Kurt Vile

“I think 'She Drives Me Crazy' is hilarious and good.”

“People can have their punk ideals, but I don't really care about that kind of thing.”

“When I was 20, I moved up to Boston with my girlfriend, who's now my wife. She went to grad school, and I met a bunch of cool friends there.”

“'Street Legal' is like a cult classic. It's pretty cheesy at times, but you learn to embrace it.”

“I feel like if you sit down and have an assistant engineer and a producer in a top-notch studio and everyone sets up all the mikes perfect, all of a sudden it's really hard to live that melancholy song. It's hard to really live it in the moment.”

“Philly's busy enough. There are tons of record stores and record-head friends and plenty of D.I.Y. shows. It's a place where people pass through and bands don't usually skip on tour. There are lots of music resources, but it's not too over the top.”

“I go through ups and downs in the psyche all the time, and then once you start moving again, it's amazing how you can always bounce back. You get, like, in a low rut, and you think, 'This is it; my life is a train wreck.' And then you bounce back again.”

“I can be chill. That's a side of me that I like. But then, I can also be not so chill. I can get a little stressed out.”

“I've got an amazing family. My wife is really smart. She's guided me the whole way. With children, you see them grow up, so it's like you're forever young. They are totally innocent and so unjaded. Watching them grow up makes you go through it again yourself.”

“I like New York. I like Philly. I like San Fran. I like when people are stoked. But Chicago's a real music town, and they're really good to us there. There's just something in the air there; people are just really stoked about music. Every time I go there, I have a great time, and the fandom is really heartwarming.”

“When I was a teenager, I was mostly getting tapes and CDs, and somebody hipped me to the fact that you can get things on vinyl that are not necessarily available on any other fomat.”

“Nobody wants a complainer.”

“I get to come home to my family. It's awesome, just constant adventure, never a dull moment. So much life.”

“I proved myself with 'Smoke Ring.' It was me maturing. I made a good pop record.”

“I had a wacky job driving a forklift for an air freight company. That was the worst.”

“It was just the next logical step from making succinct pop songs. What do you do after that? You make pop songs that are longer and more epic, that push the envelope. Imagine your favourite song, or something that you play over and over in the car, except that you don't have to start it over as much.”

“I'm definitely influenced by Animal Collective. I watched them early on.”

“Life is so beautiful, but there are all these scary things you can't deny.”

“I really love that 'I Can Feel the Heart Beating as One' Yo La Tengo record a lot.”

“I'm not cynical, but the reality is that life is mortal. Terrible, sad things happen. Everybody loses friends and family. I'll be on tour and get really scared if my wife won't answer her phone within one minute. I'm sensitive.”