(watch my moves) tracks movement with both sensitivity and a journal-esque, observational attention to moment-ness; songs fade out between each other like pages turning. Vile’s distinctive groove tempo beats regularly, so that thematic changes or frustrations are never rushed, nor met with a raised voice. Vile wears his Velvet Underground influence on his notebook-sleeve here, and this feeling of inspired hum is comforting; through it, Vile considers how travel is both a loss and arrival of self. The album pushes through moments of fog, process, and compromise, to an eventual admission of uncertainty: “who’s to say?”
25/30
A favourite: ‘(shiny things)’
(watch my moves) is out now via Verve Records.
100 words music reviews 