God Is Saying This To You
What:
God Is Saying This To You
Who:
Kurt Vile
On:
Mexican Summer
Where:
Download at Mexican Summer, limited edition vinyl scarce
Dharma bum with guitar, Kurt Vile, is another self-recording US artist of the moment, but perhaps the most anomalous and welcome yet. Taken by name - a serious misnomer - and the company he keeps, alone, Vile could be the next tapes-and-bong Surf thing by numbers, but instead he's a finger picking Zen simplest; more about clean, pastoral melodies and journeyman lyrics than any going lo-fi style. Like Vincent Gallo's When, there's something irresistibly out-of-time but-in about Vile's God Is Saying This To You, and a similar, irresistible loneliness at its core; knowing, clear-eyed and hopeless.
'My Sympathy' sounds like John Fahey with added drifter lyrics, including 'In a daydream I saw my soul in a flashing neon sign' and 'In a nightmare I saw myself - briefcase, white suit and tie' delivered in the dirty, Springsteen-loving drawl that Vile's made his own. 'Red Apples' reminds of Sandy Bull's strung-out electric oud experiments, 'Beach on the Moon' is Neil Young blues with extra weird and invocations to 'slither up just like a snake upon a spiral staircase', and 'My Best Friends (Don't Even Pass This)' is a killing, Jackson C. Frank-strength poetic folk repeater. Surprising, quiet, diamond tape visions.
Release: Album
To Cure: Hypertension
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