Kurt Vile is in fine form as the king of mellow rock

★★★★★

There’s always been a brutal honesty to Kurt Vile’s music. Back in 2015, Vile sang of waking up one morning and not recognising the man in the mirror, brushing someone else’s teeth, and combing someone else’s hair; only to realise it was himself all along.

The eerie sense of detachment Vile conjured in Pretty Pimpin, arguably his most critically acclaimed single to date, was paired with one of the greatest beats to come out of indie rock in the 2010s.

A foot-stomping folk masterpiece which tackled toxic masculinity and mental illness, Pretty Pimpin was an instant classic and cemented Vile’s status as the heir to Neil Young’s brand of angst-ridden, mellow rock.

The forthcoming album (watch my moves) is to be released on April 15th, featuring contributions from Cate Le Bon amongst others. Like Exploding Stones is the latest track to roll off Vile’s assembly line, and it’s yet another slice of genius in the vein of Young’s famous Ditch Trilogy.

What Vile manages to nail every time is that feeling of unease with his words, alongside the most intoxicating soundscape to envelop them. The effect is to lull the listener into a false sense of security.

It’s easy to listen to Like Exploding Stones and immediately find it relaxing. A slow beat, lush guitars and synths, as well as a touch of jazz saxophone (courtesy of Sun Ra Arkestra’s James Stewart) makes this feel like a late-night track. But once the lyrics start to sink in, delivered in that calm, folksy timbre, a disconnect creeps in.

“Pain ricocheting in my brain like exploding stones” is a shrewd exposition of anxiety – of how one intrusive thought can lead to another like a chain reaction. Vile takes the metaphor further, comparing his racing thoughts to pinball. This deceptively astute writing really underscores Vile’s talent as a wordsmith as well as an instrumentalist. What we colloquially refer to as ‘overthinking’ is addressed with an inspired lyrical precision – “painful calculations bruise my brain in the pouring rain.” This will ring true to many of us, that feeling of trying to predict every possible outcome of the future and the weariness this constant over-stimulation leads to.

The waves of sound Vile and The Violators craft around these words speaks of the unfailing ability for music to, if not cure the stresses of life, at least momentarily alleviate them. The French Nobel Prize laureate Romain Rolland once wrote in a letter to Sigmund Freud of “oceanic” feelings, inspired by his study of Hindu mysticism. For Rolland, this oceanic feeling, a sensation of eternity and being at one with external world, was the basis of all religions. Users of psychedelics often report a similar sensation. When we listen to music we like, we get this same feeling, often accompanied by goosebumps and/or autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR).

What Vile excels with in this track is showing how important music is to him personally and lauding its therapeutic effects. Blending his worried thoughts with the mellow music around it is a way of explaining that music is medicinal. No matter what problems you have in your head, music helps you lose yourself, if only for a moment, in that feeling of eternal oneness.