Kurt Vile – Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze (2013)

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Kurt Samuel Vile (born January 3, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer.
He is known for his solo work, music released under the name “Kurt Vile and The Violators,” and as the former lead guitarist of rock band the War on Drugs.
Both in the studio and during live performances, Vile is accompanied by his backing band, the Violators, which currently includes Jesse Trbovich (guitar, saxophone), Kyle Spence (drums) and Adam Langellotti (bass, keyboards).
Influenced by Pavement, John Prine, Neil Young, Ween, Tom Petty, Dinosaur Jr., Bruce Springsteen and John Fahey.

Wakin on a Pretty Daze is the fifth studio album by American indie rock musician Kurt Vile, released on April 9, 2013, on Matador Records.
Produced by both John Agnello and Kurt Vile & the Violators, the album is the first not to feature contributions from long-time collaborator and former bandmate Adam Granduciel.

Wakin on a Pretty Daze features songs with longer tracks lengths than on previous releases, with Vile noting, “It was just the next logical step from making succinct pop songs.
What do you do after that? You make pop songs that are longer and more epic, that push the envelope. Imagine your favourite song, or something that you play over and over in the car, except that you don’t have to start it over as much.”

Philadelphia songsmith Kurt Vile’s 2011 album Smoke Ring for My Halo was 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 album Wakin on a Pretty Daze, continues in this direction, but pushes the changes begun on Halo with even more articulate production, extended exploration in lengthy songs, and even deeper looks inward, if all approached through Vile’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 makes Vile so interesting and helps keep the compositions on Pretty Daze captivating 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 of Where You Been-era Dinosaur Jr. or the dreamy driftiness of Neil Young at his most guitar-centric peaks.
Much like his former/sometimes band the War on Drugs, there’s an undercurrent of working-class rock à la Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen here (Vile even drops the lyric “Springsteen… pristine” in one song).
However, with the spaced-out vaporous jams of Wakin on a Pretty Daze, it becomes clear that Kurt Vile isn’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 Daze is the strongest so far in a chain of releases that seem to suggest there are even greater heights to be reached.

 

Track listing

  1. Wakin on a Pretty Day – 9:31
  2. KV Crimes – 3:57
  3. Was All Talk – 7:42
  4. Girl Called Alex – 6:20
  5. Never Run Away – 3:25
  6. Pure Pain – 5:09
  7. Too Hard – 8:04
  8. Shame Chamber – 4:47
  9. Snowflakes Are Dancing – 3:23
  10. Air Bud – 6:30
  11. Goldtone – 10:26

All tracks are written by Kurt Vile

 

Kurt Vile & the Violators

  • Kurt Vile – vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, lead guitar (1, 4), electric slide guitar (8, 11), synths (1, 3, 10), organ (4, 11), wurlitzer (8, 10), keyboards (3), tambourine (4), percussion (9), vibes (11)
  • Jesse Trbovich – electric guitar (1, 2, 3, 4, 9), lead guitar (7), arpeggio guitar (4), slide guitar (11), saxophone (4)
  • Rob Laakso – bass guitar (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11), electric 12-string guitar (1), EBow guitar (3), fuzz and swell guitars (4), ambient guitars (7), lead electric guitar (8), baritone guitar (8, 11), tremolo fuzz guitars (10), tap guitar outro (11), ARP 2600 (1), additional drums (1), percussion (2), drum machine (6, 10), sequencer (3, 10), electronics (3)

Additional musicians

Recording

  • John Agnello – producer, engineer, mixing
  • Kurt Vile & the Violators – producer
  • Rob Laakso – producer and engineer (2, 10)
  • Ted Young – assistant engineer and additional engineering, mixing (10)
  • Matt Boynston – mixing (8), additional recording (2, 10)
  • Bryce Gonzales – assistant engineer
  • Jonathan Low – assistant engineer
  • Greg Calbi – mastering
  • Steve Fallone – mastering assistant

Artwork

  • Steve Powers – mural art
  • Adam Wallacavage – front cover and additional wall photographs
  • Shawn Brackbill – band photographs and additional psychedelic images
  • Mandy Lamb – recording studio photographs
  • Nick Kulp – layout

Notes
Released: April 9, 2013
Recorded: February 2012 & May–November 2012 Studio New York City, California and Philadelphia
Genre: Indie rock, psychedelic rock
Length: 69:03
Producer(s): John Agnello, Kurt Vile & the Violators

Label – Matador Records

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