Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
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Free Music Notes for Wilco (The Album)
Free Music Review: song by song review
Hit: 4 Stars
Wilco (the song): Bad Company, Bo Diddley, Talk Talk and Kool & The Gang all enjoyed this track. Black Sabbath, however, thought it sucked.
Deeper Down: sort of musical steampunk, half baroque and half postmodern. It's well written though. Pat Sansone gets a partial writing credit for this, and it is similar to the music that Sansone and Stirratt make with their side project The Autumn Defense.
One Wing: one of the strongest tracks here, and you get the sense that this could be an epic live track. Cline feigns launching a huge Impossible Germany style solo around the two minute mark, but really he's just building a bridge between two different sections of the song. Then the song fades out over his lead at the end. Potentially a huge blank canvas for live improvisation.
Bull Black Nova: Impossible Germany's evil twin. You could call it jazzy, but it's Return To Forever, not John Scofield. Dissonant at times, but the narrative and the music keep building up to a frenzy. A musical kindred spirit of songs like VU's "The Gift" and King Crimson's "Thela Hun Gingjeet."
You and I: having a female voice on a Wilco track is interesting for about ten seconds. The most intriguing thing about the song is Nels' Adrian Belew-like outtro.
You Never Know: lots of 70s FM rock ideas (e.g. the piano riff from Deep Purple's "My Woman from Tokyo") melded into one song with mixed success. Nels is DEEP in George Harrison's bag, so much so that I'm expecting a lawsuit from the Chiffons any day now.
Country Disappeared: sort of an ego-free song. No particular musician stands out here. Eventually generates some heat after sagging at the beginning.
Solitaire: never really gets off the ground musically, but the lyrics are fascinating. Don't know if it's intended to be autobiographical but the song could easily be about Tweedy. If you wanted to say "thank goodness I've gotten over myself and don't behave like a pretentious tweet anymore," writing a song about yourself would be an ironic way of achieving this.
I'll Fight: they recycled "On and On and On" from Sky Blue Sky.
Sonny Feeling: a musical tribute to Alex Chilton and Big Star. John Stirratt never travels far without a little Big Star, so it's not surprising to hear these sounds creeping into Wilco.
Everlasting Everything: kind of a lightweight song to end the album.
My real rating is 3.5 stars or 7 out of 10, but I'll round it up to four since we can't give fractional star ratings. Not every Wilco fan is going to love this album, but we can all at least appreciate the fact that after fifteen years they are still willing to try new things. One analogy that might work: Robert Plant once said that Presence was the "most Led Zeppelin sounding" Led Zeppelin album. It probably isn't anyone's favorite Led Zeppelin album though. Wilco (the album) might be the same thing. It's the most Wilco-sounding Wilco album, drawing from all facets of their storied past, but not many people are going to think it's their very best.
Free Music Review: Wilco Mark 2
Hit: 4 Stars
Sky Blue Sky served as a reboot for Wilco. After three albums of increasingly experimental pop music, Sky Blue Sky was an anti-grower. It took Wilco back to it's roots and had more in common with the bands debut AM than with their three previous albums of increasingly experimental pop. It was shocking at the time considering where the band had been musically, but in hindsight it made sense. Jeff Tweedy kicked his migraine medication addiction, he had his stressful partnership with Jay Bennett 6 years in his rear view mirror, and he had a consistent band lineup for the first time in his life. So it's no wonder Sky Blue Sky sounded a bit conservative. He was starting over musically.
Wilco (The Album) is the new Wilco's version of Being There. It's not quite the amazing leap in songwriting and quality Being There was, it's more like a modest step forward, but it's a step forward nonetheless.
(The Album) is front loaded with four great songs. Wilco (The Song) is arguably the loosest and most fun they've ever been. It's literally about Wilco taking care of their fans, giving them an aural shoulder to cry on. Wilco will love you baby.
Deeper Down is a very poetic song with some great imagery. It's also has some very beautiful moments and some nice shifting dynamics. One Wing features some beautiful moments as well, including some great guitar playing from Nels Cline.
Bull Black Nova is the best song on the album. Lyrically it seems like the sequel to Via Chicago, where the subject of the song has killed his girlfriend, has blood in his hair, and is driving a bull black Chevy Nova with the body in the trunk. It's actually a pretty startling contrast to the lovely pop of the previous two songs. It's got a jerky and choppy feel to it. It's the only song on the album with any real tension.
After the first four songs however Wilco lapses in to soft rock or references the best of 70s rock and pop. You and I has that poignant moment on Gray's Anatomy feel. It's grown on me a bit, but it sounds a bit cheesy. You Never Know sounds like a combination of My Woman from Tokyo by Deep Purple and Everyday People by Sly and the Family Stone. Sonny Feeling has some pretty overt power pop references in it.
Though the last 7 songs aren't up to the quality of the first four, it's still an enjoyable listen. They're all strong compositions melodically and lyrically. The fall in to the solid but unspectacular category. They sound like Tweedy and company are on cruise control instead of writing more challenging material. The end of Everlasting Everything is a nice way to end the album, because it sounds like the song is unraveling.
Hopefully the small steps forward on Wilco (The Album) will lead to some kind of late period great album some time down the line. The steps forward here are encouraging, but the band does lapse in to predictability a times. Still, any Wilco fan will enjoy (The Album).
Free Music Review: Wilco (The Review)
Hit: 4 Stars
4.5 Stars.
I remember, years ago, listening to Wilco's Summerteeth album and thinking that this band should be huge. It was that album which got me hooked on Wilco, and each subsequent release has felt like a significant event. Of course the band did gain an appropriate degree of notoriety with the grandly conceptual Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and every album since has been met with high expectations (at least from me) and sometimes intense critical scrutiny.
Wilco has changed its approach and pared back its sound a lot since the days of YHF and Tweedy's experimental side project, Loose Fur. Gone are the studio bells and whistles, or the 10-minute noisefests which appeared on A Ghost Is Born (the follow-up to YHF). The shift towards a subtler sound and band-oriented approach came on Wilco's 2007 release, Sky Blue Sky. That album had a sound reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan, with hushed vocals and an intimate feel. This album largely continues along the same lines, representing a refinement of concept rather than a major statement of purpose.
Many of the songs on this album are subtle and thoughtful, with an almost stately chamber-pop feel. Take for example "Deeper Down," "You And I" (a duet with Feist), and the gentle "Country Disappeared." All of these would have also made sense in the context of Sky Blue Sky (albeit with a slightly expanded instrumental palette). "One Wing" (one of my favorites here) starts off quietly and builds into a sweeping, grand wash of harmonies and soaring instrumentation.
However, a few songs differ sharply from the others, making the album a diverse and at times confusing experience. Much has been said of the cheeky opener, "Wilco (The Song)." This is a fun and upbeat song that resonates deeply with this listener, who for many years has sought solace in Wilco's music. It's a good way to start off an album that is by-and-large very warm and welcoming. The big exception to this warm quality however is the terrifying "Bull Black Nova," which arrives in the fourth spot. This song is a nightmare set to music, kind of a modern day murder ballad. It's very well executed, using the swirling and at times almost atonal instrumentation to mimic the narrator's horror at the crime he has just committed. In fact, with its novelistic attention to detail, I'd go so far as to call it brilliant. Yet it's also (IMHO) horribly out of place amongst this pack of songs and would have been better off as a non-album single. The song does serve to rattle this listener's cage (props for that) but at the expense of the album's cohesiveness.
So overall a great album, but one half-star down for the lack of cohesiveness here. It's a great batch of songs but fails to add up to more than the sum of its parts as an album. Yet that's small stuff. This is one of my favorites this year and keeps me eager to see what more this band will have in store in the years to come.
Free Music Review: A nice album, but not one of Wilco's stronger efforts
Hit: 4 Stars
Man, what do people have against Sky Blue Sky? It's one of my favorite albums from the last five or ten years. As for Wilco (the Album)...
I've really gotten to like "Wilco (The Song)" a lot for what it is. It's fun and rollicking, and it's not even quite as silly as it seems at first. "Deeper Down" is very pretty - overwhelmingly so in places -- but not overly exciting. "One Wing" has some really fantastic imagery and evokes an emotional response, but not the kind that I want to have every day. Still a very nice song, though. "Bull Black Nova" is definitely interesting in that it does a very good job of painting quite a picture, but it chugs along for too long - it's not necessarily its length, but its repetitiveness. I guess that's part of the point, but it doesn't completely work, and the track never really has a killer hook. Too bad, too, because it seems like it's on the verge of being a truly great track. "You and I" is real dern purdy. No real complaints with it, as it's not the kind of song that really needs a hook. "You Never Know" is kind of a drag. It has one or two clever lyrics, but it never really goes anywhere, and musically it's exceedingly boring. I'm really baffled as to why they decided to play that on Conan. Not a very strong track at all (for Wilco, anyway). "Country Disappeared" is kind of pretty, but also kind of sleepy and quite forgettable. I like "I'll Fight" quite a bit, although it too is a tad on the sleepy side (not in a necessarily bad way, though). I think "Sunny Feeling" is pretty good, and it reminds me of certain parts of Sky Blue Sky. I guess I just don't get the point of "Everlasting." I suppose there's nothing wrong with the sentiment in conveys, but it's kind of clichéd and the song does nothing for me. The album would be better off being one track shorter. Oh, well. Overall, I think the album is somewhat lacking in drama and hooks. There are some terribly pretty passages on it, but the rocker in me misses the... rock. It's a nice album in general, but I feel that it ranks near the bottom as far as Wilco albums go. I do think that even a weaker Wilco album is still quite good, though. I'm admittedly a bit disappointed with it as a follow up to Sky Blue Sky, but I'll live.
By the way, the product description erroneously states that Wilco debuted some of this material at the 2009 Jazz Fest in New Orleans. I was there for the entire show, and they didn't play a single track from this record. In fact, John Stirratt was interviewed before the show, and specifically stated that they wouldn't be playing any of the tracks from the yet to be released album.
Free Music Review: Jeff Tweedy (and Wilco) sounding relaxed, and confident
Hit: 4 Stars
Since its debut album "A.M.", Wilco has gone through a lot of ups and downs commercially, even though the band has enjoyed ever-climbing critical success, perhaps none more so than with the long-delayed (because of label problems) 2002 "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album, in my book stil the finest album of the band. Yet always throughout you got the sense that Jeff Tweedy, the band's singer-song writer, was trying to prove something. With the band's reputation clearly established, now comes the 7th studio album, 2 years after the slightly disappointing (if ambitious) "Sky Blue Sky" album.
"Wilco (the album)" (11 tracks; 43 min.) kicks off with perhaps the band's most irreverent/accessible and tongue-in-cheek song ever, "Wilco (the song)", with great lyrics like "Do you dabble in depression/Is someone twisting a knife in your back/Are you being attacked/Wilco will love you baby". This should find plenty of airplay on mainstream commercial radio if it was still any good, which of course it isn't. The best songs on the album are on the first half, such as beautiful pensive "One Wing", which is followed by the most adventurous track on here, "Bull Black Nova" which eventually gives way to a searing guitar solo from Nels Cline. It is followed by a gentle "You and I", featuring Feist on vocals. The first half of the album is capped by an exuberant "You Never Know". I rate the first half of the album 4.5 stars. The second half doesn't contain as many attention-grabbing songs, although there are still a couple of nuggets, such as the quiet "Solitaire", the feisty and instantly likeable love song "I'll Fight", and the beautiful closer "Everlasting Everything". I rate the second half of the album 3.5 stars.
At 43 min. this album clips by in no time. There is no grand experimenting here that marked the YHF or "A Ghost is Born" albums. Perhaps for the first time ever, Jeff Tweedy sounds like he is at peace with himself, sounding relaxed and confident, and bringing nice, but not ground-breaking, songs. That aside, Wilco has ascended as one of the top live acts around, period. I've seen the band many times in the last 10 years, most recently a few weeks ago at the Bonnaroo music festival, where they brought a fabulous 2 hr set, featuring a number of the songs of the new album, which mashed nicely with older tunes. In all, "Wilco (the album)" brings forth a nice, mature album from a band that knows where it's at, with confidence. I've been on a long ride with this band, and I really like what I'm hearing. Last but not least: props for the cover art of the album, I just love it.