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Kurt Vile's 2009 Matador debut was the complete album that he had hidden up his plaid sleeve for half a decade. Featuring nine dreamy, off kilter cuts (most by hometown master-engineer Jeff Zeigler) with the perfect level of fidelity, tunes like "Hunchback" and "Inside Looking Out" show the absolute power the Violators hold. It's Mike Zanghi dominating his thunder kit on the former, and Michael Johnson banging in a primitive caveman thud on the latter. These tracks dig in and drive hard like Crazy Horse truckin' along the Autobahn.
Vile's same steady hands guide the pretty-sounding and vulnerable route of "Overnite Religion" and "Blackberry Song." The paranoid monologue of "Dead Alive" and the tense, though sunny "Amplifier" should shame all the lightweight singer-songwriter types into pawning Lucille and patching things up with their fathers. And then there's the fan-favorite "Freak Train"; This one's got all the KV moves...a pounding and relentless rhythm (this time supplied by Roland 707), a web of electric-fingerpicking, chiming swells of feedback by Kurt and The War On Drugs' Adam Granduciel, and a boss sax solo coaxed from the lungs of Jesse Trbovich. It's a real propulsive romp through some mutant-filled regional rail network in Vile's mind.
Let the lazy scribes speculate on Vile's influences. Bruce, Suicide, Neil, Spacemen, Patton, Velvets, dozens of under-sung loners with guitars, whoever. But KV doesn't so much as borrow the moves of his elders as he does swallow them up and spit them back as if they were his all along. Listen to him lead the Violators through "Monkey" by the Dim Stars for proof. Each one of these tunes sounded classic the day they were committed to tape and still do 10 years later. 10th anniversary colored vinyl LP pressing with accompanying 7".