www.kurtvile.com

kurt vile is the nom de plume of philadelphian kurt vile (!) whose shimmering home recordings reflect the artists admiration of everything from delta blues to the minimalist agro of suicide, the downer psyche of 39 clocks as well as the skiffle hum of strapping fieldhands. in other words, a real globe trotter. kurt has shared bills...as well as wiped the floor...with the likes of blues control, pink reason, clock cleaner, times new viking, magik markers, to name a few. this is his debut release. lend him your ears.

--tom lax, siltbreeze

its like when u wake from a long and glorious slumber, then u realize u dont have to go to work, then u fall back into long and glorious slumber. kv-brand folk pop psyche to make chicks cry & blow maleminds as well...this gulcher collection compiles some of my best home recordings from all over the kv map and one studio smash hit freeway (track 1). jam it! it is the dopest!! ok, peace!!!

--kurt vile, on the kv sound & constant hitmaker

Select Constant Hitmaker review excerpts:

On his debut album, this freaked-out local dude crafts killer Guided By Voices-esque lo-fi pop gems. --Rolling Stone

Vile's carefully crafted compositions meld wall-of-sound loops with electric guitar textures and gravelly vocals. Somehow, it ends up a perfect balance of woozy folk and noisy power pop. --SPIN Magazine

I suppose it could be easy to view the title of Kurt Vile's latest as tongue in cheek if it wasn't, you know, true. Constant Hitmaker's songs are varied and twisted in their arrangements, but most often include exquisite melodies floating atop a bed of hissing psych-pop experiments that fall together as nearly perfect pop songs. The album's most distinct song, "Freeway," is the lone studio recording and a piece of music that will become lodged in every head that hears it. --Skyscraper Magazine

Mr. Vile, also a member of the band The War on Drugs, has mastered his own 4-track, and bestows upon these songs the depth missing from just about everything that surfaced this year. Gorgeous, homemade wanderings that mitigate psych, Springsteen, GBV and Flying Saucer Attack; even his castoffs sound richer and more rewarding than most bands’ A-games. --Dusted Magazine

As firmly as he's planted one foot in the world of the knob twiddler, Vile has impressively established himself as something more: a great songwriter. --eMusic

After the first time you hear the album's opener "Freeway," nothing else can quite scratch that itch again. --Heard, Sacramento State University

There are so many excellent songs on here that I'm putting this right up there with all the other home-psych curveballs I can think of from the last decade. --Blastitude

Primitive homemade pop with heroic underpinnings of the mythic and wacko, carving out synthesizer symphonies with an orchestra of toy instruments to raise spires on the horizon. Almost childish and catchy with a loose limbed flexibility and skeletal demo-like elements left skinless and showing spinning wheels beneath the song-thoughts themselves. He’s ambitious, indulgent, soulful and sophisticated despite the lo-fi trappings. --Dream Magazine

Each track could be poetically parsed but the experience of them is so gosh darn pleasant that there's no need. Just listen and you'll find your own rainbows amongst the hiss and flutter here. --JamBase

The whole CD is absolutely fantastic. --BBC New Music Download

The way Kurt Vile layers sounds evocative of different decades over one another is outstanding. Seemingly almost with a complete abandon but actually beautifully composed, this is some fantastic raw talent. It takes a great ear to absorb all this but to create it…well, that’s something else. --No Front Teeth, London

Kurt Vile (real name, no gimmicks) has seemingly absorbed a lifetime's worth of FM rock, and the ghosts of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and others glimmer under the surface of his woozy, homemade bedroom pop. For most of the ride, Constant Hitmaker ambles dreamily along a perfect midway point between the disorientingly weird and the comfortingly familiar. --Pitchfork

Prior to Constant Hitmaker, his first "proper" album, Vile self-released a steady stream of homemade CD-Rs. Playful and experimental without getting too pretentious about it, Kurt Vile has the goods to be more than a tiny cult figure for the home recording underground. --All Music Guide

Constant Hitmaker may be a more telling title than it would first seem and its highly recommended that you pick up a copy and keep your ears perked for more from Mr. Vile. --Raven Sings The Blues Blog

Beautiful, clever, endearing, genius--the songs are both instantly catchy and atmospheric. Imagine the pop sensibilities of "The Needle and the Damage Done"-era Neil Young sung in the voice of an underage Lou Reed over music supplied by Suicide. A terrible description, I know, but Vile's music is stupefying, psychedelic folk that's too much of both to be either. --Philadelphia Weekly

What's most exciting about listening to the Philadelphia psych-folk-singer-songwriter at this point is that you know you're dealing with a dude on the verge of something special. --Washington Post