At some point,
Kurt Vile started stretching out. His ambling, guitar-powered indie songs often progress a little more like classic rock or even rootsy jam band tunes, and they reached their highest form on lengthy albums where they could take their time finding the groove.
Vile's 2022 effort
(Watch My Moves) was his fourth consecutive album with a run time over an hour long, so it follows that auxiliary collection
Back to Moon Beach is presented as an EP but closes in on an hour itself with just nine miscellaneous tracks. Collected from various sessions that date back to 2019, the songs largely fit into the constant river of hazy emotions that
Vile's music always returns to. The first third of the album -- "Another Good Year for the Roses," "Touched Somethin (Caught a Virus)," and the title track -- all stroll by at similar relaxed tempos with the kind of minimal effort in regard to structural complexity and vocal performance that
Vile has made his calling card.
Cate Le Bon's production assistance on "Another Good Year for the Roses" injects the song with extra pop bounce as well as some experimental coloration. "Blues Come for Some" is a hiss-coated piano ballad, while the moody, somewhat country-intoned twang of "Tom Petty's Gone (But Tell Him I Asked for Him)" or the drum machine-driven "Like a Wounded Bird Trying to Fly" are about as lively as
Back to Moon Beach gets. The collection is rounded out by a cover of
Wilco's "Passenger Side" from their 1995 debut,
A.M., a take on
Bob Dylan's Christmas tune "Must Be Santa" (a wholesome holiday song made extra cute here by backup vocals from
Vile's daughters), and an alternate version of
(Watch My Moves) track "Cool Water." It's another page in
Vile's ongoing catalog of daydreams and stoned musings, in its best moments reaching the same levels of quality as his fully considered albums. ~ Fred Thomas
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