Last year, the lackadaisical Philadelphian indie rock prince Kurt Vile released his album (Watch My Moves). Since then, Vile has covered Charli XCX and played live with a whole lot of luminaries. Next month, Vile will release Back To Moon Beach, a new record that he’s calling an EP even though it’s almost an hour long.

The songs on Back To Moon Beach come from sessions that Kurt Vile recorded over the past four years, and they include tracks recorded with musicians like Chris Cohen, Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa, and Vile’s late bandmate Rob Laasko. It includes Vile’s covers of Bob Dylan’s “Must Be Santa” and Wilco’s “Passenger Side.” Recent Wilco collaborator Cate Le Bon co-produced three tracks, including the EP opener and first single “Another good year for the roses.”

“Another good year for the roses” has nothing to do with George Jones’ “A Good Year For The Roses,” though I imagine that the reference is intentional. Instead, “Another good year for the roses” is a sprawling track that lasts for nearly six minutes. It starts off as an ambling groove with some nifty pedal steel and cowbell action, and it builds into a psychedelic jam. Kurt Vile co-directed the video with Drew Saracco, and it features the great character actors Michael Shannon, Kevin Corrigan, and David Wike, plus recent Album Of The Week honorees Florry. Below, check out the song’s video and the Back To Moon Beach tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Another good year for the roses”
02 “Touched somethin (caught a virus)”
03 “Back to Moon Beach”
04 “Like a wounded bird trying to fly”
05 “Blues come for some”
06 “Tom Petty’s gone (but tell him i asked for him)”
07 “Must Be Santa”
08 “Passenger Side”
09 “Cool Water (Single Mix)”

And here’s what Vile had to say about the video:

Big Daddy in the Sky is Kevin Corrigan’s band with Michael Shannon and David Wike… You could easily say it’s David’s band or Michael’s band (it’s a band!)… but I was invited through Kevin to play with them a couple times in NYC these past few months (us jamming at all probably being a couple years in the making) … Kevin Corrigan and I go way back at this point. He was in my “Loading Zones” video (2018) …the first video that Drew Sarracco directed for me and Drew did this here “Another good year for the roses” video …plus he had a strong hand in the other 3 videos we made for (watch my moves), so… it’s an awesome full circle style all around.

I also met David Wike at the same time i met Kevin because the night before our “Loading Zones” video they came down to philly and we had beers and dinner and did plenty of My Bloody Valentine impersonations etc and we really hit it off. I remember the next day while we were waiting to shoot for “Loading Zones” he was telling me all kinds of cool stories of being in the Departed movie and it culminated into a peak moment of me yelling “YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN!’ in the voice of the Godfather… meaning we jump around a lot.

The first time I jammed with Big Daddy in the Sky was at Arlene’s Grocery and we did a buncha covers and that was the first time I met Michael Shannon and he was super nice, super humble… turned out he was a big fan of my music and… ya know, me and Kevin and David had been friends throughout the years at this point … but what Big Daddy specialize in actually is improv and it’s amazing to watch them go off … I kinda jam for a second and lay out and watch them go…

The second time we played together was at this amazing tiki bar called Otto’s Shrunken Head and I just let them do their improv thing except we had one song planned at the very end of the set. I had just seen the Pixies live and it was so good … so we did a cover of “The Happening” which is my favorite Pixies song and it was hard to get all those words but I tried my best. As I was driving home to Philly that night I was high by the show and this friendship with these cool people. I love their music but i also love their movies and i’m intrigued and humbled and inspired by their acting as well… and I think similarly they’re inspired by my music so it’s kinda like this fireball of energy when we hang out.

So anyway when I was driving home I was really high from our second gig and I knew I had this video comin up and the lightbulb went off “what if they jam with me in the woods, or what if they’re hanging up fliers for a show and we go back to otto’s shrunken for another gig cuz that venue is so cool.” I’m really influenced by a certain kind of movie where they just put reality in the movie, you know… like basically what’s closest to real life plays best on the camera so I was very inspired by that and I put that into this video.

That’s why I invited Florry as well… because we had just went on tour and we really hit it off and they were all just bubbling energy and we have similar interests, Neil Young and such… I knew they’d be stoked like a hippie cult to dance around in the woods.

Same goes with Mikel Patrick Avery, we toured recently with his band Natural Information Society and he’s moved to philly and he’s such a great percussion player and he rescued this EP towards the end with me and Adam. We overdubbed him for a couple of days across most of the songs with all his various curated percussion instruments unique to him… just the fact that he was around the corner and able to show up and slay percussion straight to tape and on the fly like that is beautiful and as organic as we can hope for. I guess he’s the only person in this video that actually plays on the recording, I should say that.

Back To Moon Beach is out 11/17 on Verve.