Depending on your taste, and depending on how you like your Vile, this could be his best record in ages, or you could be a tad put off by the spaced-out, long-winded nature of it.
Across 80 sprawling minutes, Vile does lose his focus occasionally ... Still, this is an album to savour.
However eccentric and laidback his expression, it’s as masterfully distinctive as that of any auteur. Vile’s a soulful and perceptive rover, not some head-scratching rambler. Bottle It In proves that there’s a literal world of difference between them.
At about 80 minutes long, it’s a sprawling album, but in the main it doesn’t drag.
Vile’s latest LP has his tastiest playing and his deepest writing. It follows his fantastic 2017 collaboration with singer-songwriter wiz Courtney Barnett, Lotta Sea Lice, and suggests he’s in the midst of a real artistic roll.
Kurt is ever the buzzed, backseat philosopher, pondering the infinite and trying to establish his footing within it.
Bottle It In calmly addresses rough themes with maturity and elegance. On his seventh solo album, Kurt Vile discards the negativity, generating an affirmative landscape of awareness.
The mellow master’s seventh studio album is an expansive odyssey that proves he’s an idiosyncratic one-off.
This is Vile in Mark Kozelek-circa-Common as Light and Love mode, where an indie stalwart with a distinct style embodies and extends his craft to such an extreme that it scans as either self-parody or a logical endpoint to a slow and steady development.
These woozy explorations don’t always result in anything more than a pleasant 10 minutes or so, but taken together, they combine to form one more data point for the argument that Kurt Vile’s artistic trajectory remains, as always, on an upward slant.
When all is said and done, Bottle It In feels like the musical equivalent of an excellent 90-minute movie padded with a couple unnecessary scenes to get past the two-hour mark.
Bottle It In ultimately succeeds in its intentions and further escalates Vile’s reputation as part of a rare breed of authentic songwriters. And that’s alright for now.
There is always more than initially meets the eye with a Kurt Vile record, and this one is no exception; Vile’s funny, evocative songwriting lends the album an uncommon warmth and humanity.
Jeez, it’s long, and there are some missteps, some ill-advised detours, along his peregrinations, but all in all, it’s worth coming along for the ride.
The sonic nature of this record is melodically soothing and laidback, with no shortage of guitar-centric genius. This, like most of his work, is humble songwriting, and for Vile, humility has always travelled far and wide.
While sometimes disjointed or lingering, Bottle It In finds Vile's production at its most colorful and curious. Making the most of the various environments where it was recorded, the album feels like a travel diary picked up sporadically along the way.
Bottle It In rewards patient listeners with some dazzling highlights that reveal themselves with each listen.
While Bottle It In—Vile’s longest, most introspective record—lacks the quiet beauty of 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo, the warmth of 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze, or the immediacy of 2015’s b’lieve i’m goin’ down…, its monolithic Kurtness is its own defining quality.
This affinity for aimless trains of thought applies to the whole of Bottle It In, an album where Vile is quick to conjure up a bevy of interesting images or ideas but struggles to find a compelling way to contain them.
Though an improvement on his previous solo effort, Kurt Vile's new album could have used some trimming.
Bottle It In does enough to keep himself and his fans happy, but it leaves waiting those of us that wish a bit more from him.
I swear if this website were out during the Kid A release it would've never gotten the praise it has today. So many people on here can't wait to rate things, so they immediately come to a conclusion on an album after 1 listen. You're telling me that Kurt Vile, who has pretty much gotten solid 80's throughout his career, deserves a rating after a leaked album listen? C'mon people. This is exactly what happened to the new AM and Jack White albums this year. A ton of people listened to it once, ... read more
Definition of chill. Even though I haven't given it a super high score it's the type of album I'd like to have on vinyl.
Stop trying to over-analyze it. What were you looking for? Father John Misty, Radiohead? This is a Kurt Vile record, and a damn good one.
I love this album, but I can't help but feel cheated every time since the live versions of these songs are performed with infinitely more emotion than the studio recordings. A couple of songs could have been shorter, but I can't really hold that against them too much when their foundations sound this good.
Despite all my nitpicking, this is a classic, with lyrics that seem like they've always existed, and which give me feelings that I don't get from anything else.
9, "Come Again" it's been one of my favourite songs of any artist I've ever heard since 2019, but never thought about listening the whole thing 'till now... The day this man leaves this Earth, I'll cry a lot.
Fav tracks:
- Come Again
- Loading Zones
- One Trick Ponies
- Bassackwards
- Check Baby
- Cold Was The Wind
- Mutinies
Least fav:
- Yeah Bones
1 | Loading Zones 3:23 | 100 |
2 | Hysteria 5:22 | 89 |
3 | Yeah Bones 4:44 | 100 |
4 | Bassackwards 9:46 | 93 |
5 | One Trick Ponies 5:21 | 93 |
6 | Rollin With the Flow 2:59 | 87 |
7 | Check Baby 7:53 | 93 |
8 | Bottle It In 10:39 | 87 |
9 | Mutinies 5:52 | 86 |
10 | Come Again 5:44 | 100 |
11 | Cold Was the Wind 4:51 | 87 |
12 | Skinny Mini 10:26 | 79 |
13 | (Bottle Back) 1:38 | 87 |
#9 | / | Rolling Stone |
#9 | / | Under the Radar |
#11 | / | Fopp |
#13 | / | MOJO |
#18 | / | Uproxx |
#21 | / | MondoSonoro |
#22 | / | musicOMH |
#23 | / | Piccadilly Records |
#23 | / | Treble |
#23 | / | Uncut |