Kurt Vile - Bad Omens

Music 4 years ago

Kurt Vile - Bad Omens

On his sixth album, our journey to the center of the Kurt Vile is lubricated by production that's as warm and smooth as a slug of whiskey.

Recorded mostly at night, partly in the desert, and buttressed by banjo and piano, it's a quiet, hold-you-close record that goes easy on the effects, and values presence above all else.

Incongruously, it's also fueled by jokes. Vile has always been sly, but here, as often as not, he's a real knee-slapper,

whether it's his headache "like a shop vac coughin' dust bunnies" or a lyrical cameo from the Stay Puft Marshmallow

Man—and that in the album’s emotional center of gravity, too: "That's Life, tho (almost hate to say)", a bittersweet bout of philosophizing that doubles as a eulogy.