♫♪  Kurt Vile - “Life’s a Beach”

A veteran of The War on Drugs, Kurt Vile has now graduated to the war on manhood. As my monster colleague recently pointed out, age anxiety seems to be one of Vile’s central motifs on his upcoming EP, So Outta Reach. “I want to be a boy, don’t want to be a man,” he sings in this track’s first line; from there, it’s all about repression of the grown-up stuff. Musically, it’s more of the same Vile goodness that we’ve come to expect. “Life’s a beach,” the titular chorus, is a cliché lyric, but that’s the point — of course, we all wish that we could have an endless summer, but most all of us know we can’t, and ergo, alas: life’s a bitch. Vile’s not really offering a refutation to the bitchness, but a veiled, reluctant acceptance. The pretty drawl of it! The delicious haze! But, then again, I bet Mr. Vile doesn’t actually mean this stuff, because if he really wanted to hang with the kids, he’d surely be making some hairy, brolicious dubstep….

The So Outta Reach EP is out November 8 on Matador Records.

• Kurt Vile: http://kurtvile.com
• Matador Records: http://www.matadorrecords.com

[Photo: Shawn Brackbill]

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

Most Read



Etc.