Kurt Vile - 2022 - (Watch My Moves)

 

Verve Records – B0035167-02  432.06MB FLAC

Kurt Vile’s (watch my moves), released in 2022 on Verve, is a loose, patient record built around repetition, wandering guitar lines and songs that often feel like they are discovering their shape while they are happening. By this point Vile had long since established his own language: dry humor, half-spoken vocals, circular riffs, long instrumental stretches and a sense that a song does not need to hurry toward a conclusion. The album stretches that language across fifteen tracks and more than an hour without trying to tighten it into something more conventional.

A large part of the record was made at Vile’s home studio, OKV Central, in Mount Airy, Philadelphia. He had already planned to build out a proper home recording space before the pandemic, and the isolation of 2020 turned that setup into the center of the album. Other sessions took place in Los Angeles with longtime collaborator Rob Schnapf. That combination helps explain the record’s unusual balance: it has the intimacy of home recording but enough detail and depth to avoid sounding unfinished.

“Goin on a Plane Today” opens with Vile immediately inside his own world, narrating movement and travel in the same casual tone he might use to describe sitting around the house. “Flyin (Like a Fast Train)” and “Palace of OKV in Reverse” continue that drifting quality, with guitars and keyboards creating long horizontal spaces rather than dramatic peaks. The songs frequently feel less like performances aimed outward than private thought processes that happen to have been recorded.

“Like Exploding Stones” is one of the album’s strongest examples of that approach. The song moves slowly but carries a persistent internal pulse, with shimmering guitar lines and Vile’s voice hovering somewhere between singing and thinking out loud. The arrangement keeps adding small details without ever becoming crowded. It is psychedelic in a very understated way: not through spectacle, but through repetition and the feeling that ordinary thoughts are gradually becoming strange.

“Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)” brings the record closer to Vile’s immediate surroundings, while “Hey Like a Child” has a lighter, almost playful quality. “Jesus on a Wire” and “Fo Sho” continue the album’s loose middle section, where songs seem to bleed into one another through similar tempos and textures. That sameness could become monotonous in another setting, but here it becomes part of the album’s identity. Vile is not trying to shock the listener from track to track. He is building one long environment.

“Cool Water” stands out partly because it was recorded with Rob Schnapf before the pandemic fully interrupted normal sessions. It has a slightly different polish and structure while still fitting comfortably into the album. The record also includes a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Wages of Sin,” an interesting choice because Vile does not approach the song as a dramatic Springsteen performance. He pulls it into his own slower, more inward style.

The guest musicians expand the record without turning it into a showcase. Cate Le Bon, Stella Mozgawa, Chastity Belt, Sarah Jones and members of the Sun Ra Arkestra all appear across the sessions, but the album never loses the feeling of being centered on Vile’s home-built process. The additional players appear more like extensions of the atmosphere than featured attractions.

The artwork fits that homemade quality closely. The front shows Vile seated in the woods with two children, one in a white dress and the other in bright pink, while Vile wears a mask and cap. The image is funny, slightly eerie and domestic at the same time. The back cover turns into a dense collage of photographs, handwritten notes, studio equipment, family images, instruments and the typewritten track list. There is no attempt at a clean, corporate presentation. The package feels like a scrapbook from the same environment that produced the music.

The inside continues that effect with photographs of rooms, windows, trees and people, while the disc itself uses a dark image of Vile partially obscured by reflections and color. This Oakland Public Library copy adds another layer of practical markings: classification stickers, barcode labels and the library hub sticker directly on the disc.

What makes (watch my moves) work is its refusal to behave like a major-label debut in the conventional sense. Vile had just signed to Verve, but instead of responding with a streamlined or more commercial record, he delivered one of his loosest and most sprawling albums. The songs take their time, repeat themselves, wander, stop to look around and keep moving. The title sounds like a command to pay attention, but the actual music rarely performs for attention. It simply keeps going at its own speed.

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