Kurt Vile was in Philadelphia, posing for a photo shoot, but his mind was miles away: 10,300 miles, to be exact, the distance from his hometown to Melbourne, Australia, where one of his favorite songwriters, Courtney Barnett, lives. “I started spacing out and writing a song for Courtney,” Vile recalls. “I had a fantasy that she would sing it with me.”
The song he began writing that day in 2015, “Over Everything” – a sneakily deep riff on life as a creative loner – provided the spark for Vile and Barnett’s excellent new album, Lotta Sea Lice, due out in October. The two were only casual acquaintances, but they had a lot in common: Both are among indie rock’s finest storytellers, with a shared sense of deadpan humor running through…