Kurt Vile & The Violators – It’s A Big World Out There (And I Am Scared) EP
An impressive artist already, this EP sees him capping the album Walkin’ On A Pretty Daze with a set of ‘out’ and ‘alternate’ takes from that album and its sessions. While it may not all be new it is certainly not ‘filler’ and works as a cohesive whole rather like Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla by Grandaddy . ‘Never Run Away’ combines an acoustic setting with synth that sounds like late 70s band New Musik , with squelching on the coda ‘Reprise’ that begs a remix. It is somehow gentle, romantic and sinister like chloroform on a rose, the singer either sure of his lover or sure of the lock on their door.
‘Feel My Pain’ sounds like you’ve heard it in a past life, it’s country rock to a motorik shuffle beat and a quite marvellous rehab ballad, a resigned confessional told to no one in particular. A desert wind ushers in the tougher ‘Snowflakes’ (in an extended version), a little of the Rain Parade filters through it and it runs into the enjoyable noodle of instrumental ‘Wedding Budz’.
To finish, a little bit of attitude shines through the narcotic smoke – ‘The Ghost Of Freddie Roach’, like all the tracks, seems to inhabit a place of memory and heat haze. With time stretching out as in childhood it’s like an impression of the shape of events rather than a linear narrative. The undertow of nostalgia present throughout surfaces less obliquely, leaving ‘(reprise reprise)’ to choogle into the night.
~It’s A Big World Out There (And I Am Scared) EP is out now on Matador .~