169. Another great record from Kurt Vile

I.

In 2013 I first encountered the music of Kurt Vile thanks to the album Wakin On A Pretty Daze. Even now, whenever I put it on, the sun seems to drift in through the window. The word vibe seems like it was invented for Kurt Vile. His music sounds as though it takes no effort at all, so dreamy and languid.

That same year I attended a Kurt Vile concert at Paradiso. The only thing I still remember is that the drums were set so loud they ruined the whole laid-back atmosphere.

I have not followed Kurt Vile closely. But lately I have been very much in the market for his slacker rock again. Recently I listened to Vile’s album Back to Moon Beach (2023), which includes the track Tom Petty’s gone (but tell him i asked for him). Vile sings “Bob Dylan’s here / And what a slippery son of a gun / If he was ever in my sights / I’d probably melt down like a nuclear reactor.” I have a soft spot for lines like that and am not entirely sure why. Maybe it is the description of Bob Dylan as a slippery son of a gun.

A week ago new work from Kurt Vile appeared: Philadelphia’s been good to me. I am hooked again. So little seems to be going on in his music, it sounds so offhand. But on his latest album Vile sounds somewhat more existential than usual. On Holiday OKV: “I’m writing lyrics in my study / Thinkin’ bout all my little buddies / I lost along the way / It’s just that demon life had / Got its claws in them / I dream big, bomb hard, crash ‘n burn, took a nose dive / Man, it feels good to be alive.”

Nothing in life is perfect, and Kurt Vile knows that too. In Philly’s been good to me he sings: “Philadelphia’s been good to me / Let’s hope I don’t fall in the Schuylkill River / That’s the river that’s polluted as hell / But it runs through my town and I ain’t puttin’ it down.” You can love a place in spite of its shortcomings. It is a polluted river, but it is his polluted river.

On Paul McCartney’s new album, which came out on the same day as Vile’s latest record, there is also a song with this idea at its heart. Together with Ringo Starr, McCartney sings on Home to Us about how little they had as children, but how it did not matter. “The roses in the yard began to wilt and then they turned to dust / But it was home to us.”

A coincidence, of course, that both artists sing about the same universal feeling. Of the two albums I keep coming back to Kurt Vile more, incidentally. He is playing Paradiso again in August. Maybe it is time to go back. And if the drums are too loud again, that is a shortcoming I will just have to accept.

II.

It is a minor miracle that the TV series Spider-Noir exists. Nicolas Cage plays a nihilistic private eye who can barely make ends meet. He reluctantly takes on a case from a client who believes his wife is cheating on him. The detective quickly becomes entangled in a web of intrigue.

Oh yes — Cage plays Spider-Man in this series. In an alternate universe.

Spider-Noir is available on Amazon Prime Video in two versions: one in colour and one in black and white. Why anyone would choose colour for a series with ‘noir’ in the title is beyond me. It looks incredible in black and white. The makers go all in on channelling the film noir genre of the 1930s and ’40s. Think smoky rooms, beautiful singers, venetian blinds casting stripes of light, hats and long coats, deep shadows on walls and Dutch angles.

I have a weakness for it. So does Nicolas Cage. The actor always plays big and loud, but he is also a lover of film history. He once played a Bela Lugosi-esque Dracula in Renfield. That film is not particularly successful overall, but the opening scene did make me curious about Cage in a serious role as a Universal Monster, like in those films from nearly a hundred years ago.

Cage has already indicated he would be open to playing Frankenstein (the doctor, not the monster). Or the Wolf Man. I can picture him doing both in films that fully dare to embrace the classic style, as Spider-Noir does with the noir genre¹. Until then we will have to make do with the most unlikely version of Spider-Man you could possibly imagine. Not exactly a punishment.

PS.

Designer Bryan Macomber has a website where he uses beautiful animations to explain how things like a mechanical pencil, a Zippo and a Pez dispenser work. I love it. (via Kottke)

Publishers are showering us with new announcements for upcoming games again these weeks. There were impressive trailers for titles such as God of War Laufey, Wolverine and Resident Evil Veronica. I am very much looking forward to gen ATLAS, the new game from Fumito Ueda, who previously made classics like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus.

Bob Dylan (who turned 85 a few weeks ago) has begun a new American tour. Fewer songs from his most recent album Rough and Rowdy Ways on the setlist, which means there is room again for older work like All Along The Watchtower and Rainy Day Women #12 & 35. Dylan even played Baby, Won’t You Be My Baby. He recorded it 59 years ago and it only appeared on the demo compilation The Bootleg Series Vol. 11. Dylan keeps surprising. That he currently ends his set with Crossing the Rubicon — let’s hope there is nothing to read into that.

Good to see Netflix occasionally still invest in wildly eccentric projects like the stop-motion film I Am Frankelda.

Sad news this week — writer Lieke Marsman has died. Two days after her death her new book De dichter en de duivel was published. In the video below she recites one of her best-known poems, about approaching death.

I want the vanilla of an old book
I want a cold bottle of beer
and I want you, one more time
Forget birds that sing
I want to hear my dog drinking

You read blog №169, written in the week of 1 to 7 June 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll receive it every Sunday, free in your inbox.