Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo (2011) [Matador] // Grade: A-

There’s something so very enthralling about Kurt Vile’s music. He’s the shaky ghost of folk rock heroes past; a soft-spoken, tender soul with a reclusiveness that leaves you spellbound. Across the past few years, he’s been a fascinating talent to watch develop, gradually loosening the grip on his lo-fi security blanket across three LPs and two EPs. On his fourth LP, Smoke Ring For My Halo, Vile’s music sounds its cleanest to date. Airy, textured guitar compositions provide a base for the slow reveal of a subdued and complicated man.

If you’ve seen Kurt Vile live, then the image of a long mane of brown hair bent forward, hiding a gaze fixated on a line of distortion pedals is familiar. Coarse fuzz has defined the Kurt Vile sound, his instrumentation a seemingly deliberate cloak from the outside world. Smoke Ring For My Halo builds off Childish Prodigy‘s baby steps towards a less grit and grime reliant sound. More than ever now, the comparisons to the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Neil Young ring true. Vile’s masterful guitar work takes on a new richness. Looping finger plucks form a hypnotic pool of ripples on opener “Baby’s Arms”. Intersecting textures move freely through calm waters. The tracks led by stronger notes of guitar take on a new presence. In the absence of distortion “Smoke Ring For My Halo” and “Puppet To The Man” are colored with the dusty hues of classic rock.

With the dirt swept from the surface, Vile’s voice has nowhere left to hide. He sings alone in a room for an audience of himself; his cloudy mumbles become heart-heavy self-reflections. His voice wanders assured, but introspective. He sweeps across “Society Is My Friend” like a dirt road traveler with no final destination and intimately internalizes his past on “Peeping Tomboy”. Track after track, Vile looks inward and allows us to watch voyeuristically.

Smoke Ring For My Halo is haunting in an all new way for Kurt Vile, trading in a hermit-like seclusion for an intimate portrait of self.

- Scrooge McFuck