Kurt Vile - b’lieve i'm goin down... (2015)

Pretty Pimpin'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=659pppwniXA

Nice groove here

Nice to see Stella

Little disappointed by three verses, all the same. I feel like his lyrics sometimes approach his guitar playing, and wish he'd write more

i'm into it

nice track

A press release for the album features this statement from Kim Gordon:

Kurt does his own myth-making; a boy/man with an old soul voice in the age of digital everything becoming something else, which is why this focused, brilliantly clear and seemingly candid record is a breath of fresh air. Recorded and mixed in a number of locations, including Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, b'lieve i'm goin down... is a handshake across the country, east to west coast, thru the dustbowl history ("valley of ashes") of woody honest strait forward talk guthrie, and a cali canyon dead still nite floating in a nearly waterless landscape. The record is all air, weightless, bodyless, but grounded in convincing authenticity, in the best version of singer songwriter upcycling.

*farts*

lol exactly! did she really write that? i'm gonna give the press release a pitchfork score of 6.3

no wait, 5.6. we're going into the 5's here.

the song's alright, though. i kinda miss the sound of his earlier stuff, and the detours into long instrumental passages. but who knows, maybe there's plenty of that on the rest of the album.

I was once told a p credible story in which he was a gross creep and now I can't listen to his music anymore (most of which isn't really my bag anyway)

share pls

you can't tease us with such an anectode and go away without details
xpost

heard a story from a girl I was on a date with (consider that as credible a source as you like, tho in general I defer to believing people in such matters) about how she was writing for a pop-culture mag a few years back and was assigned to interview him. he insisted on doing the interview in his van and reluctantly she agreed. not long into the interview he tried to physically make some moves on her but she made clear she wasn't interested. he then proceeded to bitch out what he thought was her publication as being insignificant, but as he learned was actually something bigger/with more reach, so he quickly tried to backtrack.

that's all I can remember about it. I know that the description was icky enough that I haven't been able to listen to his stuff since. maybe it was just getting a first-hand account that made it more impactful than just reading something somewhere (as you are atm)

far from the worst anecdote about beloved indie rockers kicking around I'm sure, make of it what you will

you know what's gross?

how this place is turning into gawker jr?

p much

seemingly candid

???

This place gets more millennial-y every day

I like the groove. Lyrics are a little goofy, but not too out of step with his previous stuff; maybe it's the production? Speaking of which, any word on whose producing it? John Agnello again?

Sad to see the lofi weirdo stuff put out to pasture in the last few records, but who knows what's down the road. He seems like he's got a long career ahead of him. Looking forward to catching him with Cass McCombs in October.

really love this song

there were some aspects of "waking on a pretty day" and "goldtone" that i really liked, that floaty dreamy relaxed stoner pop just kind of washing over you in a really nice lazy way but overall i think don't like his voice or lyrics very much. not really feeling this song at all

though i've always just been a dabbler w/ KV and never really on board with all of his stuff

Stella sounds like she's cooking up a pot of stew

great song, maybe the poppiest thing he done.

love how the guitar develop too

this record cover is so boring/bad

Really like this song though the lyrics are pretty dumb - they almost ruin it.

this guy seems like T/F: You have been the person in the corner of the party with a guitar to me

Chances are >50% that he was guy in the corner of the party with an acoustic guitar at one point. But he has transcended that and probably gives hope to hundreds of thousands of GitCotPwaAG now. I don't condemn his past, but he needs to publicly condemn the inspirational role that he is currently playing for those guitarists at parties

I gotta say, pretty pimpin

This is my new favorite way to say something is cool

Can anyone some up the gist of the lyrics is it really him looking in a mirror and thinking he looks good? If so pretty funny.

I think it's more his overall style, including his clothes and hair, that he's appreciating

he is being sarcastic/ironic.
sometimes it works, sometimes not..

Sum

i b'lieve he's going down

...

"Life Like Mine" is a smoker

Stella so swinging on Lost my Head

i'm digging this a lot. like the more dry, mid-70s studio sound

yeah, this is my first Kurt Vile record and so far I'm charmed.

he's remarkably consistent, so if you're into this you have several dozen more good songs to look forward to.

i do think that some of his songs are starting to run too long. each of his albums has a few songs that aren't as fleshed out. it wasn't a big deal on the early stuff because they tended to just be fingerpicked fragmented ditties that kind of drifted in for a minute or two and left, almost acting like interludes. but on the more recent albums the weaker ideas are supported by fuller instrumentation and atmospheric noises and...they just keep going. it's not a terrible thing, i guess.

i still feel like he's going to put out a killer album at some point that will surprise a lot of people

i've really been into the first half of the album, though (skipping pretty pimping). so much so that i've resolved to start listening to the back half first to give those songs more of a chance.

Kurt Vile Greatest Hits Vol. 1

he also strikes me as someone who will still be putting out albums in 25 years, regardless of whether many people are still listening or not. and i bet they'll be really good!

i say this as a former kurt vile fanatic, but i've been pretty let down by the last two albums. i prefer the stripped down reverb heavy/blown-out lofi to the violators folk rock sound. another thing he's lost is the subtle humor of the previous albums which has become more overt. before, it would be taking a whizz on the world, a maaan here or there and a SHIIIYEAAHHHH, it's now the more deliberate seeming pretty pimpin' or an awkwardly sung metaphor about a shop vac coughing up dust bunnies

i feel that. this one doesn't seem as sonically satisfying to me as smoke ring or even the one after that, altho i thought that one suffered for basically redoing a bunch of the same stuff he'd done but w/ less interesting lyrics. his music does not often 'reveal itself' to me quickly so perhaps my impression will get more favorable later. still quite solid tho.

I like this current one and previous record the best only because the lack of bass guitar on Childish Prodigy and Smoke Ring drives me insane.

I don't like his acoustic stuff at all. I skip all the tracks and just go for the groovy ones.

And I feel like this one has his grooviest stuff. Lost my Head like you mentioned up thread and also Dust Bunnies (although I'm not sure I'm crazy about his vocal on that one) and Life Like This.

LLT and LMH for the win...definitely standouts. In large part because of Stella.

new spotify session is real good

Lost My Head there is best one on this one imo. Straight channelin' Leon Russell groove.

had a little funky psychosis

it's a medication situation

His split with Steve Gunn (I got it on eMusic) is killer - opens with a Randy Newman cover and gets weird while staying totally beautiful. Digging it even more than the last album, I think

https://f1.bcbits.com/img/a0972882814_10.jpg

(Yeesh, sorry for hugeness of that pic)

I've never quite been able to get into him before but Pretty Pimpin' snuck up on me recently and I like it a lot, except for the part where he says "Pretty Pimpin'"

also when he says "sportin'"

i can live with sportin', but yeah. i've been hearing it a decent amount on radio recently, and apparently it was #1 on the "adult alternative songs" chart. no idea how that one gets compiled.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6898164/kurt-vile-pretty-pimpin-adult-alternative-songs-chart
"Pimpin," being promoted to radio by Beggars Group, is also label Matador's first Billboard airplay No. 1 in its 26-year history.

wow

It's more instantly grabbing than other songs I've heard by him. I doubt that chart has existed for anywhere near as long as Matador though, not to mention that it's really only been the last ten years or so that Matador-type music would be seen as "adult alternative."

the chart, which ranks airplay at triple a stations, has existed for twenty years now, so matador is not actually that much older! (if you're unfamiliar with the triple a radio format, it's basically a rock-leaning adult contemporary format targeted to semi-hip middle-aged white men rather than women, as mainstream ac is.) core artists over the years have been ppl like sheryl crow, dave matthews, r.e.m., jack johnson and so on, and basically any artist that starts at that format and successfully crosses to pop (like, in recent years, ed sheeran, adele and sam smith) is guaranteed to be showered with grammys.

it is interesting to see, especially in recent years, artists like kurt vile, vampire weekend, spoon, arcade fire, feist and such that were mostly known in the music press and college radio getting their commercial radio break at triple a. i am tempted to chalk this up to the addition of a small number of non-commercial stations to the reportership a couple years ago, but the trend has actually well predated that. i guess it is the natural place for them to break.

oh, interesting it's that old. I am familiar with the AAA format, and what you're saying about college radio bands getting a break by triple a is kind of what I meant by Matador-type music being seen as "adult alternative" -- as I said, I'm guessing it's been over about the last ten years that this has happened, around the same time I also seem to remember NPR playing more "indie" stuff. Incidentally, the point about targeting men rather than women had never occurred to me before.

drumming on this song come's pretty close to my platonic ideal of for-the-song drumming

that's my girl Stella!

why is Pretty Pimpin so good when the rest of this dude's stuff is so boring? it isn't even that different from the rest of his songs but somehow it's 300 times better

feel the exact same way

Have you heard his pre-Matador albums/comps (constant hitmaker and god is saying this to you)? hate to be that guy but I prefer that stuff a million times over. A song like "my best friends" is in a completely different universe then a song like "pretty pimpin" imho

Feel like this guy is capable of one crackin' song per album. "Jesus Fever" and "Pretty Pimpin'" are pretty pimpin' but I agree the rest is a snoozefest. Probably getting too high for too long - pull it together, Vile!

I've heard his older stuff and vaguely remember liking it fine.

"Freeway" is a good older one

"jesus fever" was the worst song on that album. i generally don't find his albums' 'focus tracks' to be very compelling compared to what i suppose some of y'all consider to be his 'snoozefest' material

I probably need to revisit his old ones, at the time they didn't grab me but I didn't spend a lot of time with them.

i hate to be that guy too but smoke ring is my favorite of his

New song about playing the guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qWhFmZfTb0

Sadies name is on here but it sounds exactly like what you'd expect in a vile b-side

i went to look up the "forgot to add the fabric softener" ad on youtube to show my wife an old ad i remembered from my childhood and the third hit was courtney barnett and kurt vile's "tiny desk concert"

i didn't click on the link so the relationship between kurt vile and fabric softener will forever be mysterious to me