Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.20 You Save: $14.78 (78%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.48 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Wilco (The Album)
Free Music Review: Great!
Hit: 5 Stars
I like WILCO so this is a bit biased right? But another fantastic recording from a great band. Thanks WILCO.Free Music Review: Ru a sonic idiot!
Hit: 5 Stars
If u don't like, no, love this album, you're an idiot!
In other words, go to Mars
Free Music Review: Wilco (the album)
Hit: 5 Stars
Fantastic CD - not a bad track on it. My wife has practically worn it out already!Free Music Review: And on the seventh day, Wilco
Hit: 4 Stars
WILCO
WILCO (THE ALBUM);2009
NONESUCH RECORDS
MY RATING: 7/10
It took me a while to get there, but I now consider Wilco's previous record, SKY BLUE SKY, to rank in the top 3 Wilco albums. SBS initially came off as a bit lazy and disinterested, but after a while I came to see it as Tweedy's own equivalent to Bob Dylan's TIME OUT OF MIND, in that it was a clear break from the past in favor of a new and rejuvenating direction. SKY BLUE SKY really is a great record, the sound of a band taking a different approach in the studio and succeeding on all fronts.
That being said, I like WILCO THE ALBUM, especially as it continues in the understated vein of SKY BLUE SKY. Tweedy seems to have completely given up on trying to break our hearts, opting instead to simply sing from his own and let come what may. Pretense seems to be completely gone from his music, and nowhere is that more evident than in the album's incidental trappings. Bands concerned with continuing to feed some kind of cooler-than-thou image wouldn't put a two-hump camel on their album cover and don some seriously hideous nudie suits for the album photo shoots. And basketball orange just isn't the color of pretense, it's the color of cheese and fire and summertime. Did I mention that these guys named their SEVENTH full-length record after their band, and actually wrote a song about their band being your best friend? The only band that could make this kind of thing pretentious is Pavement, and Wilco ain't Pavement.
The record opens with "Wilco (the song)," which rivals "Can't Stand It" for the most upbeat opening track on a Wilco record. Nels Cline delivers a Pixies-esque guitar lead, lending a slight edge to the otherwise good-time groove of the record. The sweet-natured tribute to the fans sends a clear message: this is an album that really doesn't have much of an agenda. Fair enough!
"Deeper Down" follows, one of a few fairly experimental tracks on the record, featuring a start-and-stop progression. The lyrics appear to be a meditation on mystery, focused on the unsearchable and unattainable both within and without. The lyric progresses happily from "the insult of a kiss" to the "comfort of a kiss," a signal to some renewed optimism on Tweedy's part. One can't help but wonder if this song reflects Tweedy's own journey as a songwriter. There are many indications that Tweedy, like other artists, has experienced difficulty with the creative process in the past, but his later work, especially the last two albums, suggest that he has reached a certain comfort with his music-making. This appears to be the center that holds "Deeper Down" together. In fact, the start-and-stop structure of the song reflects the old SELAH literary device used in the Psalms, which most scriptural scholars would say probably means "pause and meditate on these words."
"One Wing" - as in "One wing will never fly" - starts to introduce some sadness to the music, reflecting the dejection of one party after the end of a relationship. Tweedy's metaphors here are spot on - "We belonged to a bird who cast his shadow on the world" - and while the song does veer off into a bit too much of a groove towards the end, the overall mood provides needed balance to an album that has, thus far, seemed lighter than air.
"Bull Black Nova" comes off like a hybrid of A GHOST IS BORN's "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" and SKY BLUE SKY's "Impossible Germany." The lyric and music complement each other perfectly, reaching a paranoid climax along the theme of an apparently accidental killing. While the death is easy to discern through the numerous references to blood, it's the sense of being watched that slips just under the radar. A Nova itself is a stellar object, and suns and stars populate the lyrics, as if they were the eyes of God Himself. "Nova" is a definite highlight of the record, one that I expect will feature prominently in the band's sets for years to come.
Featuring an enjoyable duet with a tragically under-used Leslie Feist, "You and I" lightens the mid-album mood, being the breeziest pop song Tweedy has ever written. In contrast with "One Wing", track 5 is an optimistic testimony to the mystery of relationship. It vaguely recalls "I'd Rather Dance With You" from fellow Feist-collaborators Kings of Convenience, as the couple agree that "I don't need to know everything about you." It's a winner, but as previously mentioned, with a talent like Feist on board, it's a shame this one doesn't reach greater heights.
"You Never Know" continues the shift toward the sunny side of life, infecting your subconscious like something you might have roller-skated to back in grade school. It's got Big Star, George Harrison, and midwest-bred written all over it, and might be the rootsiest thing Tweedy has written since BEING THERE. Could the positioning in the center of the album suggest a certain centrality to its message?
"Country Disappeared" pulls the plug on the mid-album breeze, drawing big correlations between wars in the third-world and the overwhelming presence of the media in our own. Ultimately a patriotic song ("I won't take no/I won't let you go"), it does seem a bit untimely given the election of a presidential candidate for whom Tweedy actively campaigned. Still, it is multi-layered, no mere protest song, and features one of Tweedy's most soulful vocal performances.
"Solitaire" might be otherwise titled "Song for a Repentant Loner." Reflecting the message of Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock" without any of that track's distracting moralisms, it's really a nice, simple song featuring understated but fitting instrumentation and excellent dual-tracked vocals. Again, it fits well with the overall theme of the album, and after a few listens, proves itself one of Tweedy's best compositions, something that might have found its home on SKY BLUE SKY as well.
"I'll Fight" is the album's most urgent song, reflecting a deep spiritual dilemma in Tweedy. Whereas only a few albums ago he lackadaisically sang about a "War on War," "I'll Fight" is full of vigor and conviction. Strong religious imagery is employed, the narrating voice identifying in several ways with the suffering of Christ. It comes off something like Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," and is truly a step-forward for Tweedy, exploring the beauty of a life laid down for another versus the emptiness of a life lived without purpose.
"Sonny Feeling" recalls some of BEING THERE's finer moments; BIG STAR is stamped all over this thing. It's a life-flashing-before-your-eyes song, with Sonny having to choose between leaving home and seeing the world or staying in her hometown amongst all the "cruel kids." Coming on the heels of "I'll Fight's" study in contrasts, it illuminates something still slightly out of reach with Tweedy, a certain nameless discomfort that keeps popping its head up like a whack-a-mole.
"Everlasting Everything," a pretty minor-key piano ballad closes out the record in grand fashion, with Tweedy lamenting that "Nothing could mean anything at all." It's an exceedingly sad song, where everything that was good and bad is "Gone like a circus, gone like a troubadour." In the end, Tweedy's only consolation is to "be glad Everlasting love is all you had." It's a fitting close to a record that finds itself stuck somewhere in the middle between a hunger for deep knowledge and the need to take life as it comes. Like "One Wing," my only contention with the track is that the band doesn't do more with it.
Overall, this record feels like a summary statement of the band's first twelve years. I'd call it a mature "AM." There's plenty of good material here, in fact it's pretty consistently good throughout. Tweedy's lyrics are quite multi-dimensional and genuinely shine within the simple (for Wilco!) production. However, there's nothing off-the-wall great here, no "Impossible Germany" or "Shot in the Arm" or "Misunderstood" or "Poor Places." While they've thankfully avoided repeating an avant-garde disaster like "Less Than You Think" for two albums now, they could stand to linger a little bit more here and there. It just seems a bit hurried, that's all.
So with this, a mature AM, here's to the band delivering a mature BEING THERE next time around.
TRACKS:
1. Wilco (the song) (4.5/5)
2. Deeper Down (3.5/5)
3. One Wing (3/5)
4. Bull Black Nova (4.5/5)
5. You and I (4/5)
6. You Never Know (4.5/5)
7. Country Disappeared (4/5)
8. Solitaire (4.5/5)
9. I'll Fight (3.5/5)
10. Sonny Feeling (3/5)
11. Everlasting Everything (4/5)
Free Music Review: Wilco - Wilco (The Album) 7/10
Hit: 4 Stars
Wilco has always been a band more than willing to change things up to fit whatever wild musical direction they felt like pursuing. From the sunny pop harmonies of Summerteeth, to their oscillating experimentalist rock on A Ghost is Born, to the big middle finger to the music industry that was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jeff Tweedy and company have not been content to sit on their laurels. That's why it was a little disheartening to hear their 2007 work Sky Blue Sky, a record rightly criticized for its fairly tame material and, dare I say it, a boring Wilco record.
That isn't to say Wilco is at their best when they're experimenting or throwing all songwriting conventions to the wind; indeed, Summerteeth more than proved this band had the chops to make bright `70s pop their own, and opener "Wilco (The Song)" only supports them further. As Tweedy asks "are times getting tough / are the roads you travel rough" over a crunching backbeat and guitarist Nels Cline's distorted shrill, it's even more obvious than after Sky Blue Sky that Tweedy has left his millennial demons behind him. When the chorus of "Wilco, Wilco, Wilco will love you, baby" hits, it fires off the album in the best kind of pop direction, one bursting with vibrancy and the kind of energy the band seemed to lack on their last effort.
It's hard to pigeonhole Wilco in any other way other than their clear energy, as, much like the band's discography, things change quick here. "Deeper Down" is an intricately fingerpicked exercise in how to build atmosphere, while a song like "Sunny Feeling" builds itself around another sinuous riff by Cline (whose distinctive guitar work is truly the highlight of the musicians here) and a charged performance by Tweedy. The lovely "You and I," meanwhile, is a simple acoustic duet with Feist that initially seems like it's going to choke on cloying amounts of sweetness, but the sincere lyrics ("I think we can take it / all the good with the bad / make something that no one else has") and the unexpectedly natural pairing that Feist and Tweedy make turns it into the album's heartwarming center.
If "You and I" is the heart, then the stunningly crafted "Bull Black Nova" is the dark, twisted brain behind Wilco's talent. Part "Via Chicago" and part "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," the tale of spousal homicide is equally a haunting confessional and an instrumental showcase, particularly past the midpoint where Cline puts on a virtuoso solo that is undeniably Wilco. Tweedy's lyrics are as grainy and real as a black-and-white crime scene photograph, his protagonist worrying "it's my hair / there's blood in the sink / I can't calm down, I can't think" before the guitars coalesce into a distorted, needling whirl and Tweedy sums everything up with a wild shriek: "I freak out / oh black out."
A few songs, however, betray Wilco's lazier tendencies, particularly first single "You Never Know." The tinkling pianos and arena rock riffs showcase the worst from Sky Blue Sky's MOR-ready malaise, and the chorus lacks the kind of rushing energy of "Wilco (The Song)." "I'll Fight" largely falls into the same lite-rock morass, although this time it's Tweedy's uninspired lyrics ("I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go for you / I will" goes the chorus) that doom the song. And it's a shame that the album has to end on the cheesy whimper that is "Everlasting Everything," where Tweedy spouts such wise sentiments as "everything alive must die / every building built to the sky will fall" and the most exciting part is the trippy guitar confetti Cline throws on the end of the track.
But for most of Wilco, the band is more than up to the task of again opening up a new chapter in their history, one that calls up shadows of their past in songs like the mournful, double-tracked "Solitaire" and simultaneously proves that the band are striking out for new territory, like in the uncharacteristically optimistic titular song or the charming "You and I." By balancing the best of their pop sensibilities with their irresistible creative energies, Wilco have made their most confident record, one nearly brimming, even for all its flaws, with possibilities for the future.