KURT VILE – Philadelphia’s been good to me

1. Zoom 97 4:56
2. 99 BPM 4:46
3. Rock ‘o Stone 5:37
4. You don’t know cuz it’s my life 5:40
5. Chance to Bleed 4:57
6. Philly’s been good to me 5:53
7. 99th Song 10:12
8. Red Room Dub 3:18
9. Holiday OKV 4:34
10. Every time I look at you 5:04
11. Piano for Sarah 2:37
12. Avalanches of Snow 7:20

All songs written and album produced by Kurt Vile

Vocals, Electric Guitars, Acoustic Guitars, Goldtone Mandolin Guitar, Electric 6 string guitar, 12 string Guitar, Keys, Synth, Piano, Trumpet: Kurt Vile / Electric Guitar, Vocals: Greg Cartwright / Electric Rhythm Guitar: Jesse Trbovich / Electric Guitar: Steve Gunn / Bass, Drums, Synth: Adam Langellotti / Bass, Keys: Rob Laakso / Piano, Electric Piano, Keys, Wurlitzer organ, Percussion: Matthew Jugenheimer / Piano, Steel Guitar, Lap Steel, Synths: David Scher / Drums: Sarah Jones / Drums: Kyle Spence / Drums & Percussion: Mikel Patrick Avery / Shaker: Rob Schnapf / Backing Vocals: Francie Medosch, Jon Cox, Jesse Trbovich, Natalie Hoffmann, Elena Tulve

Kurt Vile meldet sich mit seinem dritten Album bei Verve Records zurück. Der Titel „Philadelphia’s been good to me“ unterstreicht seine Liebe zu seiner Heimatstadt, wo er noch immer lebt und den Großteil seiner Musik aufnimmt.

Musikalisch bietet das Album alles, was Fans an kv lieben: klirrende Gitarren, mitreißende Instrumentalpassagen und Texte, die gleichermaßen frech und sentimental sind.

Dieses Album zeigt einen Musiker, der trotz seiner äußerst erfolgreichen Karriere seinen Wurzeln treu geblieben ist und weiterhin für künstlerische Integrität steht.

INFO

Lincoln Drive is a four-mile stretch of highway in Philadelphia that seems to exist out of time, its winding turns taking you by beautiful river bends, forest groves, and inns and roadhouses that date back to the 1800s. Once used as a pleasure roadway when cars were reserved for only the well-to-do, it’s now the route Kurt Vile takes from his home in the city’s bucolic Mt. Airy neighborhood to cruise into Philly proper. “Jump in my whip / My engine whines / Zigzag my way / Down Lincoln Drive / Puck on my lip, feel I can fly,” he sings on “Zoom 97,” the opening track on his tenth full-length record, Philadelphia’s been good to me. As the Gold Tone mandolins swirl and dubby effects bubble around his vocals, an image of Vile’s window down, his signature shaggy mane rippling in the wind, begins to cohere.

“You get a certain feeling every time you drive through there,” says Vile, ever a zenned-out philosopher of the quotidian.

Released in God’s year of 2026, the 250th anniversary of the founding of America in Kurt Vile’s fine city, Philadelphia’s been good to me enjoys a similar time-collapsing quality, merging open-road jams with meandering balladry and lines about phone screens and how “it was 2012 but it felt like 2014.” Philadelphia isn’t exactly Neil Young’s Malibu, California or Terry Allen’s Lubbock, Texas. But every great American songwriter needs to stake a claim for the town that feels most like home, and with his 10th album, the man who came out of the gate calling himself “Philly’s constant hitmaker” has crafted a love letter to the city he never left, even as his career took him around the world. “This is my ‘bringing it all back home to Philly’ record,” Vile says.

He created the album from late 2023 to early 2026, in what he describes as “an inspired state of flux,” recording between stints on the road in a basement studio in his Mt. Airy home. Though Vile’s travels led him to sessions in Memphis, Los Angeles, and Athens (Georgia, that is), he laid the majority of Philadelphia’s been good to me down there, surrounded by
humming analogue organs, old tape consoles, records, and books about heroes like Young, Allen, John Prine, Sun Ra, and DJ Screw — some of whom he now counts as collaborators. Built out with Violators bassist Adam Langellotti at the start of the pandemic, the space, dubbed “OKV Central,” has become Vile’s sanctuary, a zone where he can put down the odd idea to paper and listen to “weird shit” late into the night after his wife and daughters have gone to bed. “I’ve always liked the nighttime,” he says. “There’s a shift once it’s all quiet. I’m inspired.”

Largely self-produced, with assists from Langellotti, keys wiz Matthew Juggenheimer, and longtime Violators boardsman Rob Schnapf, the album sees Vile returning to his home-recording roots while also coming into his own as a producer, using time-tested and world-worn tools to fill the album with more warmth and bonhomie than you can fit into the back of a touring band’s van. Prior to that, most of the songs originated as riffs or melodies Vile laid down using whatever gear happened to be handy — Zoom recorders, loop machines, even just his phone — the results of a no-rules philosophy that guided him as he composed. “It doesn’t matter what it’s recorded on,” he says. “You’re just capturing the feeling.”

Though it’s a snapshot of his life at a very particular moment in time, Philadelphia’s been good to me embodies Vile’s understanding of music as a conversation between people across time. Hometown ode that it might be, the title track—a tribute to his city’s notoriously hard to spell (for outsiders, at least) Schuylkill River—is a riff on Tom Petty’s “California.” It might be “polluted as hell,” Vile sings. “But it runs through my town and I ain’t puttin’ it down.” Similarly, the photo on the album’s cover, an image of a ramshackle bar sign taken by the legendary photographer William Eggleston, actually depicts a scene in Memphis. Yet the never-before-seen original photo, which Eggleston’s son Winston sent to Kurt a few years ago, is at this point as much a part of his history in the city as his old gig driving a forklift at the Philadelphia Brewing Company or his old haunts in Northern Liberties. Its origin is both immaterial and the key that unlocks its meaning.

Elsewhere, on “Chance to Bleed,” Vile looks back on his early days in the underground music scene. Featuring guest vocals from Reigning Sound/Oblivians’ Greg Cartwright and Natalie Hoffman of NOTS and Optic Sink, it’s an ode to “old-time, lo-fi, DIY rock ‘n’ roll nights” — and a catchy-as-hell barnburner he jokingly calls “hillbilly techno.”  Appropriately, its music video was filmed at Fishtown institution Kung Fu Necktie, and it boasts a cameo from a fellow hometown hero: the one and only Schoolly D.

“Rock O’ Stone” lyrically references the music of legendary Texas hip-hop producer DJ Screw, and there’s a distinct country influence on “Every Time I Look at You,” which features sly spoken-word verses reminiscent of Allen and finger picking in the vein of the dearly departed John Prine. “It’s got the ’isms of the country greats,” he says. Meanwhile, “You Don’t Know Cuz It’s My Life” is Vile’s take on a stadium anthem, building up to a laid-back yet triumphant chant of “I’m from Philadelphia” that you could imagine a crowd of Eagles fans singing at halftime, but it also contains its fair share of affectionate kiss-offs to the transplants who’ve left the city behind.

Make no mistake: Philadelphia’s been good to me is the sound of Philly’s constant hitmaker coming back to kick ass, son the haters, and put on for the City of Brotherly Love. As he sees it, between the 250th anniversary of America and its hosting of select World Cup games, 2026 is shaping up to be a big deal for Philadelphia. “And then there’s one other thing,” Vile says. “I gotta be that third thing. Because I am Philadelphia. I gotta own it. I gotta rise to the occasion.”

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