Kurt Vile

After packing an entire album’s worth of songs, licks, and winsome wisdom into his 2023 EP Back to Moon Beach, indie rock’s exemplary everyman Kurt Vile stuck to the medium’s more traditional format with Classic Love. The project draws heavily on Vile’s friendship and creative partnership with Nashville songwriter Luke Roberts. After meeting via MySpace, they toured together for Kurt’s seminal ’B’lieve I’m Goin Down… album, while Roberts has gone on to release LPs on Thrill Jockey and Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace. Their collaborative work emanates an energy that’s “sad and funny at the same time,” something Vile says is a guiding ethos of his music.With a run of adored albums and EPs starting in the late 2000s, Vile quickly became a critical favorite and commercial stalwart thanks to 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze and 2015’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down… A leading figure in Philadelphia’s robust indie rock scene, Vile has released nine solo LPs since 2019, as well as a cavalcade of EPs, collaborating with Courtney Barnett, John Prine, Hope Sandoval, The Avalanches, and many more. Classic Love is a concise but emblematic entry in the Kurt Vile canon: infectious, yet unvarnished, showcasing his natural ability to craft his own songs and interpolate others that you want to keep listening to.