too overdone. But it's very intentional, and it it rings out the monotony of the touring life - it's Seger's 'Turn the Page' minus the romanticism.  It's just ugly and menacing:

Watch out for this one
He'll pump you full of lead for turning your head wrong
I would know
I see through everyone, even my own self now

Not every song on the album works.  "Society is My Friend" is just too high-school poetry, as is the title track, but if you've recently overdosed on Radiohead, The National, or the Smith Westerns, this just might be your antidote.

Smoke Ring for My Halo on Amazon
Smoke Ring for My Halo on iTunes