Kurt Vile: "Ghost Town"

Kurt Vile makes it sound so easy. “Ghost Town,” the first track released from his forthcoming Smoke Ring for my Halo, is an unusual choice: it doesn’t have a typical pop song structure, but instead skates circles around it, stumbling and rambling through six and a half minutes. If this sounds like a slog, it’s remarkably not. “Ghost Town” is deceptively loose and airy, but underneath that laid-back demeanor, Vile is working hard to keep a perfect balance.

Vile plays the slacker well, with his long curtain of hair, sleepy eyes, and uniform of flannel and ripped jeans. His rich-toned voice wraps casually around lines like the opener—“In the morning I’m not done sleepin’ / In the evening I guess I’m alive”—painting a picture of someone who witnesses life as a bystander, not willing to be bothered. But as “Ghost Town” floats on—and float it does, gracefully building—it becomes clear that Vile, aware of that head-in-the-clouds slacker persona, is having fun with it. “I got a friend—hey wait a minute, where was I?” he sputters, and later shrugs, “Christ was born, I was there / You know me, I’m around.”

There’s something magical about the sound achieved on “Ghost Town”: it’s a repetitive exercise without a real chorus, yet for all its long-windedness I didn’t want it to end. Perhaps it’s the layers—low motor-guitar fuzz, trebly, ambient leads, and bright piano—that manage to balance a rootsy, homemade aesthetic with a full concert-hall feel. “Ghost Town” is delightfully relaxed and open, taking its time but paced just right. It takes a lot of talent to be this restrained, but much like the song’s Zen-like protagonist, Vile keeps his cool and sticks to his vision. As he sings in the refrain, “Raindrops might fall on my head sometimes / I don’t pay ’em any mind.”