coast to coast

Elliott Smith's is my favourite Thirteen. Please Be Patient With Me has very Elliott Smith style chords I think.

Did someone say there were mp3 versions of the tracsk from Shake It Off. I really liked the versions of the title track and Impossible Germany on it.

I just got mine sent from Musictoday. Disappointed with how long it took and that there is no bonus content.... but the second part is BONUS stuff so I can't be too demanding. But I really shoulda just bought in Tower the day it came out. Coulda got the two and half weeks earlier and cheaper.

So anyway, like above - is there Wilco / Via Chicago group on slsk?

thanx..

go to the thread that has the same title as the one you made...

Shit sorry! Didn't see anything, which I thought was odd. Perhaps I shoulda searched.

"D'oh".... I believe is the correct expression.

I wasn't at home to see this last night wsa at a gig (BTTLS!)... did anyone do a fancy record job? Please say someone did!

Last time I watched Later I wanted to see Joanna Newsom but I fell asleep during Travis cos they were so boring... thankfully someone lashed that one up on the internet.

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps a brother out.

enjoyable song! i always liked it, possibly not the right vibe for the album. thanks for posting it. i could've bought the record more than two weeks ago, but for some reason I ordered from the Wilco store... won't be making that mistake again!

Got an email saying it was sent on Friday. I could have bought it last Friday in Tower records but I got the impression the DVD version would only be available in certain American indie. Stores I shouldn't have come to this conclusion arguably, but seeing as I ordered the record, they could at the very least sent it on the day it was released in America.

Also, you can't get the vinyl in Ireland yet I don't think. Tried three places for it (that usually have vinyl) - both Tower and Road said not in yet, don't where it is, should be here soon and CityDiscs said it was sold out, but I'm not sure if he was sure about that cos he was looking for it on a computer, rather than going "Oh we had that, but we sold it out."

I'd like to thank my pre-order personally for not arriving, and not even being sent until a week after it was available. Thanks guys!

Cool.

 

Not to pick nits, but that looks like it's all the same "predator" bird, with none of the "prey" ones.

I thought that when I saw it (having read Jeff's explanation) then I said to myself...... too anal. Its still fucking deadly. They don't have the vinyl in road as of today... I assume not in Tower either. Still no sign of my copy from the Wilco website either. If I preordered, surely they could've pre-sent it!

I;d seriously love my preordered album to fucking arrive at this stage!

Pitchfork is a very worthy music site, but they can be baffling at times.

 

The below quotes could almost apply for Sky Blue Sky, but are actually Pitchfork quotes from an album that got an 8.2 rating:

 

"beautiful moments-- even when the songs themselves aren't particularly engrossing"

 

"The (album) is so confident that its strangeness could easily go unnoticed"

 

"meandering tunefully through subtle but effective changes in texture and tone"

 

"doesn't provoke deep absorption or self-reflection so much as a kind of fond familiarity"

These are quotes from Bonnie "Prince" Billy's very good album, "The Letting Go".

 

Of course, Bonnie sings about love lost or love desired and sounds pained and sad throughout....y'know....he's a suffering artist. How dare Jeff Tweedy sing songs of hope! How dare Tweedy write lyrics that are more gray than black and white!

Had Rob Mitchum gave the disc more of his time, perhaps he would have written something as profound as this quote from Popmatters' review:

 

I've listened to the album countless times, and am fairly steeped in the consternation, confusion, and griping surrounding its songs, production, direction, lyrics, etc., in the reams of web and other chatter. No doubt you're familiar with it as well, even if you haven't heard the record yet, which, where the hell have you been? I can also understand a lot of the present and future complains with Sky Blue Sky, because at various points I've shared them: the album is too slick, oddly unexperimental, straightforward, sentimental, embarrassingly direct. But lately I've had to face the awkward truth that despite my initial misgivings, I've listened to the album more than any other released in 2007 thus far, and there's no stopping in sight.

That is such a good post - all the things you quoted.

Last things first - the popmatters quote is exactly what I've thought and what I've done. Initially I was a bit sketch on this album but the more I listen, the more I want to listen. And track by track its breaking me down. Initially I was so underwhelmed by some tracks and just not into otehr but now I'm starting to love each one.

One other thing I can say is that I'm a littel suprised that they (Pitchfork, that is) didn't put two and two together for this between the Jeff Tweedy interview and the review of his band's album: the main point being, this is exactly the record they set out to create. I know that sounds kinda tautological - but I mean you can hardly criticise its directness or its simplicity or its very straight forward six-guys-in-a-room sound. You can I guess only say that you don't like it, but (and this brings up the whole star-ratings/one guys opinions chestnuts) thats about it.

The Pitchfork guy is still pretending he's reviewing the album for everyone rather than just himself (or at least he seems to, maybe I'm mistaken) but that popmatters quote is very much in admittance of its subjectivity, which is I think, honorable.

Anyway, like I said... the more I listen to this album, the more I enjoy it. I don't think of it much in comparison with the other Wilco records I love. For some reason I find their albums very easy to wall off from one another and appreciate on their own terms.

Also, At Least Thats What You Said is "soft-rock" - that is just bizarre. Its quiet, followed by big arsehole ripping Neil Young influenced guitar solos over a two chord vamp. "Soft-rock" usually refers to over-produced mushy sounding seventies AOR records - Wilco, or at least A Ghost is Born, doesn't really deserve to be tarred with that brush.

edit:

Also I just noticed that they gave A Ghost Is Born a 6.6 - I kinda forgot that that was also kinda unpopular when it came out (The whole "Its the demos" thing) - and fuck me, that album has aged well. I have confidence in whatever Wilco does, such is their integrity.

Also... Glenn's percussion and the imagery of the lyrics, chambers of chains, red plastic mouths.... ohh man what a song.

It was in Tower, but not in HMV, strangely. Tower didn't have the vinyl (given Mr Tweedy's recommendation for that format) though, he said probably next week for that.

Now I just have to wait for my preorder to come through from America... that DVD better be deadly!

I meant stwike Tweedy. Abba are/were shit, now and then. No ironic, post modern "they were pure pop" or anything like that. They sucked balls and forever it shall be.

Its not ironic to love Dancing Queen. Its excellent. About a billion times better than Casino Queen.

anyone else secretly hoping pitchfork gives sky blue sky a poor grade? i can't stand the thought of all those little indie farts getting into wilco now if pitchfork gives sky blue sky a really good rating. i was quite pleased with the 6.6 given to a ghost is born, other than the 'greatest album of the century' title it deserved.

For starters, Pitchfork gave Yankee Hotel Foxtrot a 10.0 rating - I'd imagine that got a lot of people into their music myself included. And listen, I know hipsters can be loathsomely annoying, but your snobbery is pathetic.

Less Than You Think, but with just the drone looping on and on forever instead of dying out.....

No really, if you wanna play her stuff you know she's gonna hear at the concert that'd help her get into the concert. She can become familiar with the bac catalogue once she's fallen in love with them, but put stuff on she'll hear at the concert, so she can enjoy it with a bit of familiarity. Thats my advice. Do the "uLTIMATE mIX tAPE eVA!" at later date.

glad there's some pitchfork love on here. most people seem to hate it because one of their reviewers said something mean about their favourite band, or madea joke about them and now can't stand them... yet still takes their reviews so seriously. i bought YHF cos of pitchfork, along with loads and loads of opther great albums like Michigan, The Meadowlands, You Forgot It In People, The Body The Blood The Machine, Friend Opportunity to name a few off the top of my head.

perhaps, but the demos better.

damn. my immediate reaction was to make that joke.

I hope this wasn't addressed to me (although I do seem to be the guy who slagged on Dylan's recent work the hardest in this thread). Because I assure you, I'm in no desperate need for a refresher course on how great Patton, Johnson, Boggs, Thornton, Hurt, Hopkins, Jefferson, Muddy or any of the blues giants were, and continue to be.

 

My major beefs with Dylan's work began at the outset of the current decade, more or less. I'm one of the few Dylanphiles who rank Time Out of Mind among my top three Dylan records of all time, so I certainly have no quarrel with anything pre-dating Love & Theft. L&T is a mixed bag for me, however. A song like "Mississippi" stands up well next to anything Dylan's ever written, but hey, it's a holdover from the '90s, so that shouldn't be surprising. I suspect a few other numbers appearing on that record also date to the '90s, but obviously there's no way of knowing for sure when they were composed. Unfortunately, no fewer than three songs on that record are note-for-note lifts of other artists' tunes. Although the lyrics are Dylan's, the music for "Tweedle Dee" is a shameless plundering of the old Johnny and Jack song "Uncle John's Bongos," right down to the bridge. Gene Austin's "Rebecca" was transposed from piano to guitar for "Summer Days," while Austin's "Lonesome Road" was lifted part and parcel for "Sugar Baby." A few of Austin's lines even survived the transition, like "Look up, look up / And seek your maker / 'fore Gabriel blows his horn."

 

Modern Times, on the other hand, is just minor Dylan, not to be taken seriously. It has less in common with TOOM and L&T than it does albums like Under the Red Sky and Dylan's Traveling Wilburys contributions. Half the record is bar band blooze-rock filler, uninspired and anything but compelling; funnily enough, you can pretty much go down the track listing and cross off all of the odd-numbered songs with a red pen, for all they're worth. There are plenty of breezy workouts here, but there are no Dylan songs anywhere. There's "Rollin' and Tumblin'," another note-for-note swipe of a superior old song, although this one isn't nearly as obscure as "Uncle John's Bongos." "Someday Baby" is a snoozer of a Muddy Waters remake, originally known as "Trouble No More," which, hilariously, Dylan himself covered in the early '90s. And although it's credited as a Dylan original, I'm sure every pre-war blues fan in the world has heard "The Levee's Gonna Break" countless times before. "Ain't Talkin'" works well enough on paper, but in practice it sounds like later-period Dylan on autopilot, or maybe even a kind of self-parody. "Workingman's Blues #2" at least sports a fine melody, but the lyrics are yet more pastiche, a superficially interesting skeleton without any marrow. What's the song about? Anything? I'm not convinced it is.

 

And his voice is just shot. Opinions will vary, of course, but ever since Sexton left the touring band, Dylan has sounded laryngitic and snarled. The vocals from the last few live shows I've downloaded have been devoid of both melody and panache, regrettably, and Dylan has never sounded more consumptive and breathless on record than he does on Modern Times. He's really struggling, and buddy - that ain't a stylistic conceit. A lot of people love to believe Dylan's still got it, and that's fine by me. Everybody needs something to believe in. For what it's worth, I still consider Bob Dylan the greatest American artist ever to have lived. Nobody's perfect, though.

I agree with some things in this, but especially the bit in bold, which I only noticed once I read it. I've always thought the bluesy rockers need to do something very interesting to make them stand out. I think I like Love and Theft more than you tho. I think that album is fantastic bar the opening track. But, you know your shit and you said what you said very well also. Deserves props

Oh and one thing - yeh his voice is fairly ragged and fucked, but man what can you do... sorry his life got in the way of his vocal chords? Its passable live and fine for the recordings.

Fucking amazing. Absolutely intense crowd. I know nothing about harp playing, but I would guess that she's pretty much a virtuoso as well as being a phenomenal song-writer and artist in general. Played with a small band of drummer/harp/tambora or banjo. Played new arrangements of Milk-Eyed Mender material and of Ys (compared to the albums that is) very folky and intense. Brilliant gig. I recommend seeing her on this tour in Europe if you can still get tickets.

Why would he say they're performing at Electric Picnic if they were playing at Oxegen? I fucking severly hope its not Oxegen cos I'm not going to that (not by a long shot) and it makes 50 times more sense for them to play EP, where there's a small chance people might listen to them and enjoy them.

In terms of finding out a bit about the gestation of the albums up to YHF, is Greg Kot's book any good? Or is one of those one day books where you learn about 10 facts but mostly know the entire story already (like most music books!)?

That's harshing the mellow a bit, man. Tweedy may not write with the explicitness of Jarvis Cocker, but his lyrics make sense in an impressionistic way.

In fairness its not like you couldn't make up a very similar sentence about Thom Yorke's lyrics (regard the Tweedy-NPR stoner love-in jam band connotations!) They're both very good songwriters but I prefer Wilco and Tweedy. Yorke seems so disillusioned by writing a normal song... theres a very apt Elliott Smith quote about this when he's talking about songwriting "It'd be a drag if you have to battle conventions all the time." Then he says "you can make conventions work for you" or something like that. I see where he's coming from - Radiohead had a fucking huge drag making Kid A. And when did Hail To The Thief come out? 2005? And their next? Its not as if his lyrics are in especially succint succinct these days. There's a huge denial that Radiohead haven't gone backwards lyrically since OK Computer... Whereas Tweedy and Wilco some more and more at ease with their progression. I'm not saying this is either good or bad, but it is interesting to see how thier careers have developed.

Also I still can never remember which of these signs mean anything ">" and "

On Summerteeth, Jeff Tweedy was experimenting with electronic pop for the sake of revealing its emptyness.

 

This is from an argument I'm having on another board, and I'm just curious to see what the thoughts might be from this place.

I think they were trying to make really sweet music with really dark/confusing/obscure/image-heavy, non-trad. wilco lyrics... not that i want ot sum it up in one glib sentence or anything but i don't think he was trying to show how hollow it was, just create some tension between things that seem to be pulling in different directions. frankly, i'm not sure how over the top is supposed to be or whether it's just a bit dated at this stage, cos i didn't listen to it when it came out and in comparison with the previous (the rootsy but still fleetingly experimental Being There) it is quite a leap. For me the record is over-produced... not in terms of making something sweet sounding is over-done in principal, just this record's particulars. I don't like the sound of some of it. ELT is a brilliant song hidden underneath all that synthesiser. I think YHF goes was even more expansive and expressive in terms of pallette and exectuion, better mixed, better drummer and other little details. I prefer the sound of AGIB to all of those though... the way the sound seems so untreated. Maybe its the tape or the mix but whatever it is, it seems so precise, even when Tweedy is tearing it up on the skronky, craggy guitar solos. Like Being There but way better!

Summerteeth has dated badly... would people agree? I think it has, especially when put beside YHF. Drums sound cock.

yeh but we're not allowed to tell anyone.