The magnitude of singles freshly available for streaming each day means that, depending on the arbitrating whim of the moment, many potential favourites might get skipped passed. The optimum strategy for artists to get heard can’t be precisely determined, but you certainly wouldn’t think a languorous nine-minute guitar and lyrical episode is a prime attention-grabber. However, released earlier this year, Wakin On A Pretty Day, the lead single from Kurt Vile’s fifth full-length album was exactly that; a winding extension of scattered thoughts that doesn’t contrive solubility in order to appeal to flickering attention spans. Vile kicks off the record with this sunny mid-tempo episode, ruminating on various phenomenon with hints of pressure, ‘Waking at the dawn of day/Gotta think about what I want to say, bemusement ‘Phone ringing off the shelf/I guess they wanted to kill themselves,’ and snatches of joyous realisation, ‘Wakin’ on a pretty day/Don’t know why I ever go away. The track’s ponderous nine minutes sets the structural template for the album. Vile sticks largely to impressionistic wandering and, while he’s never quite exultant, he is poised in curiosity.
Figuring out what you want to say is tough and determining what most appropriately warrants your care and attention can be equally opaque. In the electronic-tinged Was All Talk Vile admits ‘there was a time in my life when they thought I was all talk’ but at his most loudly exerted, in the grungy Neil Young homage KV Crimes, he contends ‘I think I’m ready to claim what’s mine, rightfully’. During the subdued and exquisitely gliding Too Hard, Vile makes a pledge of solidarity, ‘I will promise to do my very best for you, that won’t be too hard,’ while also admitting to encroaching frailty ‘even though I’m just human after all’. Although the statement comes with a pre-emptive concession, it’s so humanely professed that failure to meet the proposed duty is evidence of a universal resistance that tinctures our lives.
This isn’t background music, nor is it frazzled stoner meandering, as stated in meditative album closer Goldtone, ‘you’d think I was stoned, but I never – as they say – touch the stuff’. Even when the vocals are a feathery warble (on the aforementioned Too Hard) the melodies don’t peter out into dusty chaos with the passing breeze. Guitars dominate and sometimes the vocals can be obscured, but this is a reflection of the narrator’s fleeting excitement being disrupted by doubt-inducing variables.
Sonically the album is very immediate and John Agnello’s production captures the band with clarity. Many songs end with an instrumental repeating chord progression that gradually builds but never quite sizzles. As a result, each song (most exceeding six minutes) incites an image sequence in the mind of the listener that accompanies the narrative suggestions. It’s a continuation of the mood established that gestures it’s now time to proceed with your own inner-exploration from this stimulated vantage point.
Kurt Vile doesn’t force his way into your psyche, he calmly creeps in. But once he’s entered it’s not simply to be nice and affable. Wakin On A Pretty Daze exemplifies art’s ability to return us to things we already knew but have misplaced due to the fabricated seriousness demanded by everyday trivialities.
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
Best Track: Too Hard
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In A Word: Atonement
