Kurt Vile does what he does in ways that I find convincing. His EP Square Shells (Matador 936, vinyl or download) seems like a good example. It's a kind of miscellaneous DIY collection of songs, jams and what-have-you he created in the course of making his last album or so. I accidentally came across a review I tried not to read while grabbing the cover art today. It said something about folksy songs and shoe-gaze jams. The jams have a soundscape-y quality but the shoe thing I never do get, since I usually wear sneakers. But for all that there is something about Kurt's music that tickles me. Like lyrics that admit "I wanted everything but I think that I only got most of it." His lyrics are comments on lyrics, his songs (in this case, often folksy sorts of songs) are comments on the kind of songs that people might do these days. And yet it comes across as Kurt Vile in all his Vile-ness.
The EP gives you some more of what makes him interesting. There are no pretensions, no high-density superchops, just a laid back, laconic yet completely in-the-zone artist.
Square Shells may not be the first collection of his music to get. Yet it is another convincing presentation of his wayward prescience.
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