Kurt Vile — Smoke Ring For My Halo, Matador Records, 2011

At the out­set, I have to admit that I have only recently become famil­iar with Kurt Vile’s music.  I first noticed him when his song “He’s Alright” was used to close out the sec­ond sea­son of HBO’s Eastbound and Down.  That song, con­strained mostly to echo­ing gui­tar and Vile’s equally wan­der­ing voice, has an ethe­real qual­ity and over­all haunt­ing atmos­phere that drew me in imme­di­ately.  I have since had the oppor­tu­nity lis­ten to “He’s Alright” in its orig­i­nal con­text, as a bonus track to Vile’s 2009 album, Childish Prodigy.  There, it fits well among a hazy col­lec­tion of tracks that feel some­what unfin­ished but well-worn, as if some­one decided to per­ma­nently take up res­i­dence in a house miss­ing an exte­rior wall.

Although Smoke Ring for my Halo has a higher level of pro­duc­tion than its pre­de­ces­sor, this aes­thetic remains, and frankly, it suits Vile well.  These songs feel as though they were writ­ten only a few sec­onds prior to record­ing.  Vile gives off a strange sense of becom­ing lost in his own songs, as he mum­bles lyrics, seem­ingly chang­ing up his rhythms at the last moment, and allow­ing the ends of his sen­tences to trail off.  To be clear, I don’t think that any of this was recorded spon­ta­neously.  However, I appre­ci­ate the craft it takes to cre­ate that impres­sion, and Vile’s songs have a cer­tain authen­tic­ity to them, even when the lyrics veer toward a dorm room stoner sensibility.

Most songs within pop­u­lar music have a sense of move­ment, in both time and space; that is, they have begin­nings, mid­dles, and ends, and the lis­tener moves from one part to the next.  Conversely, Vile’s songs reflect more of an atmos­phere that sur­rounds the lis­tener for a few min­utes and then moves on.  That is not to say that these songs do not con­tain famil­iar ele­ments such as verses, cho­ruses and so forth, but this struc­ture seems far less urgent in this set­ting.  Each song seems like an inti­mate view into what­ever is pass­ing through Vile’s mind at the moment.  And whether those thoughts are sub­lime or mun­dane does not mat­ter as much as the enjoy­ment of vis­it­ing such an odd, yet eerily-relaxed space.

Musically, the album reflects Vile’s vocal style, con­sist­ing of shim­mer­ing gui­tar, sparse bass, and in places, unob­tru­sive drum machines and nat­ural per­cus­sion.  Again, the sense of get­ting from here to there is min­i­mized, and the album as a whole per­haps resem­bles noth­ing so much as sit­ting in a smoke-filled room as sun­light beams in.  It may not be beau­ti­ful by con­ven­tional stan­dards, but it is inar­guably com­pelling and strangely sooth­ing.  An ear­lier gen­er­a­tion might have referred to this as “come-down music.”

This review has gone for a good bit with­out ref­er­enc­ing indi­vid­ual songs, but in writ­ing about why I enjoy this music, I am struck by how much I view this album as a whole.  Not to imply that this is a song-cycle, or that the songs segue into one another, but the ongo­ing lack of urgency deem­pha­sizes the need for each song to announce itself.  It is some­what like recall­ing a long con­ver­sa­tion that touches on many sub­jects.  The places where that con­ver­sa­tion changes gears, even if it does so abruptly, are not ulti­mately impor­tant to one’s mem­ory of the event.  That being said, lis­ten­ers will likely enjoy the spaced-out “On Tour,” the lengthy album-closing “Ghost Town,” and the album’s most fully-realized track, “Jesus Fever.”

Usually, albums that are repet­i­tive, unfo­cused, and cause the listener’s atten­tion to drift do not gain glow­ing reviews.  However, Smoke Ring for my Halo aptly demon­strates that there is an art form to being a space-cadet, and that some­times, that space-cadet’s head isn’t a bad place to hang out for a while.

Ryan Harrell.HighStreet.Cleveland