These days, Kurt Vile songs begin in the middle of the story. In the third decade of his career, the journeyman musician seems even more content than ever to ride his own wave, to let his laid-back koans sit in the air without explanation or context, waiting for a listener to find the right frequency to understand or absorb them in their own time. The Philadelphia guitarist and songwriter opens his 10th record – an auspicious number for any musician – in the least auspicious, most Vile of ways, mumbling his way through the moment: “Smoke on my lip / I wrote a song / Some people said / I was doin’ it wrong,” he sings, his plainspoken warble as familiar, at this point, as the taste of Coca-Cola, or the smell of a summer thunderstorm.
Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me relies on the fact that Vile, 46, is an elder statesman of indie rock at this point, and that it would be downright strange for him to put on any airs, or even for him to sound as if he was performing for any kind of audience. The album never labours its points or trades in anything so tacky as radical departures in sound or style. It is, emphatically, a Kurt Vile record – loose, lush, ambling, aimless, and totally, deeply poetic, bruh.
