“I’m pretty critical,” Kurt Vile says while en route to Washington, D.C., just a few shows into an extended fall tour with his band, The Violators. The Philadelphia-bred, indie-guitar hero has just wrapped up two sold-out nights at New York’s Webster Hall—an impressive feat for any lo-fi musician whose early output primarily consisted of CD-Rs— but when asked how the shows felt, particularly the new songs from his latest release, b’lieve i’m goin down, he is characteristically subdued.

“I was nervous and I really liked [the first show in] Boston, and the next couple of gigs were fine but not great to me,” he says, carefully studying the early leg of his tour in support of his latest album. In conversation, the 35-year-old musician comes across more like a store clerk you might make small talk with at your local record shop than a decorated hipster wunderkind who has been in the game for almost 20 years. He can seemingly expound on just about anything, but lately, he’s most excited to talk about the musical direction he took on his latest album, the follow-up to 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze. “It’s a natural evolution, really,” he says. “I get excited about that. I discover that I like a style of music that I’m doing.”

On b’lieve, Vile experiments with some of his most diverse instrumentation yet, mixing in pianos and other lighter arrangements, creating what he calls a “spaced-out blues record with a modern folk element.” Throughout his press junket for the album, Vile referred to some of the material as fairly dark, telling Rolling Stone that he spent a lot of time alone on his couch with just an acoustic guitar, building the skeleton of some of these tunes. “It’s definitely got that night vibe,” he said in April.

Vile is quick to revise his comments a bit while thinking back on that conversation a few months later. “You say it’s a dark record, and, all of a sudden, there’s a headline ‘Darkest Record Ever,’ and, all of a sudden, it makes me say, ‘No, it wasn’t dark.’ I think it’s all relatively the same theme.”

One thing Vile understands is that b’lieve brought out his more mainstream side, which he shied away from on the album’s more psychedelic, stoner-rock predecessor. “There was a problem with the vinyl so you couldn’t get it everywhere the first week, [otherwise] it would have probably charted higher,” Vile says with a laugh when discussing his highest-charting effort to date.

He’s still not overly concerned with the mainstream, shrugging off his shows at Webster Hall by saying, “We’ve played these venues before,” admitting that it “feels good” to play two nights there. After years on the Northeast DIY circuit, Vile and The Violators have grown into mainstays at indie, roots and pop festivals around the world, and recent crowds have swelled far past the capacities of the indoor venues that he regularly packs. Toward the end of the recording process for b’lieve, Vile also enlisted the help of Peter Katis—whose résumé reads like a who’s who of indie rock, given his work with bands like Interpol, The National, Jonsi Birgisson of Sigur Ros and Trey Anastasio—to put the finishing touches on the mix. That process, Vile said, was crucial to nailing down the sound.

“He really saved the record,” Vile confidently states. “Honestly, we were so behind and he was mixing two songs a day. The songs were pretty simple—I think he got that.”

Vile insists that Katis connected with the sound more than anyone else could. “I think other places we were just mixing them or cleaning them up too much, and I think he just got it. This whole record has been like, ‘Well, OK, are you around next week? We’re in a bind.’ And people make time. I just saw him last night, too—he came to the shows. He’s super pro for sure. He has a great ear and good equipment.”

He sums up the experience with Katis by saying, “We were lucky to get and find him at the 11th hour.”

Vile has been making music and carefully refining his sound since his father handed him a banjo at the tender age of 14. When he was starting out, the Pennsylvania native recorded some early material with Brothers Past guitarist Tom Hamilton, who would later go on to form Joe Russo’s Almost Dead and American Babies.

Hamilton remembers that Brothers Past keyboardist Tom McKee “approached me about this guy he knew who wanted to make a demo, and thought it would be a fun and easy way for me to make a bit of cash. Brothers Past had a house in West Chester, Pa., that we all lived in and rehearsed at. He came to the house and we talked a bunch and got on really well. I had this digital 8-track that I barely knew how to use, but we had a shitload of gear in the house because it was where BP practiced, and Kurt sure loved gear. We agreed to work together and he brought a bunch of stuff to the house and we dug in.”

Of those early sessions, Hamilton adds, “It was super fun, and is one of my fondest memories of living in that house. Obviously, I was coming from the Grateful Dead world and had Brothers Past up and moving, and he was coming from the Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. world, and we were both up for anything. It was exciting and, to this day, affects what I do with my work.”

After a short stint in Boston, Vile planted his roots in Philadelphia and started working with Adam Granduciel, who spent time as an early member of The Violators. Together, they also formed psychedelic indie-rock band The War on Drugs in 2005 as a vehicle to explore Granduciel’s songs. Vile left the group after their first full-length LP, 2008’s Wagonwheel Blues, and he signed with Matador Records. He quickly found a dedicated following with 2009’s Childish Prodigy, which features some contributions from Granduciel, and his true breakthrough, 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo. The War on Drugs initially lived in Vile’s shadow, but in recent years, they have grown into a live force, thanks to their Tom Petty-via-the Grateful Dead sound, which landed them at New York’s far larger Radio City Music Hall just one night after Vile’s Webster Hall shows. But contrary to some reports, there was never any significant falling out between the two. In fact, Vile most recently shared the stage with Granduciel and the band during a stop in Philadelphia in September of 2014. They are now part of an extended family of Philadelphia musicians that also includes guitarist Steve Gunn, who toured as part of Vile’s band, and the dream-pop group Nightlands. (Granduciel also worked on Vile’s two previously released compilations of lo-fi, CD-R home recordings, the Woodsist/Gulcher release Constant Hitmaker and the Mexican Summer collection God Is Saying This to You… while Vile appears on The War on Drugs’ 2011 crossover, Slave Ambient.)

When asked to reflect on his six solo albums, Vile once again carefully chooses his words: “I think that every record just blends into the other one. It’s not too drastic.

“Smoke Ring [came] after Childish Prodigy just because I went to a cleaner production with John Agnello, and the songs are an acoustic, melancholy thing. Maybe that came off a little slightly drastic, but not to me. I think that it’s never going to be a surprise, every one is going to blend pretty good into the other one.”

Hamilton notes his fondness for Vile’s freedom within his own music: “His lyrics, vocals, even his guitar playing, were all so fluid and dreamy.” Vile explains that with b’lieve, he was able to inject what he calls “comic relief” into the music. For example, take the lead track, “Pretty Pimpin’,” which spirals through several verses of the main character not recognizing himself before stating, “Then Saturday came around and I said, ‘Who’s this stupid clown blocking the bathroom sink?’ But he was sporting all my clothes, I gotta say, I’m pretty pimpin.’”

Vile considers it a point of pride, saying, “I fine-tune whatever combination of emotions and comic-relief situations, which I’m proud of.”

Vile’s current setup and path reflect the freedom that Hamilton initially described from their sessions almost 15 years ago. Despite a musical path that continues to evolve, Vile remains true to his core, still the 14 year old with a banjo, trying to play it like a guitar.

Hamilton relates it to the ethos of the Grateful Dead, saying, “Kurt and his ilk find that freedom more so in a studio, whereas the Dead and its children mostly find that freedom onstage. I’ve always been of the mindset of being the conduit between those two worlds—make exciting records and let the live show have an equally exciting life of its own. I can easily say I came to that ethos from my time working with Kurt all of those years ago.” (Those two worlds recently collided when Vile recorded a version of “Box Of Rain” with J Mascis for The National’s forthcoming Grateful Dead tribute.)

It’s evident that Vile’s enthusiasm is squarely focused on the future, which includes bringing these tunes to life onstage with the plan to mix up his instrumentation as much as possible. “Everybody has stations now,” he says. “Keyboards and stuff. It’s cool to have something else to touch besides guitar all the time.” His has also found his footing onstage with his current version of The Violators, which includes guitarist/ bassist/saxophonist Jesse Trbovich, multi-instrumentalist Rob Laakso and Harvey Milk drummer Kyle Spence, who has performed with Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools in the bands J Mascis + The Fog and BBQ Pants.

“It’s the kind of music that you can get away with a charming train wreck here and there,” Vile says of b’lieve, before settling into his usual relaxed, reserved zone for the rest of his bus ride. “I’m not sweating it too much either way.”