Kurt Vile Is All About Humour

It seems strange to call 2015’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down… a breakout moment for prolific indie musician Kurt Vile, but it also feels apt based entirely on its commercial reception, the single Pretty Pimpin’ becoming his first Billboard chart-topper. That success, following critical acclaim on 2013’s Wakin On A Pretty Daze, is likely responsible for Vile and his band, the Violators, being “forced to become professional” and “really come into [their] own” through a punishing touring schedule. 

Still, despite the sheer number of live shows they're playing in cities around the world, Vile managed to squeeze in time to record his seventh record, Bottle It In, with a worthy list of collaborators including Kim Gordon, Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa and Cass McCombs, all over the United States, in New York, Los Angeles, Portland and Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

While Vile likes “the idea of making a record at home”, he says this time around “it was not on the cards for me”. Recording in snatches of time between shows promoting both B’lieve I’m Goin Down… and 2017’s collaborative album with Courtney Barnett, Lotta Sea Lice, lent an authentic, live element to Bottle It In. He says that coming into the studio straight from a gig ”is actually the best way to sorta be one with the scenario, organic with the music because you just came from actually performing”.

One specific live show whose influence was felt on the record was in February of this year, when Vile played two sets ahead of Willie Nelson at Luck Reunion festival, at Nelson’s 275-hectare Texas ranch. He’d finished mixing a lot of the record before he drove into the desert from LA to meet his wife, Suzanne, and two daughters.

“We chilled in Palm Springs for a couple days and then we drove through New Mexico and Arizona and up into Texas - Marfa, Texas - all the way through Big Bend [National Park] and then we ended at Willie Nelson's Ranch [Luck, Texas]. 

“I played this gig, this awesome gig. They had a festival at Willie's ranch and his son's band, the Promise Of The Real, who also back up Neil Young, they backed me up for a couple songs. It's totally a moment captured, y'know, in front of a music-loving audience. I played just two slots before Willie played on the same stage. 

“Humour and joy, love and sadness, terror, they're all very real and I think they're all necessary."

“That experience alone affected the recording process. After a few solo gigs I went and finished mixing with Peter Katis [The National, Interpol], so that's an example of how many different things I did in a row - I just combined my life. I involved every important facet.”

Vile returns to Australia with the Violators in April for Bluesfest in Byron Bay, plus headline shows across the country. At one point in the conversation, Vile refers to himself as “introverted” but admits that’s certainly not the case once he’s on stage. 

He gushes that “gigs are more exciting” and playing in front of an audience “is the most organic thing you can do”: “In my element playing a gig, on tour with all my friends, I'm actually pretty loud once my nerves go away, and I would say that when you just play a gig it makes you crazy, in a good way. Ideally, when you mix alcohol with that or whatever, you're like loud and being crazy.” 

Vile’s music has always had a humorous element to it, throwaway jokes marked by his droll delivery sitting amid sprawling psychedelic guitar lines. One such line is impossible to miss in Hysteria, a song about fear, and love, and also about “being hypersensitive to all kinds of things going on in the world”: “Girl you gave me rabies/And I don’t mean maybe.”

Vile confirms that lyric is funny, and deliberately so. “That's definitely a big part of my personality. I think humour's so good - things are so funny that they make you cry sometimes, what a good feeling to laugh so hard at something that you're tearing up. That gives you chills. 

“Humour and joy, love and sadness, terror, they're all very real and I think they're all necessary - you gotta include 'em all. It's tough to meet somebody who has zero sense of humour, you know? I'm all for the comedy whenever possible. We need it.”