Kurt Vile - 2021 - Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep)

 

Matador – OLE1651T  137.66MB FLAC

Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) is a compact five-song Kurt Vile release built around admiration, collaboration and the relaxed musical language he shares with some of his strongest influences. Released by Matador in 2020, the EP combines two Vile originals with songs by John Prine and “Cowboy” Jack Clement, and its center of gravity is clearly Nashville. The recordings were made over several years at The Butcher Shoppe studio with producer David Ferguson and a group of veteran players including Bobby Wood, Dave Roe, Kenny Malone, Dan Auerbach and Matt Sweeney.

The opening track, “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,” is Vile’s version of John Prine’s song. It is an unusually natural fit. Prine’s writing has the same ability Vile often reaches for: plain language that initially sounds almost casual until the emotional weight begins accumulating underneath it. Vile does not radically rearrange the song. Instead, he settles into its rhythm and lets the melody stretch out, making the track feel less like a formal cover than a conversation with a songwriter whose influence was already deeply absorbed.

“Gone Girl” comes from Jack Clement, another figure strongly connected to Nashville recording history. The arrangement has a warmer country feel than much of Vile’s regular work, but his loose phrasing and slightly detached vocal delivery keep it from becoming a genre exercise. The musicians around him sound comfortable rather than overly polished, which is important throughout the EP. These sessions feel like people playing together in a room instead of constructing something piece by piece.

“Dandelions,” one of the two Vile originals, stretches beyond six minutes and moves at the unhurried pace associated with much of his best work. The song circles around small images and repeated guitar patterns instead of aiming for a dramatic peak. That looseness links it naturally to the older songwriters represented elsewhere on the record. Vile’s music often works by allowing apparently minor observations to stay in place long enough that they begin carrying more emotional weight.

The most important recording here is “How Lucky,” performed with John Prine himself. Vile had admired Prine for years, and their voices make an appealingly imperfect combination. Neither singer approaches the song with theatrical precision. Their phrasing remains conversational, and the performance gains much of its warmth from hearing two distinct voices occupying the same song. Vile later described recording with Prine as one of the most special musical experiences of his life. The track took on additional weight after Prine died in April 2020, only months before the EP was released.

“Pearls” closes the record with another Vile original. It returns more fully to his own hazy guitar language while retaining the relaxed Nashville atmosphere of the sessions. The song does not attempt to deliver a large ending. Like the rest of the EP, it works through modest scale, repetition and the pleasure of musicians responding to one another.

The credits help explain the richness of such a short record. David Ferguson recorded and mixed the sessions, while Dan Auerbach contributes guitar, bass and percussion, Matt Sweeney adds guitar and vocals, and Nashville veterans including Bobby Wood, Dave Roe, Kenny Malone, Fred Eltringham and Pat McLaughlin appear throughout. Rather than crowding the arrangements, that large pool of musicians gives the recordings subtle variations in texture: piano, organ, mandolin, acoustic and electric guitars, upright bass and percussion moving in and out without calling excessive attention to themselves.

The packaging emphasizes the informal, personal character of the project. The front photograph places Vile in the woods between two children in costumes, wearing a mask himself, an image that is funny and slightly eerie without explaining itself. Inside are photographs of windows, trees and people, while the rear artwork resembles a collage or scrapbook assembled from snapshots, recording equipment, handwritten notes and domestic details. The visual presentation feels more like documentation of a period of life than conventional promotional photography.

This Oakland Public Library copy comes in a clear plastic library case with Main Library labels, classification stickers, barcode markings and a library hub label on the disc. The EP itself remains visually simple, with the dark disc carrying only the title, Matador logo and five-song track list.

Speed, Sound, Lonely KV is small compared with Kurt Vile’s sprawling full-length albums, but that scale is part of its appeal. It documents a few songs, a particular studio, a group of musicians and an encounter between Vile and one of his musical heroes. Nothing is pushed toward monumentality. The record is warm, loose and conversational, and the presence of John Prine gives the whole thing a significance that could not have been fully understood when the sessions began.

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