Kurt Vile – Wakin on a Pretty Daze: 10th Anniversary Edition 2LP

Description

**Ltd Edition Yellow Vinyl

Philadelphia songsmithKurt Vile‘s 2011 albumSmoke Ring for My Halowas a definitive shift for the artist away from home-recorded overexposed fuzz pop toward a more sprawling, textural, and most markedly introspective style. The follow-up, fifth albumWakin on a Pretty Daze, continues in this direction, but pushes the changes begun onHalowith even more articulate production, extended exploration in lengthy songs, and even deeper looks inward, if all approached throughVile‘s one-of-a-kind fog. Beginning with the nine-plus-minute “Wakin on a Pretty Day,” the album immediately takes the mantle from its predecessor, offering up wistful interplay between acoustic and electric guitar tones,Vile‘s dour mumbled vocals, and an overall emotional sense caught somewhere between the hope and promise of youth and the exhaustion of everyday life. It’s this deceptively complex perspective cloaked in seemingly lunkheaded guitar heroics that makesVileso interesting and helps keep the compositions onPretty Dazecaptivating even as many of them stretch past the six-minute mark. “KV Crimes” comes on with a lazy classic rock riff but beneath its stony shuffle and sneery vocals lies a heart of both melody and a palpable sense of diminished excitement being reborn. Longer tracks like “Girl Called Alex” and “Goldtone” capture the dark wistfulness ofWhere You Been-eraDinosaur Jr.or the dreamy driftiness ofNeil Youngat his most guitar-centric peaks. Much like his former/sometimes bandthe War on Drugs, there’s an undercurrent of working-class rock laTom PettyorBruce Springsteenhere (Vileeven drops the lyric “Springsteen… pristine” in one song). However, with the spaced-out vaporous jams ofWakin on a Pretty Daze, it becomes clear thatKurt Vileisn’t aiming to ape or even update the canon of classic guitar-based songwriters, but is very much his generation’s chapter of the evolution of rock. Easily his most focused and accessible work,Pretty Dazeis the strongest so far in a chain of releases that seem to suggest there are even greater heights to be reached. -All Music Guide