giraffo

I think Tweedy and O'Rourke would downplay O'Rourke's influence -- they both went to great pains to point out that O'Rourke actually "removed" a great deal of the "noise" from YHF.

I don't necesarily mean he added the noise, but I think he reinforced Tweedy's interest in the noise elements. Bennett himself said in the documentary that he believes it all should serve the melody, where I think Tweedy was more interested in roughing up the edges a bit. also, to be fair, removing the noise doesn't mean much since there's still quite a bit there and it's even more noticable because they had a guy like him arranging those pieces. I think before (on the demos) I noticed the noise but it seemed cumbersome or naive, where O'Rourke's take made me glad that he mixed it. It made sense to me.

also, to be fair, I love SBS and I think it's one record that defies pretension and "newness". I just think that with this lineup you've got to at least want to twist some knobs and make some noise at some point.

This isn't going to read as I intend but here goes:

 

I think people get down on SBS because they expected the unexpected -- because in the progression of previous albums, that's what fans had come to expect. But in listening to those albums from hindsight, and reading what Tweedy and the various band incarnations went through, there was the goal of each album of reaching for something, or being pulled by some influence, wanting to take things in a direction. In each case Tweedy had his "enablers," those he learned from used, borrowed from, was led by (in YHF, most would say that was Bennett, but recently I'm convinced it ws more Kotche).

for YHF it was Jim O'Rourke-- he created Loose Fur with him around that point, brought him in to play on some songs (I think they said that Poor Places was mostly the three of Loose Fur)-- and had him remix the entire album. Jeff was starting to get into O'Rourke and his music as well as more noisy stuff, where Benett wanted to pull him elsewhere. I'm convinced that if JT never met Jim (or had him get so involved) the album would have been entire entirely different, possibly for the worse. I think that's why Jeff felt Bennett had to go--Summerteeth was his place, where YHF and AGiB was Jeff finding O'Rourke more of an influence.

edit: for this next record though, I would like to hear less of this "band in the room business." Wilco is full of musicians who can extort any sort of sound and idea from their instrument, I think it would be interesting to see this utilized...Not "Nels the shredder Cline" but Nels Cline, that guy who can make any sound with his guitar, or Glenn Kotche, the human percussion section, not the drummer. I just think if this current lineup regressed toward the kind of weirdness of their past albums you would have an incredible record, and it still wouldn't sound like any of their past showings. I don't know. I just hope these two new songs have some chance to change over time, or get some kind of post production treatment, because now they seem just...I don't know, musical? just not really interesting to me.

wow, I live in Albany and completely forgot this.

well, the Daniel Johnston one just made me love the guy because he's adorable, and a decent visual artist. his music, I'm not sure so much. But Dig just blew my mind that such an obnoxious child could have such a massive following.

man, I don't get these guys at all. It seems to me like awful, flat out mediocre hipster trash. watching parts of DiG I was amazed that people took this guy seriously. one minute he's talking about "it's about fucking love man" and the other minute he's fighting with people. or he's acting like he knows everything while acting like a tough drunken rockstar pointing a gun at somone. I didn't see any actual competition between talented bands in that movie, I just saw a bunch of beligerent children acting like they were god's gift, here to relive all the "hip" aspects of the sixties. if strumming some chords in the key of C and complaining about how hard your life has been (growing up in Newport fucking Rhode Island and treating your parents like shit) is all it takes to be considered a genius then I have to reevaluate my entire life. I hate to seem so negative about some of the stuff I post in lately but I think of all bands that I wish everyone would universally agree on as just awful naive "psychedelic" music this is the one band.

wow, I like how Radiohead gets fireworks during their set and Wilco gets them after, despite Wilco being from Chicago.

ok

this time

for real

it'll be I'm the Man.

wow betcha you didnt see this coming, the NEXT song will be im the man....or panthers

I'll get a lucky break at some point...

next song: I'm the Man Who Loves you.

I'm throwing that out there.

oh wow, this was unexpected.

okay, so the next song HAS to be I'm the Man. oh, or Walken, then I'm the Man.

Jesus etc.

I'm gonna make a guess: next is I'm the Man

ooh, that ended a little messy.

I wish these guys would release an album already.

I liked it better when you simply typed:

I know, I'm sorry.

I can't keep my mouth shut.

who would talk???

New neil is better than any shit coming out today and the last 2 decades. i for one can't stand indie rock and all its cuteness and ridiculous punk attitude. talk about being nostalgia acts. wilco is in the same boat. i have tried for years to figure out what it is about tweedy that bothers me and it is him trying to be so cute. his little songs with the capo up so high on the fret board about aquarium drinking...give me a break! i'll take neil young any day. even new dylan!

my view on Tweedy specifically was that he played a nice line between "rock deity" (i.e Neil Young) and somone who's 40 and has a wife and kids. Guys like Dylan and Neil Young expect everyone to bow down and have never had anyone shrink their giant heads (as seen here), while Tweedy seems generally easygoing and down to earth for somone who is a popular rock musician.

like I said, I figured people would be aghast at my opinion, and they are. Yeah, Wilco owes a buttload to Young, but that doesn't mean that the guy is some olympian figure. The only person, like I've undoubtedly said before on this board, who is owed the hyperbolic praise would have to be Brian Wilson. Otherwise, I see a lot of these icons as just people with overblown egos (Pete freaking Townshend, Bob Dylan--the most condescending egomaniac to ever become a popular American) who are pretending like they never got old and became (for the most part) irrelevant. Blame Rolling Stone. These guys aren't gods. Most of them aren't even that bright (Neil Young, for instance, ate weed sauteed in honey--go figure). They just happen to make music. It's their job, like somone's job is an accountant, or a clerk. If you strip away the mythology that's what you get. I'm not saying let's put Wilco on the pedestal now. I'm just saying that people should be more open to new things and willing to reign in the next thing instead of focusing on the old-- that's the attitude that got these past musicians where they are.

Otherwise, I think it's weird that people want to complain about new pop music sucking or etc-- they're not willing to embrace anything new.

whats wrong with neil young

personally, I hate his music (with the expection of some of that Massey Hall album and On the Beach), but it goes beyond that. I feel like if you're still kind of (relatively) an up-and-coming rock band getting more mainstream attention, the last person I'd want to go on tour with is Neil Young. Why? a) he's just another aging boomer relic who is pulling out the "rares" in order to wow the audience that grew up on his hits while simultaneously egging on your overzealous critic fans to give you more praise than you deserve. Each member of your band can singlehandedly outperform him and has made better records on their bad days than this guy's best days. however, due to the novelty fact that "he's freaking Neil Young!" you'll never be given the credit ('you' being Wilco) you really deserve.

I mean, come on, to be fair, I don't like Neil Young but I think we could all agree here Wilco puts him out of business in terms of actual showmanship. His songs, not that he can help it, are either given a folk rock or grunge rock treatment and they never are given the room to breath life. Whereas, you have a band like Wilco, with two superhuman musicians and probably the most likable singer-songwriter in his age group playing songs of more dense emotional (okay, opinion) and musical (this however I feel is fact) complexities-- the craftsmanship of the mentioned bringing a tight yet spaced out sound. I feel like Wilco going on tour with that guy is Wilco not giving themselves enough credit. Yeah, he's Neil Young, but you're doing now what he did yesterday in terms of making contemporary, fresh, new sounding music. You're not recycling as much as your contemporaries are, the music you make is as new now is his was then. You should be the ones on stage, you can't help it that the music business has (for the most part) aged more intelligently than him and you get overlooked.

don't get me wrong. if you wanna go see Neil Young, go see Neil Young. But everyone should be going ape over getting to see him open for Wilco, not the other way around. I'm sure I'm the only one that feels this way, I'm sure I sound backwards to probably 99% of the people here.

jeez, is this really the type of person Wilco wants to associate with?

That was a good read. Mostly because he agree with what I was talking about earlier.

this is the same type of crap I was talking about in the Dr. Dog thread- again I don't mind snobbery or pretentiousness, but I hate when reviewers go at length to throw punches. It's a god damn Batman movie, not a Nietchzeian exposition on the psychology of the high and lows of society. Using the term overrated when going at lengths to describe how Alan Moore "does The Joker better" is the biggest contradiction of the entire thing-- most comic writers (ESPECIALLY Alan Moore) are overrated in their own right. Expecting some sort of freak of nature-- an entertaining pop culture movie displaying psychological studies and philosophical concerns-- in a PG-13 Batman movie will set you up to write one of those inane, immature-yet-nuanced reviews. Pop culture is lucky to get what it got out of this movie. It could have been much, much, worse.

I don't mind bad reviews, but isn't a little stupid that a publication allows their reviewers free reign to just be flat out douche bags? It seems to me like the people who write these negative reviews take it personal, or for what ever reason are just angry at x band for making whatever music they make. Rather than discuss the merits (which was given about one sentence in the entire page long review) they snipe at the band. I don't mind some pretentiousness or snobbiness, I think it makes it more fun to read, but I don't understand why they have to throw punches. I think it was on an Eminem review that one of the reviews gave a hint that the head honcho at Pitchfork was angry they weren't taken seriously-- and it's immature style of writing is mostly responsible for that.

Jack Nicholson isn't better than anyone at anything. Even acting for that matter. One of the worst things ever to happen to comics was the asinine Tim Burton Batman films.

I'm a dick. John Stiratt is a buddha. You're a bunny. New Dr. Dog comes out Tuesday. Everybody's happy.

that first song makes the whole thing worth getting for me, imo. it does lose a bit of it after awhile.

Mikael and Pat are great. Imagine SBS without the keys, or Impossible Germany with only two guitars. Jim O'Rourke has distanced himself from music, and might not come back to it any time soon. Glenn plays bells while he's playing his drums, check out the crotales on IATTBYH. Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective and Dr. Dog are all really new bands, I think Wilco wouldn't lean towards a combination of recent contemporaries.

 

Sorry, I'm excited too. And John Stiratt is the most under rated bass player of all time, you're right on that.

well I was joking about everything, to be fair.

except for John Stiratt. love the guy.

I hope it's not just a SBS part 2. I think we can all agree that part of the fun of Wilco (or the challenge) is that no two records sound alike. I hope they keep that up.

I remember an article awhile back where Jeff stated being psyched on Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, and Dr. Dog. So we can only hope the next album is some hellspawn Wilco combination of the three bands. Personally, if you combined them, I don't think you could go wrong, and it's freaking Wilco: Jeff effing Tweedy, the Nels Jazzmaster Cline, Glenn the conservatory drumming genius, and the man who will go down in history as the most under rated bassist of all time, John Stirratt.

and then there's Mikael and Pat.

frankly, it's like the dream team of indie rock or flat out musicianship. I have to hyperbollicly rant like this everytime in my head that I think about Wilco. That's so much amassed talent. It's like if I were Pat or Mikael I would just quit, or at least tell JT to do what he really wants to do and form a second supergroup consisting of Tweedy, Stiratt, Glenn, Nels, and Jim O'Rourke and making Wilco an official side project.

I mean, Glenn probably knows Marimba or associated instruments, can't he just play the keys while he drums?

we all know he's capable.