Kurt Vile Finds His Balance

With his excellent new LP, the Philly songwriter is just looking for a good time and a calm mind

With his excellent new LP, the Philly songwriter is just looking for a good time and a calm mind.

On a recent autumn afternoon, Kurt Vile and a couple of dozen friends are gathered at a spooky Catskills estate for a party. The occasion: the completion of Bottle It In, the Philadelphia singer-songwriter’s seventh solo album — and first since he broke through to a new level of success with 2015’s “Pretty Pimpin,” a lean guitar tune about panicked dissociation, which now has more than 45 million Spotify streams. “It’s a whole different scene once people love you for a song,” says Vile, 38. “We had to grow into playing theaters without me, in particular, losing my shit.”

With Bottle It In, Vile does his best to come back to Earth. If his earlier LPs often resembled dark, lonely nights of the soul, this one feels more like a friendly session with his backing band, the Violators. On its highlights (“One Trick Ponies,” “Loading Zones”), he sounds as though he’s simultaneously swinging for another hit and searching for an inner peace that’s just beyond his grasp.

He credits his wife, Suzanne Lang — an ayurvedic health consultant who home-schools their daughters, ages eight and six — with helping him stay grounded. Lately, on her advice, he’s been trying to clean up his diet and drink less. “[Alcohol] relieved some stress this past year, but it just exacerbated it later,” he says.

His deepest anxieties have to do with life in the age of hate and climate change. “The world is backwards as fuck right now,” he says. “I got so much to be happy for, and so many things to be terrified about.”

SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON