Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy [Album]

Matador

November 3, 2009, 01:30 PM

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‘Childish Prodigy’ marks Kurt Vile’s - with or without his band, The War on Drugs - gradual ascent from the murky swamp of lo-fi. It’s not a complete exodus - it’s as if the album knows that it’s under the full scrutiny of daylight now so buries itself back in the mire every so often where it can feel comfortable. It has a right to be nervous - Vile’s songwriting just isn’t consistent enough for the high end of lo-fi.

The biggest problem is the vocals. The voice is an instrument in its own right, has its own texture and character, but there’s absolutely no point in lyrics if you’re going to douse them with so much delay and reverb that extracting words is like extracting toys from those crane operation machines you get outside arcades. For the most part then, Vile’s guitar is entrusted with communicating the spartan naming of the songs. This works wonders in track 4, ‘Freak Train’ (and instrumental auto-filter send-off, ‘Goodbye Freaks’) - a mesmerizing seven minute epic, that improvises around exchanging textures. Perhaps, as demands go, “make it sound like a freak train!” might rank among the easier, but its still done very convincingly here.

'Goodbye Freaks' is fleshed out by his band, but others are just Vile and his bedroom walls: ‘Blackberry Song’ and ‘Heart Attack’ unfortunately sound exactly the same, wearing the classic folk rock influences perceivable throughout on their sleeve. I’ve read that Tom Petty is an influence - I don’t know much about Tom Petty, but I don’t think music this cloudy could have the same working-class appeal.

What does it actually sound like then? Let’s say Springsteen without the clarity, or Animal Collective without the interesting bits. The middle ground is not a great place to make music. Songs have a tendency to get stuck in the doldrums. ‘Monkey’ rescues itself in the last 30 seconds with something otherwise foreign to the album - a change of dynamics! - whereas some trumpets come in for an emergency salvage of ‘Amplifier.’ There is a few decent middle-8s kicking about too; it’s certainly the best part of album opener ‘Hunchback,’ but otherwise the album is largely reticent until ‘Freak Train’.

The song that breaks the mould is ‘He’s Alright’ - a song that communicates both some words and some emotions, but placing it as the last vocal track on the album is almost an apologetic move yet it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s tempting to award the album the ‘psychedelic’ tag but there’s just not enough imagination - shoegazing at plain black work pumps if you will. Any attempt to extricate should be rewarded.

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