GLHawk

Ah, OK, that's probably what I was thinking of.

I was disappointed with the crowd staying seated for much of the first quarter of the show, even on some fairly uptempo songs. Sitting at any point during a rock show seems bizarre to me. Didn't seem to bother the band, though -- I guess it's par for the course with Sunday night shows, when presumably less alcohol is being consumed. As has been noted, the setlist was fairly predictable, except for Nick Lowe's fine cameo in the encore and the fact that they played all 12 minutes of One Sunday Morning. (The crowd stayed seated for that one, but seemed to warm to it as it went on -- how could t

My favorite band of all time. Maybe it's time for Wilco to move to #1. Lots of Wilco connections. Peter Buck produced the third Tupelo album. The first time I saw Wilco was opening for R.E.M. in '99. And I have an R.E.M. fanclub release featuring Tweedy and co. playing live along w/ R.E.M. on "It's the End of the World as We Know It." Maybe they can cover that one on this tour.

Truce. It's just that I know the songs better than I know you. So when somebody on the Internet says, without qualification, that one of my favorite songs is crap, it raises the hackles a bit. I've gotten used to people abusing WTA, even though I like that album a lot, but seeing someone rip on "The Late Greats" makes my head explode. Anyway, this new album is astonishingly good. I think "Sunloathe," "Dawned on Me," and "Born Alone" are sort of getting shortchanged here -- which I guess is understandable since there are so many standouts.

I think it's more of a "classic rock" record than Yo La Tengo would do. But it does remind me of Yo La in the sense that it has a very leisurely pace and spacey ambience, as well as some beautifully atonal guitar work -- and the obligatory 14-minute song. In addition to jumping on the bandwagon of praise for this album, I would also like to say that the people talking smack about "You and I" and especially "The Late Greats"... actually, I have nothing to say to those people. They are dead to me. Just kidding, we're all friends here, I hope. I just don't understand how people considering t

I also can't believe there isn't more love for "Deeper Down." What a breathtaking song that is -- great contributions there from Pat and Nels plus great lyrics and singing from Jeff. I mean, is this a Wilco fansite or not? I'm seeing more snark than love for the band here. Granted, on some level I do understand the current apathy for the previous album. It obviously wasn't their best, it's a couple of years old, and we're all breathless with anticipation that the new one will put the previous couple to shame. Maybe that will be the case, but I refuse to throw WTA under the bus.

Here we go again. Every time I come back to this site the majority of the posters are ripping WTA. The band has set the bar so high that it's not enough to make a merely "good" album of catchy pop tunes -- and that's what it is, no more or less. Of course it wasn't an era-defining masterpiece like YHT -- no one hits a home run every time out. But it compares favorably to AM and SBS, I think. I get particularly sick of people looking down their noses at "You and I" and WTS, as if just anybody could write a sweet, breezy pop tune like that. I love Tweedy for his ability to write in all genres

I understand how you might not like a certain musical flourish on a song, but to let that spoil the whole thing is silly. If I rejected all music that had touches of overly florid or tacky-sounding instrumentation, I'd have to stop listening to a lot of Ray Charles' albums, and maybe most of Frank Sinatra's recordings, for example. Not to say Solitaire is an all-time classic or anything, but that organ fill constitutes like 0.5 percent of the elements that make up the song. As for editing, you said Tweedy needed an editor because "less is more," so that's what I was responding to.

OK, so in other words, NOT the musical equivalent of Showgirls. Just mediocre, could have been good if not for "little missteps" and some songs are probably good but aren't your type. That seems like a more reasonable position, although I still disagree. Organ fill? How can a 5-second part ruin a whole song? That's just nonsensical to me. Either a song is good or it isn't. I like Solitaire, but I guess if I'd paid more attention to the organ fill instead of incidentals like melody and lyrics it would make me want to strangle kittens. (?) The point about Tweedy needing "an editor" also make

Seriously, do you WTA-haters really think the album is this bad? Like, a Showgirls-type fiasco? I mean, I really like the album, but I can understand some of the criticism. It's a little safe and unadventurous, and it certainly doesn't match the brilliance of their classics. Do you really believe that it's not merely a lesser Wilco effort but actually an epically BAD album deserving of this level of snark? Because if you really do believe your own hyperbole here, then I think there's no point even having a conversation on the subject with you. It'd be like Al Franken trying to debate Rush L

Pat Sansone co-wrote "Deeper Down," which is probably the best song on WTA. If there is a problem with present-day Wilco -- and I don't really think there is -- Pat is not it. Keep digging.

I'm a big fan of WTA and continue to be baffled by all the hate it receives. However, they do need to take a different tack on the new album to keep things fresh -- whether that means more tempo, more anger, more edge, more experimentation, more O'Rourke, more RAWK -- whatever. No need for them to be apologetic about WTA at all, but they shouldn't do another one just like it.

From an Oct. 14 feature on The Onion AV Club-Chicago, where the interviewer asks Tweedy to respond to various Web comments: Post: "What exactly does Wilco stand for, besides good MOR dad rock? Do they represent a band winding down and becoming less adventurous? It’s very hard to see how whatever they are could be threatening in any fashion." Tweedy: Well, the goal of all art is to be threatening in some fashion. [Laughs.] Obviously we’ve threatened this guy’s view of whatever it is he’s supposed to allow himself to like. If that’s not threatening, I don’t know what is, because he’s obviou

I'm with you on "Leave Me." There's not enough "content" there for me to overlook the relative musical blandness. It's possible that I'm missing something.

I understand where you're coming from. We all have our genre shorthand for music we don't like, because there aren't enough hours in the day for all the music out there. I also reflexively turn the dial when I hear something with that "TNN feel." But a great songwriter like Tweedy transcends genre; if you like Wilco, I don't understand why you would reject a Wilco song merely because some surface element of it reminds you of some other song you don't like. When I first heard "Walken," I thought, "Is this a cover? I hate this Southern rock crap." Fortunately, because it was Wilco, I gave it a

Sorry to flame you there. I thought the soft rock comment was part of the "You and I" pile-on; didn't realize the discussion had shifted to Bread. I'm not really familiar with Bread. My sense is that the haters are dismissing "You and I" without giving it a chance because it has that soft-rock feel, and ignoring the content. I'm not saying that "everyone has to like everything." I'm saying that as Wilco fans it doesn't make much sense for us to be close-minded about genres -- they obviously are not. I would never have thought we'd hear Wilco songs influenced by Can or Neu, but we did; for

I'm glad Wilco does not share the genre snobbery of many of its fans. If every Wilco song sounded like this, yes, I would get bored fairly quickly. But there's nothing inherently wrong with "soft rock." A good song is a good song. And this one is good. It's not a saccharine "silly love song," it's an intelligent, adult lyric about maintaining a relationship while accepting that you can never definitively "know" that person. "You and I" is a lot more intelligent than the knee-jerk attacks on it have been.

I would like to state again for the record that "You and I" is not a good song. It is a great song. Those who think it's easy to write a love song that doesn't suck should try it sometime. The fact that Tweedy can follow "Bull Black Nova" with something like this only cements my admiration for him as a songwriter. It certainly could have been a radio hit, but probably in a different era. Not enough sex, violence or auto-tune for today's radio audience. Plus as we have seen, even a lot of Wilco's own core audience has a knee-jerk hatred for it.

Both of those really are a lot of fun live.

In my comment I distinctly did not put W(TS) in the "interesting and complex" category, but some of those lines are very cool in a pop way: I love "the stare of your stereo" and "aural arms open wide" and "a sonic shoulder for you to cry-y-y on." The two SBS songs you mention are not lyrically generic, but much of the album is, including the title track, Either Way, Hate It Here, Please Be Patient, Leave Me Like You Found Me, Walken and What Light. Some of those songs have a lot to recommend them musically, but the words are mostly just folk- and blues-rock cliches.

"One Wing" and "Everlasting" are perfect as is. Just because Nels Cline's in the band doesn't make it necessary to have 3-minute guitar freakouts a la "Impossible Germany." I much prefer the tighter structure of the W(TA) songs, but both approaches are valid; I like the fact that Wilco is unpredictable that way. To me what hurts SBS by comparison are the lyrics, which mostly seem very generic to me. In W(TA) Jeff seems to have his mojo as a writer back; Deeper Down, Country Disappeared, I'll Fight and Sunny Feeling contain some of the most interesting and complex lyrics he's ever done. And s

Sorry to keep digressing, but I absolutely agree with this. "2+2=5" and "There There" are two of my favorite Radiohead songs ever, but the album as a whole doesn't quite measure up. I know this isn't supposed to be a Radiohead thread, but it's nice to see so many fans of both bands here.

In Rainbows is a better album than W(TA), but that's not much of a knock on W(TA). We're comparing top-tier Radiohead to 2nd-tier Wilco. I'd take W(TA) over a number of Radiohead releases, for what it's worth, including Pablo Honey, Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief. And I don't dislike those records by any means.

Thank you for having the balls to say it. For me at the moment it's #4. If I may coin a phrase, I find W(TA) to be a sort of aural arms-open-wide, sonic shoulder for me to cry-y-y-y on.

I don't know why this song needed an instrumental exclamation point. It's perfect as is. What could be more "orgasmic" than the falsetto and soaring guitar at the end? I like the conciseness of this record (BBN excepted) -- it's tighter than most Wilco albums, and while that's not an inherently superior approach compared to loose jamming, it's not worse either. Repetitive phrasing is one of the few criticisms of the album I agree with -- yet that's only a problem on 2 songs ("I'll Fight" being the other), and both of those songs have other redeeming qualities -- lyrics in particular. (