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I really don't like Kurt Vile. Like The War on Drugs, he apes the most boring styles and sounds from some of the most boring rock stars of all time. It was boring when Dire Straits did it. It was boring when Tom Petty did it. Springsteen's most boring years were spent doing it. Vile and WOD sound like sonic sleeping pills. Every time I hear a new song by either artist I feel like I've heard it thousands of times before, dripping from the speakers in of department stores and dentist's office waiting rooms.
There's just no excuse for music that boring.
I know a few groups that have managed to use similar influences to a much more interesting effect. Blank Realm, for one. Milk Music, even better. Milk Music solves for X by adding Meat Puppets' blistering countrifried irony to their equation. But Vile seems perfectly comfortable sounding like an ambien.
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