Kurt Vile
Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me
VERVE
Philadelphia’s slacker-folk mayor Kurt Vile has returned from global wanderings wearing a braided marriage band to the Pennsylvanian city itself throughout the years. At a time of national polarization, Vile is using his sound to focus on small impacts—four-mile small, to be exact—to hopefully clip through some of those chainlink brigades with gentle, nurturing force and a little hillbilly sway. If Neil Young had Malibu and Terry Allen had Lubbock, Vile has claimed Philly as his billet doux recipient, dousing the underdog American hub in his unapologetic amber veil with Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me.
Deeply affectionate and uncharacteristically fuzzy, Vile’s sound is refurbished here in ode to all the swarming memories that make a love letter worth reading—one that carries feelings of nostalgia, that feels like returning to your hometown after a long time away. Vile is calling this his “bringing it all back home” moment, claiming that he treated it like his final album. Thankfully, instead of sounding like a somber retirement party, it feels more like a late-night hang surrounded by humming analog organs, old tape consoles, and the ghosts of his musical heroes. Recording in the basement of his Mt. Airy home, Vile returned to his lo-fi DIY roots and mostly self-produced a record that walks strongly yet never stomps out the polished, twangy, and still pretty damn shimmery sound of close-nestled reminiscence and golden days gone by.
The track list is a genre-fluid road trip that sees Vile zigzagging down Lincoln Drive on opener “Zoom 97,” channeling a time-collapsing energy that hustles through the rest of the album’s balladry. There’s a distinct country influence on “Every Time I Look at You,” featuring sly spoken-word verses and fingerpicking that nods to John Prine, while “Rock o’ Stone” somehow bridges the gap between Houston icon DJ Screw and Vile’s own brand of cosmic folk. The near-title track, a cheeky riff on Tom Petty’s “California,” features Memphis scene greats Natalie Hoffmann and Greg Cartwright, turning the song into what Vile perfectly dubs “hillbilly techno.”
Armed with a sparkly old Gretsch Tennessean guitar, Vile packs this record with warmth and bonhomie textures lurid enough to trap you atop the sunlit bench seat of a beat up Ford if only to soak it in a little longer. It’s a relaxed, inspired state of flux proving that Philadelphia has, indeed, been very good to him—and that Kurt Vile has, and will continue to be, very good to us.
