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It's finally here: Wilco - Wilco (The Album), 2009
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Yesterday, the incapable-of-letting-you-down Wilco released their highly anticipated 7th studio album, Wilco (The Album).
The album begins with the Colbert Report-showcased “Wilco (The Song)”. This is the band at its most roots rock-encased, full of A Ghost Is Born-era raw piano-ed rhythm and pure unprocessed guitar drive. Yet, like any post-A.M. upbeat Wilco track, the soundscape is riddled with everything from piercing guitar antics to drastically tweaked melodic and rhythmic fluctuations. The end product is a triumphant introduction that is essentially Wilco’s lyrical version of the Bill Withers classic “Lean On Me”, as they ask that we turn to Wilco for emotional well-being.
The melodic ante is upped on the psychedelic folk pop of “Deeper Down”. Easily one of Wilco’s most beautiful moments ever on record, the track progresses as it builds upon its acoustically melodic and percussive foundation. Compounded onto this foundation is one of the oddest song structures in recent memory, with its choppy truncations that flow with the transitional nature of the lyrics. Nels Cline’s emotionally distraught slide and effected atmosphere drone on with Eastern influence as variable percussive elements help the melody fully blossom. At the very core though is a message of truth in identity as Jeff Tweedy relays, “Underneath the ocean floor/The part of who we are/We don’t explore.”
“One Wing” expands on the non-acoustic textures that dominated Sky Blue Sky. Glenn Kotche’s disjointed rhythms and Cline’s rippling signatures support Tweedy as he tells a tale of disjointed love. It is here we find the album’s first notions of post-Ghost Wilco experimentalism. This move is quite warranted as we are led into the peak of the album’s experimentalism on “Bull Black Nova”. Full of multi-instrumental staccato rhythm, dissonant yet consonant melodic structure, and your average bloodbath-based lyrics, the track finds Wilco throwing its audience into a violent tailspin both of noise and of message. We like it.
“You and I” represents a rare sight on a Wilco album as Leslie Feist, of Feist obviously, makes a cameo appearance, ensuring that the album has its fair share of sexual energy. The band curbs its over-zealous instrumentalism in favor of back-to-basics classicist songwriting. Armed with straightforward acoustic/electric interplay and Band-esque organ sugar, the duo strikes one honest chord after the next as they croon, “But you and I/I think we can take it/All the good with the bad/Make something that no one else has.” To top it all off, Cline finds his inner George Harrison for a little backwards soloing, and oh does it add the perfect topping.
The energy of the intro track is revisited on the soon-to-be concert favorite “You Never Know”. If when you heard Sky Blue Sky’s “Hate It Here”, you thought that the chorus was a clear rip of the Beatles’ “Birthday” riff, you’ll be a Beatles-referencing maniac when you listen to this track. There is no doubt that the 60s play a huge roll in shaping the band’s compositional signatures, alongside the folky country of the early to mid 70s of course. Everything from the ooh-oohing to the piano textures to the completely obvious guitar rip of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” to the ever-present harmonizing screams Beatle. For that reason, and for the fact that Wilco knows exactly how to take its influences and produce alt-country classicist pop perfection, this track will become an instant fan favorite.
Yet again, on “Country Disappeared”, there are shades of Beatlesque progressions, all amounting though to a purely Wilco track that again uses derivation for compositional good. With a title this provocative, you’d expect some degree of profundity of message, and you’d get just that as Tweedy critiques, “You’ve got the helicopters dangling angling to shoot/the shots to feed the hungry weekend news crew anchorman.” Just goes to show you that you don’t have to repeat the same power chords again and again to achieve a message of protest. Its somber partner “Solitaire” puts self-righteousness to rest as its verse progression reminisces of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”. There goes that 60s progressive pop again.
Another fan favorite in the making, “I’ll Fight” resorts back to the upbeat straightforward alt-country foundations of Being There and Summerteeth. Its simmering, turned boiling at the chorus, organ takes a song that would normally be considered a modern pop rock track and throws it into an antiquated whirlwind that puts you in a Robbie Robertson mindset. Yet, as uplifting as this composition sounds, the lyrics are incredibly dark in scope, relaying a message of the heartbreak of the dead soldier’s family in a time of war. Few songs on this issue ever end as poignantly as, “And my life will not be lost/If my love comes across.”
The closing sequence of the album follows the last upbeat track and yet another potential fan favorite in “Sonny Feeling” and the frustrated romance of “Everlasting Everything”. The former is pure back-to-basics Wilco, a seeming trend on this record. Full of blues guitar swagger, Beach Boys harmonization, festival-worthy sing-a-long quality, and Tweedy’s endearing falsetto, this track closes out yet another selection of perfect upbeat Wilco numbers. The album itself though closes on “Everlasting Everything”, yet another beautiful melody balanced by compositional shifts that Wilco seems to have an absolutely necessary fetish for. With Tweedy’s final outpour of “Everything goes both good and the bad/It all adds up and you should be glad/Everlasting love is all you have”, the album closes on a note of both introspection and lesson, as we as listeners mull over that message to the tune of a wonderfully cohesive band in its prime.
With Wilco (The Album), the band I once referred to as the greatest modern American band has only continued to solidify that title. If you have yet to experience Wilco, you must.
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