The Whole Love - Wilco (2011 Honorable Mentions)

The Whole Love

Wilco
dBpm Records.


SCQ Rating: 80%

 Skeleton Crew Quarterly arrived late to Wilco’s adventurous return, and backwards. On a rocky, unmarked highway that winded the roofless rest-stops outside Montego Bay, Jamaica, I let closing track ‘One Sunday Morning’ fill my heart; from there I was sneaking my way through The Whole Love’s back-door. As such, I’ve had a hard time bonding with these songs as honestly as I had with, say, A Ghost Is Born. Although my wedding preparations and honeymoon no doubt clouded the record’s hype and release, it’s just as likely that my personal divide exists because The Whole Love is downright bizarre.

And thank the heavens. I mean, I don’t think I could’ve swallowed another bland placebo on the scale of Wilco (The Album) but a return to the convoluted pop labyrinth of Summerteeth is something else entirely. Don’t let ‘Art Of Almost’ have you believing that Wilco are going off the deep end; in reality, it’s a seven-minute knot of red herrings – electronic rhythms, unusually hip discord, and a bewildering guitar freak-out – that nonetheless primes us for the unknown. Like the Jamaican hills our small convoy tripped along, The Whole Love’s momentum never settles amid dreamy ballads (‘Sunloathe’) and wide-eyed roots-rock (‘Born Alone’). In fact, Wilco’s habit of constantly combing our expectations with one song before rubbing against the grain with the next creates more friction than the record needs (really, does ‘Capitol City’ fit in anywhere on this disc?). But friction proves far more interesting than the band’s complacently mellow stuff, and Wilco scopes out new songwriting avenues with combustible results.

More than anything I'm just excited to hear Wilco hungry again, spinning their creative wheels as opposed to resting on lazy laurels. That surprise, in and of itself, won’t be enough to rival the band’s previous classics but The Whole Love offers more than its share of quality cuts to suggest that Wilco aren’t hanging their American rock crowns on MOR rock quite yet.

3. A Ghost Is Born - Wilco (2004)

(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

Unlike Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, if A Ghost is Born has any controversy, it’s because Tweedy booked himself into rehab mere days after the record’s release, citing self-medicating and pills as the issue. His diminishing health is audible on record; although his performances give no indication of trouble ahead, Tweedy’s malcontent is woven into both lyrics and music. No example is more glaringly evident than the twelve minutes of sonic layering that close ‘Less Than You Think’, which Tweedy claims is a recreation of the migraines he experienced throughout recording. His mental well-being was also under duress, as heard in the obsessive, ten minute ‘Spiders’ or the paranoid ‘Company in my Back’. Strange to think that despite these gloomy bits of trivia, A Ghost is Born remains a wonderful summer album, carrying little of the content’s burden and offering countless moments of art-rock beauty.

What makes this album one of SCQ’s all-time favourites is how versatile the material is: its sadness is uplifting, its restlessness is peaceful, its sonic ambitions are all over the place. My first taste of the album, ‘Hell is Chrome’, sent a shiver from its tastefully upbeat piano-trot. The ivories suddenly dropped into a jazz-torn heartbeat, where the electric sears in, crisp and mournful, breaking this peaceful dawn like a day’s first carhorn. Underappreciated but well-advanced from its celebrated predecessor, A Ghost is Born is Wilco’s crowning achievement; a record to fall in love with.

Wilco (The Album) - Wilco

Wilco (The Album)

Wilco
Nonesuch Records.

SCQ Rating: 71%

Jeff Tweedy has always been a breeze of fresh air amid your average assemblage of egocentric songwriters. As if Wilco didn’t already own my heart in the summer of 2004 with A Ghost is Born, Tweedy gave what is hands-down my favourite Wilco interview to Pitchfork, wherein he explained the true nature of his rehab-stint. Not only did he deflate rock’n’roll rumours by admitting his time in rehab was to find remedy for his migraines and anxiety attacks, Tweedy also spoke out against artists who embrace bullshit rumours, citing Bob Dylan as a prime example of a songwriter who – if one looks into his timeline – can be seen buying into his own press. Such mysticism connected to the songwriter as an ‘enigmatic character’ meant nothing to Tweedy, and that was one of many interviews where the Wilco frontman refused to play into the rock and roll game. And ever since, I’ve believed in Tweedy because, despite his success and talent, the man never stood for any one thing. Always skirting big questions in favour of vague lyricism and a chameleon-esque set of musicians and styles, Tweedy focused on his thoughts and feelings, not the state of the nation or trendy charities. Whether that sounds quaint or selfish, that’s the role of a songwriter and not once has Tweedy forgotten his day job. Everything else is celebrity.

Upon the release of Wilco (The Album), however, and its first single ‘Wilco (The Song)’, it’s apparent that Tweedy has never said so little. Ever since the record’s announcement months ago, I’ve digested the exclamation of journalists, bloggers and fans all brimming over the album’s title, calling it “cheeky” and “clever”. Besides my opinion that had they simply rendered it a self-titled record, it would forego the cutesy and downright pointless (The Album) portion, it’s disheartening that the album’s title – or lack thereof – has earned the most headlines from this anticipated release. Yet for the life of me, I cannot grasp another angle worth brimming about in this follow-up to Sky Blue Sky, the first creative and stylistic standstill in Wilco’s decade-plus history. No, Feist’s lovely voice doesn’t change a thing.

Although less jam-oriented and breezy than Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) finds the Chicago-based sextet’s prerogative virtually unchanged, ambling down ho-hum acoustic patches on ‘Solitaire’ (which hints at ‘Muzzle of Bees’ greatness but never delivers) and hokey adult-contemporary musings on ‘Sonny Feeling’ and ‘Country Disappeared’. The band’s comfort in such laid-back melodies – not to mention some journalist’s accusation of “dad-rock” - are highlighted by the lifted George Harrison track ‘You Never Know’ and worst-Wilco-chorus-ever contender ‘I’ll Fight’. By any other band these are mildly skippable tracks but, as maddeningly reminded by Wilco (The Album), these songs represent further proof that Tweedy and Co. are losing the artistic edge that made their earlier works (Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born) so notorious.

As thoroughly as Sky Blue Sky shared less ingenious tracks with moments of greatness, Wilco (The Album) contains several instances of inspired resurrection. And strangely enough, these tracks are mapped out much like those on that 2007 release: a top-heavy selection of diverse Wilco hits (here we get the 70s strut of ‘Wilco (The Song)’, the supple build of a poet’s swansong on ‘One Wing’) and a piano-based closer that speaks in forevers (trade ‘On & On & On’ for ‘Everlasting Everything’). What sticks out like a black sheep (sorry…) is inevitably ‘Bull Black Nova’, a krautrock epic that breaches Wilco (The Album)’s curbed ambitions with the scope and intensity of the Wilco we knew five years ago. ‘Bull Black Nova’ and these other highlights (toss the brilliant ‘Deeper Down’ into that category) deserve better neighbours than the friendly but benign filler that pads this release.

When Tweedy blew off any notions of songwriter-mystery as journalistic hyperbole, his comments came off as brilliant because they stood on the shoulders of Wilco’s commendable, unique work. And besides those landmark albums, anyone with an interest in Wilco knew Tweedy – the lyricist who wrote some of the most cutting words alt country has ever heard, the front-man who hired and fired musicians with a dictator’s sense of power, the songwriter who detonated a division of Warner Brothers Records - was no Joe-Blow. Yet five years and two satisfactory albums later, his insistence on being a simple songwriter is beginning to make sense. After years of dodging questions into his lyrics and albums, maybe Wilco (The Album) is that empty statement Tweedy has exhaustingly sought to create. If it’s a personal victory for Wilco, it’s a shrugging delay-of-game for us.

A Ghost is Born - Wilco (SUMMER 2008)

A Ghost is Born

Wilco
Nonesuch Records.

SCQ Rating: 97%

The tale and subsequent myth-making that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot garnered after their split from Warner Records is no longer a story but a saga; the crème of all press kits that turned a record (that had been streamed on Wilco’s website for free) into a classic and Wilco into art reconnoiters. The ruse – Warner Execs giving Wilco their own record, free of charge, and releasing them from their contract only to buy the record back on the band’s terms – was enough to blind every underdog-loving critic from doing their job. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was hailed as a rock record of the 21st Century, and rightly so (seeing as it was 2002 at the time), but its success also set the stage for what would come next: a new Wilco record, only without the David/Goliath backwash. You could almost hear all those newly sober critics creak their armchairs as they reached for red pens.

If the whole label debacle has proven anything, it’s that Wilco grew from the experience instead of simply cashing in. A Ghost is Born is brimming with ideas, equal parts novel and polarizing, that are seamed into a whole that few other bands could manage. The familiar draws to Wilco World are ever-present - all the ache of Tweedy’s desperation, expert musicianship – but intensified; where Yankee Hotel Foxtrot thrived on obscure experimentalism and lyrical fragments, A Ghost is Born is the return of the band, huddled around microphones and creating sounds together. Some of those sounds, like the electronic cut-up that blindsides ‘Handshake Drugs’ into oblivion, remain explicitly borrowed from electronica, but according to Tweedy, the record realigned all the Wilco mates to one studio room. The results are stirring: an eccentric song-cycle of electric rockers, lo-fi acoustics and experimental soundscapes that are all grounded and relatable under Tweedy’s well-honed talents. Even haters who found Tweedy’s new-found love for the guitar solo narcissistic have to appreciate the romantic stomp of ‘At Least That’s What You Said’, a track that opens in sparse piano with Tweedy whispering “I thought it was cute / for you to kiss / my purple black-eye / even though I caught it from you / I still think we’re serious,” before exploding into a bombastic release of thrashing electrics guitars.

If A Ghost is Born has any controversy, it’s because Tweedy booked himself into rehab mere days after the record’s release, citing self-medicating and pills as the issue. His diminishing health is audible on record; although his performances give no indication of trouble ahead, Tweedy’s malcontent is woven into both lyrics and music. No example is more glaringly evident than the twelve minutes of sonic layering that close ‘Less Than You Think’, which Tweedy claims is a recreation of the migraines he experienced throughout recording. His mental well-being was also under duress, as heard in the obsessive, ten minute ‘Spiders’ or the paranoid ‘Company in my Back’. Strange to think that despite these gloomy bits of trivia, A Ghost is Born remains a wonderful summer album, carrying little of the content’s burden and offering countless moments of art-rock beauty.

What makes this album one of SCQ’s all-time favourites is how versatile the material is: its sadness is uplifting, its restlessness is peaceful, its sonic ambitions are all over the place. My first taste of the album, ‘Hell is Chrome’, sent a shiver from its tastefully upbeat piano-trot. The ivories suddenly dropped into a jazz-torn heartbeat, where the electric sears in, crisp and mournful, breaking this peaceful dawn like a day’s first carhorn. Underappreciated but well-advanced from its celebrated predecessor, A Ghost is Born is Wilco’s crowning achievement; a record to fall in love with.

Sky Blue Sky - Wilco

Sky Blue Sky
Wilco
Nonesuch Records


SCQ Rating: 72%

1996: Band divides fan-base with their ambitious double album, Being There, which found a devoted following while pissing off every Uncle Tupelo fan in America.

2000: Band divides fan-base with a sun-kissed exploration of Beatles-inspired pop and lyrics about abusing, killing one’s lover.

2002: Jim O’Rourke promises Jeff Tweedy that hiring him as producer will ensure Wilco being booted from Warner Records. He wasn’t kidding and the end result, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, delivers a fallout that befuddles music execs and inspires millions. Oh yeah, and divides fans.

2004: As quickly as it came, Tweedy and Co. abandon their electronic art-country moniker and release A Ghost is Born; a record largely obsessed with the guitar solo. Some fans are left frustrated while the rest eat it up.

Between and after these years, the band also committed themselves to two volumes of under-the-rug Woody Gunthrie covers and a live record that despite being awesome, is inconsequential in the way most live albums tend to be by mandate.

This shamefully brief and self-serving chronology is to illustrate something about both Wilco and Wilco fans: it’s impossible to please everyone. And Wilco’s indifference to fan support has accumulated a discography of nearly unrivaled comparison (as far as contemporary American bands are concerned), where each album is a new exploration and challenge for both songwriters and open-minded fans.

So strangely enough, it was an uneasy sign when everyone and their grandmother adored Sky Blue Sky. Like the opening guitar-plucking of ‘Either Way’ is as welcoming as the Ice Cream truck’s jingle on a hot summer’s day, the record felt so effortless, so pretty, so laidback in its optimism and melancholy. And like everyone else, I was excited, asking friends if they had heard the new Wilco yet and when they shake their heads, widening my eyes to silently suggest “Well, maybe you should.” I still think everyone should, if only to hear the 1, 2, 3 punch of the first three songs. Alternately resigned and occasionally tense, these opening tracks are impressive additions to the Wilco catalogue.

After the Thin Lizzy-esque triple guitar climax of Impossible Germany, Sky Blue Sky takes it down a few notches on the title track, a lovely acoustic number that would be easy to dismiss if it wasn’t so damn easy to listen to. And that’s where us fans get all divided up again, because this pretty ambivalence (outlined by Tweedy himself as he sings “I survived/That’s good enough for me”) dominates many of these following songs. It’s still a Wilco album, and a respectable one at that, but the slowly unraveling song structures and cryptic lyrics have been largely omitted this time around.

When the band decides to shake up their sound from the acoustic laments, like on, um, “Shake It Off”, the band misses the mark so badly it makes listening to this record beginning through end nearly impossible. Any shortcomings before or after this song are mere suggestions -- details I would’ve preferred elaborated upon or left out – yet in both melody and timing, “Shake It Off” is the aural embodiment of that feeling you get right before vomiting.

It’s a record so charmingly quaint that critiquing its weak spots makes one feel like they’re throwing rocks at a younger sibling. It’s sweet and harmless, so just play nice.