Ground Control Touring

After packing an entire album’s worth of songs, licks, and winsome wisdom into his 2023 EP Back to Moon Beach, indie rock’s exemplary everyman Kurt Vile stuck to the medium’s more traditional format with Classic Love. The project draws heavily on Vile’s friendship and creative partnership with Nashville songwriter Luke Roberts. After meeting via MySpace, they toured together for Kurt’s seminal B’lieve I’m Goin Down… album, while Roberts has gone on to release LPs on Thrill Jockey and Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace. Their collaborative work emanates an energy that’s “sad and funny at the same time,” something Vile says is a guiding ethos of his music.

With a run of adored albums and EPs starting in the late 2000s, Vile quickly became a critical favorite and commercial stalwart thanks to 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze and 2015’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down… A leading figure in Philadelphia’s robust indie rock scene, Vile has released nine solo LPs since 2019, as well as a cavalcade of EPs, collaborating with Courtney Barnett, John Prine, Hope Sandoval, The Avalanches, and many more.

“When you listen to Kurt, it can be like watching a tightrope act,” Roberts says. “He’s out here doing this thing that seems like he could fall at any moment. There’s a strength to what he does that makes you feel like you’re on a journey with him.”

This EP is succinct, not slight, exploring how romance changes as it endures. Vile’s “classic love” was adapted from a years’ old Roberts demo and features guitar work from Creston Spiers of Athens, GA band Harvey Milk. Vile likens it to a country music standard, the kind of song that’s been performed by dozens of artists and feels both singular and adaptable.

“I always thought ‘classic love’ belonged on the radio,” Vile says, comparing the track to Fleetwood Mac’s “Honey Hi.” “It had been a long time since I heard a classic song that belonged on the radio in a classic way.”

“hit of the high life” captures a sense of faded glory, with Vile and Roberts’ half-spoken vocals recalling Nick Cave or late-career Johnny Cash atop bluesy electric piano and guitar. “slow walkers ‘22” is an intricate finger-picking acoustic showcase built around the brilliantly blunt couplet “Everyone I know, talks to me way too slow / I lose track of what they say before they walk away,” a re-interpretation of Vile’s 2008 original song of the same name, while “wildflower” reimagines the wistful dream pop of Beach House’s original as a lonesome guitar ballad.

Classic Love is a concise but emblematic entry in the Kurt Vile canon: infectious, yet unvarnished, showcasing his natural ability to craft his own songs and interpolate others that you want to keep listening to. Responding to Roberts comparing him to a tightrope walker, he stresses, “I like to fall, too. That’s the beauty. A lot of times if you’re not careful the producer will erase the falls and say ‘Put that fucking back. We don’t want it to be perfectly straight, because that’s not fucking real.’”