Blouse - Blouse (Captured Tracks)
Last year was when I first got obsessed with the label Captured Tracks. Both Wild Nothing and Soft Moon ended up in my top ten last year. This is the year of Blouse, Soft Metals and Craft Spells. This label can do no wrong and keeps putting out amazing albums one after the other. This album continues the Captured Tracks tradition of capturing that early 90's shoegaze sound that I am still obsessed with. This Blouse album fits in more with the soft rock side of shoegaze and dreampop. It is more like Beach House than the darker sounds of label mates Soft Moon. It is a beautiful album and I can't get enough.

listen to "Time Travel" by Blouse...




Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
(Matador)
This is not his first album but it really is his first album for me. This is the year that I fell hard for Kurt Vile. I could not stop listening to this album for a couple of months. There is just something about it that really got to me. The album is on the more folky side of things. Something that I need in my life every once in a while. He reminds me of Mark Kozelek and the Red House Painters. And listening to this album makes me remember the first time I discoved Mark Kozelek and was hooked for life. It really is that good.

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Kurt Vile has just released his brilliant 4th album called Smoke Ring for My Halo. I am obsessed. He released his 3rd album and his 1st for Matador about a year and a half ago, in October of 2009 and somehow it just passed me by. I just had to go back and see if I even mentioned it in my blog, and I only briefly did but I never got around to really giving it the time it deserved. That album is called Childish Prodigy. I really wish I could go back in time and fall in love with it right there and then but there was a lot going on that week to distract me! The new album from A Place To Bury Strangers had just come out, and new Dead Man's Bones and Gossip albums had just come out as well. I was busy! So when I first heard about the new Kurt Vile album, I really was not that excited and I didn't know what to expect. I had heard some good things about him -- I knew my friend Zack was obsessed, but I really had no idea what he sounded like. From the look of him, I expected him to sound like Andrew WK or Jay Reatard. I had no idea he would sound more like Mark Kozelek or Jose Gonzalez. He is sort of a combination of all your favorite folk musicians: Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Bert Jansch, and Fairport Convention. I was pleasantly surprised when I first heard Smoke Ring for My Halo. I had absolutely no idea that this would be one of my favorite albums of the year!

The show to be at tonight in the Bay Area is Matador's own Kurt Vile at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. The guy is unstoppably good! Is it wrong to label his songs "bouncy?" They feel somehow bouncy to me... and have beautiful guitar work too. If you aren't in SF, over the next few weeks Kurt will continue his tour down through the South and back up to his hometown, Philly. Check out some songs and dates below.

"Freeway"




Tue-Nov-09 San Francisco, CA Rickshaw Stop
Thu-Nov-11 Los Angeles, CA Echoplex
Sat-Nov-13 San Diego, CA Casbah
Sun-Nov-14 Tempe, AZ Trunk Space
Wed-Nov-17 San Antonio, TX The Korova
Thu-Nov-18 Austin, TX Emo’s (w/ Purling Hiss, The Young, Air Traffic Controllers)
Fri-Nov-19 Dallas, TX Club Dada
Sat-Nov-20 Little Rock, AR Whitewater Tavern
Sun-Nov-21 Memphis, TN Hi Tone
Wed-Nov-24 Washington, DC Black Cat (backstage)
Fri-Nov-26 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brendas
Fri-Dec-03 Brooklyn, NY Knitting Factory (w/ Metal Mountains)

10/21-11/13, co-headlining with The Soft Pack
10/19-12/3, support from Purling Hiss