SOUNDTRACK: KURT VILE-Tiny Desk Concert #822 (February 6, 2019).
I love Kurt Vile. I love his sense of humor, I love his attitude and I love most of his music–I love the way his songs are often circular with catchy parts. I wish I liked his music a lot more-but some of his stuff is a little too meandering for me.
Having said that, he was dynamite live. And this Tiny Desk is a delightful distillation of his live show.
For this show Kurt plays acoustic guitar and he’s joined by guitarist Rob Laakso and a drum machine.
“Bassackwards” is a wonderful song–and really highlights everything I love about Kurt. It’s a mellow song with chill out lyrics, a beautiful melody and a circular style in which the song never really seems to go anywhere and yet even at over 6 minutes, it never gets dull.
I love that Kurt does most of the musical heavy lifting even on the acoustic, with Lassko providing the rhythm.
He’s very funny between songs. This son is from my new album as well. It’s called “A Working Class HEro is Something to Be” but, uh, also “Loading Zone.”
“Loading Zones” is a faster song which feels like it’s going to overtake itself at some point. The totally relaxed harmonica (I’ll give John Popper a run for his money…as usual)and his laconic delivery of I park for free is a wonderful contrast.
For the final song “Tomboy” his switches guitar and jokes, “this song’s about John Popper.’ I love this song with its beautiful guitar lines and his halting vocal delivery. Again, a wonderful juxtaposition of styles, which the blurb addresses:
Kurt Vile exudes a casualness at the Tiny Desk in his style and body language that is so unlike most anxious artists who come to play behind my desk. …The way he plays guitar, he seems distracted, yet the complex guitar lines he so nonchalantly plays, along with his musical mate Rob Laakso, are effortlessly beautiful and lyrical.
On the surface, it all can seem just chill. But there’s a lot of rumination in these songs — and even when he’s gazing into the overhead office lights, I think he got his mind on the stars and the world at large.
Imagine how good he is live when he switches between seven or eight guitars (and banjo).
[READ: February 4, 2019] “Asleep at the Wheel”
I really hope this is an excerpt because I want to read a lot more. Plus there’s a lot going on, not all of which is resolved.
Set in the not too distant future (I fear), technology has taken over more than it has now. Cindy is driving a self-driving, cognizant vehicle named Carly. It not only tells her which way will be fastest, it also reminds her about a purse she wanted to pick up (which is now on sale).
In fact, there are no non-automated vehicles anymore–except in race tracks and in the desert. There are ad-driven free cars called Ridz that take you to your destination after stopping by a few of the stores you like to shop at first. Some daredevils even try to hop on automated cars –they ride on the roof–despite the dangers–and go as far as they can.
One such daredevil is Cindy’s son. While he is riding on top of a car he sees his mom in the car next to him. He is sure he’s busted until he sees that she is napping.
She is on the way to visit a homeless man, Keystone. She not only feels that he is being treated poorly by society–she thinks he’s kind of cute too. He has been hassled by the nighttime security bot outside of the SPCA and she believes it is a detriment to everyone to have these bots patrolling the ground like that.
Carly connects to all of the connected devices, so Carly knows that Cindy’s son is not home yet–she doesn’t know where is, just that he is not at home. But Cindy is too preoccupied with Keystone to pay much attention to her son right now.
When Cindy meets up with Keystone, she sees the SPCA bot. It patrols the grounds making loud noises but not hurting anyone–its purpose is to prevent people from sleeping on the grounds by being loud. With Cindy present, Keystone has had enough and takes it out on the bot. Carly seems quite aware of this and now thinks that Keystone is a bad man.
Cindy’s daredevil son has been watching old moves of drag racing. His friend Warren gets the idea to try to hijack and override the code of an automated car. And they plan to live out some classic drag racing scenes. he two of the will race each other and see who the chicken is. It’ll be a blast.
Both storylines feel somewhat up in the air by the end, which is why I hope this is a novel. I love Boyle’s future societies and I would love to read a whole story set in this world.
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