Kurt Vile has demanded the impossible with his debut album ‘Childish Prodigy’. His sound encapsulates a diverse musical spectrum including the FM heartland rock territory of Bob Dylan; the spacey kraut rock of Can; the psychedelic rock of The Stones and the American primitive tradition of John Fahey. Remarkably, the end result still resoundingly sounds like Kurt Vile.

And although ‘Childish Prodigy’ is Vile’s debut album it has a maturity about it, due mainly because it has been years in the making with CDRs. The immediacy of do-it-yourself CDR music culture has paid off for Vile, allowing him to emerge from the underground to produce the most propulsive, stone-cold classic album of the year. First track ‘Hunchback’ is a stone groove, as Vile summons up as much sneer as possible, and exorcises it with a heaviest-of-the-heavy solid rock action guitar attack. I am still stuck on the gentle ‘Blackberry Song’. A great title which immediately makes you think about technology, but as Vile sings a dusty blues ballad to a girl, you get it – he is current and timeless. ‘He’s Alright’ is a blunt look at childhood nostalgia and the subsequent struggle to find meaning in life. Juxtaposing refrains of ‘I Don’t Care’ and ‘He’s Alright’, Vile paints a unique picture of confusion (not heard since Kurt Cobain). ‘Childish Prodigy’ dem onstrates that Vile is able to transpose entire archetypes of music. So much so that you believe his songs have been the soundtrack to your life for a long time.

Alan