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

Hey Pepsimaxcasters… It’s been a blinding few weeks indeed. We have had some truly brilliant gigs – Leeds on Monday was mental… we had the Sheffield Wednesday firm in and it went off!!

And the The London Forum last Thurs was totally insane!! It was packed, the crowd knew every single word to every song and  everyone was jumping about and going crazy- at one point I thought the balcony was going to come down! We then went on and partied till the small hours in Camden… I didn’t feel to clever in the morning though!

I also wanna say a big thank you to the Pepsi Max comp winners for coming down and saying  hello – top geezers! Anyway just thought you’d like a sneak peek at one of our soundchecks. This is me doing “The Drugs Don’t Work” by The Verve – one of my favourite bands. Liam, Andy and I like to take it in turns to choose a song to cover to keep sounchecks fun! Enjoy… TC.