Vile talks about the season, in November 2020, when Seth Meyers asked him to perform John Prine’s Speed of the Sound of Loneliness on his talkshow. It would be the first time anyone had played live on the show in eight months because of the pandemic, and Vile was enjoying the challenge. Vile is a fan of Prine, as is Meyers, and it would also serve as a tribute: Prine had died by Covid seven months earlier. But soon the dream became a nightmare. As a car transported Vile to New York, his back began to throb. In the TV studio, the makeup artist stood on the other side of the dressing room door and told him how to apply blush. In addition, Vile had decided to change the rhythm of the song from his usual pull to make it his own, speeding up some tracks and slowing down others. But as he rehearsed himself behind the scenes, he became concerned that he had made a mistake. When the show aired the next day, on Thanksgiving, his fears were confirmed. “People were saying I had just slaughtered this song, that John was rolling in his grave.” Vile laughs calmly, leaning back in his chair almost disappearing. “I felt like I was disappointing John Prine. I made a spiral. “ That night, Vile escaped the family Thanksgiving celebrations and fell into a complete spell of self-doubt, playing the guitar and overcoming his despair on his own. By the time he went to bed, he had written Like Exploding Stones, an honest view of his own failures. The synthesizers unfold as he beats his strings, singing slowly for simpler times, while thinking about the anxieties about performance and the pressure of life in the eyes of the public. “It was,” he says, “an exorcism.” “I have the steaks and the songs to play in arenas. And I like the idea of having songs on the pop charts… Vile live in London in 2018. Photo: Antonio Olmos / The Observer Vile – still thin and with a fresh face at 42, with a sense of boyish elan – has specialized in carefree stoner jams full of melodic murmurs for almost two decades now. Although written in the first person, his unsearchable songs have long felt resilient to ready-made interpretation, so the sincerity of Like Exploding Stones is a fundamental change. The slow-moving, seven-minute song, recorded as Vile’s band climbed over the cassette they made that night, is the first single from (see my moves), his first album in four years and his most personal to today. It is also his debut in the big company, recorded in the studio he made with cash from Verve Records. It’s a bold departure from someone who goes on as an eternal skateboard teen, dressed in a T-shirt and a Cate Le Bon T-shirt, with his underground shower full of skateboards and guitars. “I can be in arenas,” he says, likening himself to Willie Nelson or Bob Dylan. “I know I have the ability, the steaks, the songs. And I like the idea of having songs on the pop charts, connecting with people. I have these possibilities “. But can he do all this and keep his uniqueness while facing the stresses that these opportunities can bring? Vile talks about his music intensely and gets frustrated when his cool songs are thrown away: he believes that his latest album, Bottle It In 2018, has been misunderstood, the complexity has been overlooked. “It was a profound album. I go so deep and work so hard. I want to shudder. ” He makes a funny laugh that is more screaming. “I very rarely let the music go through something that can be annoying, of which I’m not madly proud.” The creation of records became the reason for Vile’s existence immediately after the obsession of his father with a blogger, gave him a banjo for his 14th birthday. He dropped out of college and moved from downtown Philadelphia to downtown, making a living from his various jobs while making cassettes and recording with his friends and roommates the War on Drugs. Shortly after their debut in 2008, Vile left these psychedelic rockers of the heart and signed a contract with Matador, with his career sparking as indie music entered the mainstream. When Matador asked him for a single after being there for more than five years, Vile wrote Pretty Pimpin. “I was trying to write a successful song,” he says, “and I did.” The song now has 92 million Spotify streams. “I’m pretty much touched this area that I know I can go there again. “I want to do that with every song now, in different ways.” He has fought with the “soul of table tennis”. Part of him longed for the stability in the home that the pandemic offered Vile felt he had reached the indie, where each new album was released as the previous one. “It’s always a small step,” says Vile, who avoids eye contact by staring at the floor until he lands where he likes, as he does now. “I put everything I have on all my records and, in the end, I’m exhausted. “How many times can I do this without trying something new?” After Vile participated in a Velvet Underground tribute to Universal subsidiary Verve, executives there asked about his plans. Recently 40 and at the end of his deal with Matador, he reckoned it was time to jump, mainly because Verve’s extended family included the Velvets, as well as Alice and John Coltrane. “I was always noisy and I was thinking about what would follow,” he says. “This was my chance to see what happened.” On March 11, 2020, Vile met his longtime manager, Rennie Jaffe, in Philadelphia to sign his new contract and celebrate. Later that night, Donald Trump announced a travel ban in response to Covid. Despite Vile’s ambitions, this sudden pause and cancellation of his upcoming tour brought a sense of relief. The musician had struggled for years with what he called the “ping-pong soul”, thinking more about what would follow than what was happening now. Part of him longed for the kind of home stability that the pandemic offered. Stuck in Philly, Vile developed a routine, aided by the fact that he had stopped drinking the previous year (and weed smoking, more or less). He was in bed until 10 at night and woke up at 7 in the morning to drink coffee and read about music before recording until night. His daughters – Delphine, nine, and Awilda, 11 – studied upstairs with their mom, Susan Lang, Weil’s wife, for nearly 20 years. His world became smaller. “We have such beautiful trees here,” he says. “I just started thinking about them.” “Children and flowers”… with his daughters on the cover of the new album Vile used Verve funds to turn his basement into his dream studio, christened OKV Central. The studio is an extension of Vile’s already music house: in an upstairs room, an instrument and a piano are surrounded by books, records and sketches. Stacks of albums and cassettes are crowded in every corner of the basement, with the walls serving as sacred bands Vile loves: Box sets by Neil Young, setlists Dinosaur Jr., ZZ Top cassettes, Silver Jews notes. Vile takes a picture of rapper Schoolly D and says, “Philly pride!” This continuum between work and home life fuels new songs, which are confessional in a way that Vile rarely was. Despite his surprise for the success and the star, (watch my moves) it is familiar and unguarded, a record of pandemic family life. “Write about what you see around you”, screams the beauty Chazzy Don’t Mind with laces. “Children and flowers / And days for hours”. The lyrics include children’s toys on the windowsill, favorite stereo records, new development in old gardens. Sam’s brother and Conda’s nephew star in the video for Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone), while his daughters frame their father – hidden behind an alligator mask, of course – on the album cover. Vile mourns global crises during Jesus on a Wire, a charming country number. Playing guitar at home, he concludes, may be all he can do to help now. He agrees that this is the record of “returning home”, acknowledging that the next step – starting the tour to promote it – may not be easy. “I finally get into my own here, in the woods, making music myself,” he later said by telephone, three days into the band’s practice. He slips out for the first time since rehearsals began, adding: “But in reality, I’re going to jump back into these crazy times, with all the anxiety.” As his voice goes out, he notes that the weather is great, though he does not know if it will stay that way for long. Kurt Vile’s (watch my moves) is now available on Verve / Virgin Music.