Philly indie icon Kurt Vile is a self-proclaimed Luddite in his music-listening habits, even still making CD mixes at home. But he’s not totally averse to streaming, and he randomly played tracks from one of the playlists on his phone for Rolling Stone‘s Leah Lu in the latest episode of our Song Shuffle series
First came “The Handshake,” a deep cut by his friend Steve Gunn, who played guitar in Vile’s band, the Violators, on a 2013 tour. “It’s like a bridge between modern times and Velvet Underground meets psych rock,” Vile says. “He could be in the Seventies or he could be now.”
Next up was “Goddess on a Hiway,” from Mercury Rev’s 1998 album Deserter’s Songs. Vile’s favorite part comes at the very end. “It seems like the keyboardist is waiting around for it,” he says. “Just at the last minute, he plays this really cool Hammond organ lick, and then it fades.”
Then came “The Moors” by June Tyson, a singer in the Arkestra, the band led by the late avant-garde jazz pioneer Sun Ra. Vile lives near the Philly house that Sun Ra and the band called home, where 102-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen still lives. “I’ve pilgrimaged over there quite a bit,” Vile says. Sun Ra’s music sounded “noisy” to him at first, but he got into it during the pandemic, he explains: “Once you get deep into that story, for a while, no one else is gonna do.”
John Prine‘s “It’s Happening to You” followed. “John Prine’s one of the few people that make a mustache look really cool,” Vile says. He recalled getting to record with Prine before his death. “He was telling me stories, and I could hardly hear him ’cause I was just like, ‘I can’t believe he’s here.’”
Next was “Right On” by the Roots, Philly natives like Vile. The song samples Joanna Newsom, though Vile initially assumed she played on the song. “I was like, man, she probably rolled up with all her homies to the studio,” he says. “Then somebody told me, ‘No, that’s a sample.’ That song really slaps.” When Newsom’s 2015 album Divers first came out, he adds, “that CD never left the car.”
When Lu asked which song people should add to their playlists, Vile went with one of his own: “Zoom 97,” the opener of his latest album, May’s Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me. He also recommended two Philly acts: One is Florry, a band with “classic-rock roots.” and guitarist Emily Robb, an old friend who’s “killing it in the punk scene.”
Vile also talked about his Charli XCX fandom. “Most of the pop music I was hearing, they got one amazing banger and some other good songs,” he says. “Whereas Charli, every song is a banger.” Would he want to work with her? “I’m gonna sit back,” he says, “’cause I’m a little previous generation. But she knows I’m here if she ever needs me.”
