Constant Hitmaker

Kurt Vile has absorbed a lifetime's worth of 70s FM rock, and the ghosts of Springsteen and others glimmer under the surface of his woozy bedroom pop.

He's no R. Stevie Moore -- yet -- but Philadelphia homebody Kurt Vile is definitely as much of an acolyte to the home-recording mastermind as Ariel Pink: prior to Constant Hitmaker, his first "proper" album, Vile self-released a steady stream of homemade CD-Rs and the occasional 7" single, many consisting of solo acoustic songs, often instrumentals heavily indebted to John Fahey and his acolytes. There's a little of that on Constant Hitmaker, but overall, this 13-track set features the singer/songwriter's lo-fi pop side. The "lo-fi" part of that sentence should likely take precedence over the "pop": not since pre-Bee Thousand Guided by Voices has there been an artist so philosophically devoted to the concept of muddy sound, echoing vocals, bad mixing, and tape hiss as a deliberate musical element. What makes Constant Hitmaker a compelling listen even for those not attuned to such deliberately primitive acoustics is that for every bit of self-indulgent experimental noise like "American Folded" or "Intro in Z," there are three immediately arresting pop gems like "Don't Get Cute," "Freeway," and "Trumpets in Summer.