Kurt Vile | CHILDISH PRODIGY | CD

Personnel: Kurt Vile (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, acoustic 12-string guitar, electric guitar, 12-string guitar, resonator guitar, baritone guitar, banjo, harmonica, trumpet, piano, synthesizer, drum machine, electronics, sampler); Adam Granduciel (electric guitar, 12-string guitar, baritone guitar, synthesizer, drums, percussion, electronics, sampler); Mike Z (drums, percussion); Mikele Edwards (background vocals).
Audio Mixer: Jeff Zeigler .
Kurt Vile's long-haired hippy appearance may suggest West Coast roots, but his sound comes straight out of the underbelly of the Big Apple. With a slack-singing style reminiscent of Lou Reed or Alan Vega and his vocals doused in slap-back reverb, the songs on CHILDISH PRODIGY shift between gritty numbers driven by guitar fuzz and steady ballads backed by one-key baritone drones. If this sounds a bit derivative of the Velvets, well, it is and it isn't. Vile and his backing band The Violators are knowledgeable students of the CBGB school of rock, circa Son of Sam, but just when you think you have them pegged as leather-clad street hoodlums on "Freak Train", a shuffling Roland 707 groove topped with a distortion wall and tense yelps ("I've never been so insulted in my whole life! Shit!"), they go the other way with the mellow fingerpicked circles of "Blackberry Song."

• Format: CD
• Genre: Pop
• Released: 10/06/2009