lost highway

Bless your Norse hearts. You folks are truly remarkable. With love from sunny Colorado (highs this week in the mid 50s).

Merci! Excellent work, sir.

What a blast! I'm jealous. Any data heads keeping track of how many different songs they've played in the last week? Also how have they not dusted off Born Alone?

Oh yeah, from what they said about that process they might be one long track that would stretch uninterrupted longer than an LP side.

I only just realized the deluxe edition comes with LPs AND cds. Is there different material on each or did they just decide someone wanted it all on both?

Oh my friends, I have so many thoughts on this. This is my favorite record.... maybe period. First of all, I'm not crazy. My prediction was premature but they came through! Listening to this first song was really cool. I was a little nonplussed, "Another Handshake Drugs, I already have two. Is this just an extended outro that they trimmed for the album version?". But no, this is completely different. You can tell they loved this song and kept trying it until they got it just right. This version sounds like a demo from a really nice studio. It's loose and free and has to

Mine too. Looking unlikely this year.

I was starting to think I'd joined the legions of embarrassingly inept predictors of the future when Jeff chimed in on his Substack about the original form of "Panthers" being brought to mind from recently digging through the archives. We might still see a deluxe edition!

Seriously. Critical discussion is wonderful- people liking and disliking things for interesting reasons without being aggressive or defensive. Hard to come by in the age of hot takes on social media.

Yes. You can hear the difference between material that was written by a singer songwriter and arranged by a band and material that was written by a band. Most of Wilco the sextet's most stirring and memorable instrumental passages (One Sunday Morning, Bird Without a Tail, The Empty Condor, Side With the Seeds) are the product of writing or at least recording as a full band. Tweedy has shown he's capable of leaving spaces for discovery in recording assembly line/ individually tracked material, but there's a magic that only happens when all six of those guys are in Chicago at the same time to cr

I was excited because I have like 7 ten inches and they could use company down there at the end of the LPs. It is kind of an impractical format. 12 inch will be nice.

I'm wondering if this is a later 2024 announcement/release, or if maybe I imagined the whole thing.

This piqued my curiosity because as you mentioned, older artists tend to bring things down for their aging voices if anything. Someone posted the stream and I was pumped to hear some unheard live versions. While I was at it I peeped the two you mentioned and they did "Secret of the Sea" in C (ha!) and "ELT" in B. Both the same as the album versions. Maybe we're just getting used to Jeff singing lower and quieter these days so those pre Y2K tunes just sound really high in contrast.

Yeah, and this has been true for like 3-4 albums for you (I imagine). Judging by how firmly he's landed in this sonic approach/vocal delivery I think it's permanent. It doesn't bother me, but I think I know what you're hearing. He doesn't project or have as much grit as he used to.

What a great listen. The opening track was the biggest shock. It's the first thing they've done in over a decade that doesn't sound like it happened in the loft. It came out of a space ship. Overall it feels like if the Cousin sessions were done with the sheer playfulness of Star Wars. I'm reminded in attitude, if not sound of Deerhoof. Like, "We went looking for sounds and came back with all this! Isn't it fun, check it out!" When Jeff described alien shapes in the lead up to Cousin, this is more what I had in mind. A somewhat disposable instrumental doesn't diminish t