Album review: Kurt Vile, Wakin' On A Pretty Daze (Deluxe Edition) (Matador)

One of the year's more celebrated Americana albums, reissued here with an additional mini-album also available separately as "it's a big world out there (and I am scared)". Some of the tracks are extensions or remixes: "Never Run Away", his love ode to a girl who fell for "a wild child who harmonizes keys in his dronin' mind", is re-cast with additional string synthesiser, while the trippy, dense-textured "Snowflakes Extended" adds three extra stanzas to "Snowflakes Are Dancing". "Feel My Pain" muses on empathy over a gentle putter of drum-machine and guitar. Vile displays a deceptively ragged frailty reminiscent of Neil Young, with his band The Violators conjuring up the chugging momentum of Crazy Horse.

Download: Snowflakes Extended; Feel My Pain; Wedding Budz