Album Review: Kurt Vile, Philadelphia’s Been Good To Me

Speaking to Hot Press several years ago, Kurt Vile expressed surprise that his native Delaware County, Pennsylvania, had suddenly become famous, having featured in HBO thriller Mare Of Easttown (which he had avoided watching due to its grim subject matter). But Vile is now delivering an off-beam love letter of his own with his beautifully earnest tenth album, Philadelphia’s Been Good To Me.

He really means it. The City of Brotherly Love has sprinkled its good vibes on Vile ever since he moved there as a young artist. He repays that compliment with a wonderfully cheery record that makes the most of his shaggy, conversational singing and his ability to create music that’s stripped back yet bursting with emotion.

It’s less-is-more writing, as he demonstrates on opener ‘Zoom 97’, in which a chiming mandolin (steady on, Kurt, this isn’t 1991, and you’re not R.E.M.) gives way to a gorgeously brittle melody and a lovely “ah-ah-ah” refrain.

Simplicity is his superpower. A fuss-free blues riff anchors the achingly gnarly ‘BPM’, grainy vocals suggesting a mumblecore Lou Reed. Yet that grit is brushed aside for the synth-fuelled title track, which is suffused in Stranger Things-level nostalgia, as he looks back at his years as a striving musician and wonders how far he has come – and about the people who helped him along the way. It’s a work of exquisite generosity, delivered in the deadpan manner of classic slacker rock.

Vile never stays in one place for long. He swerves into acoustic balladry on the “does what it says on the tin” torch song, ‘Piano For Sarah’, where he comes across like an artisanal, farm-to-fork Billy Joel.

A quietly stunning album comes to a suitably emotive close with ‘Avalanches Of Snow’ – a horn-splashed indie chugger that spotlights his talent for lush, jazz-style arrangements. Hometown odes can be hit or miss and it is fair to say that Philadelphia is a city which doesn’t go out of its way to win over newcomers – it is proudly unglamorous and comfortable in its hardboiled exterior.

But Vile has made something special here – the lo-fi equivalent of the scene in Rocky where Sylvester Stallone runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and punches the air. It’s a record that wears its feelings on its lapels and has a hug for everyone in the audience.

8/10