Smoke Ring For My Halo

Kurt Vile's fourth full-length may also be his best, as it distills classic American guitar music into one singular and sublime vision.

An intoxicating brew of ambient drone and Bruce Springsteen-style bombast distinguished Kurt Vile’s work with The War On Drugs, and his fantastic 2009 solo album, Childish Prodigy, embedded looping, loping guitar lines in a fine-grained matrix of buzz. Vile’s fourth full-length, Smoke Ring For My Halo, filters out…

Check out our album review of Artist's Smoke Ring for My Halo on Rolling Stone.com.

The title could easily act as a style guide for the eleven tracks herein.

Philly-based singer/songwriter Kurt Vile lit up the indie rock radar in 2009 with his cynical, lo-fi, classic rock-meets-N.Y.C. proto-punk Matador debut.

“Shrink myself just like a Tom Thumb and hide in my baby’s hands” sings Kurt Vile on album opener Baby’s Arms,

"Right now you probably think I'm a puppet to the man", spits Vile, "well I'll tell you right now you best believe that I am".

Kurt Vile’s name is a masterpiece of reductive classification, evoking all kinds of gritty rock ‘n’ roll signifiers.

On stage, Kurt Vile can be hidden in plain view.