Blackberry Rust

I was there! We'd come over from Adelaide for the third night. This was the first time I'd seen Wilco in *checks notes* ...21 years. Over a decade ago, I regularly pass on making the trip over to the eastern states thinking: "Oh, they'll include Adelaide on the next tour..or the one after that." After passing us again on the 2013 tour, I was ready to commit to a Melbourne or Sydney trip, not knowing that it would be over ten years before they'd dip down to the Antipodes once again. I really feel for New Zealand and Perth who missed out completely. I thought it was an excellent gig.

Damn, that's a great track! One thing I've enjoyed about "Evicted" and especially "Cousin" is that Jeff's writing solid bridges/middle-eights into songs again. Less verse/chorus/verse; more verse/chorus/weird twist/chorus/verse.

Strong Cate Le Bon influence on that.

It's been ten long years...no Adelaide (their only visit was in 2003) so looks like Melbourne is the go. https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/music-reads/music-news/wilco-announce-australian-tour-2024-dates-tickets-leah-senior/102841264 Wed 13 March - Princess Theatre: Turrbal Jagera Land, Brisbane Fri 15 March - Canberra Theatre: Ngunnawal, Canberra Sun 17 March - The Forum: Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Melbourne Thrs 21 March - Sydney Opera House: Gadigal Land, Sydney

Via a Hoffmann Music Forum user: From Uncut: 9/10 review: “If there’s any criticism to be leveled at Le Bon’s production work, it’s that her fingerprints are often audibly all over the albums she produces. However, that’s not the case here: Cousin is deliciously weird and intoxicatingly angular, but it still sounds like a Wilco album, not a Le Bon collaboration. There are crisp drums, bone-dry guitars and woozy synths – of course – but as always with Wilco the material is the thing. No matter how strange they get, these songs could all be played on acoustic guitar, and indeed Tw

Absolutely delighted (and relieved) an external producer has been brought in. Over the moon that the producer is Cate Le Bon, who - IMO - is one of the most interesting and compelling artists out there at the moment. As for the preview track: breezy and mid-tempo (as per usual since Schmilco), however the production touches are really nice. The stacked guitar/keyboard counterpoint moments in the chorus/outro are pure Cate Le Bon, so that bodes really well for the rest of the album.

I am absolutely stoked that "Soldier Child" made the cut. This bodes very, very well.

Any Australians here? I ordered the CD version SDE via the AU Wilco Store back in April and prior to receiving the advice that the release had been delayed to 30/9, the method of delivering pre-release tracks has been through SendOwl. It's been a day now and there's been no notification from the web store as to what's happening re: mp3s. Anyone in the same boat? Advice?

Hints - "Rivers rounding ridges in our fingerprints" That's an absolute pearler, Jeff. Reminds of some of the most beautiful semi-surreal and poetic Wilco/Tweedy lyrics from songs like "She's A Jar", "Chinese Apple", "Panthers", et. al.

So, thoughts on the album - it's a bit on the long side: I'll be upfront and say that I'm simply thankful for Cruel Country because it's given us "Country Song Upside Down". When this landed behind the paywall on Starship Casual, I must have listened to it repeatedly on a loop for at least 30 times. For me, it's one of the most beautiful, perfect songs that Wilco's ever recorded. I remember hearing it and being astonished. Everything about it is perfect: its length, lyrics, delivery, the instrumentation. A world within a world within two-and-a-half-minutes. That instrumentation: th

The album's really, really good (more thoughts later) and I'm watching the live stream from Solid Sound from here in little old Adelaide, SA. These live renditions really bring some of the more subdued songs to life. Can we also please have a round for Pat? His playing on this album and on stage at Solid Sound is nothing short of brilliant.

I think it's the strongest of the bunch so far, and that's really saying something!

Great! Yeah, it's got a very Byrds-y feel to it - really emulating Roger McGuinn's 12-string style. Speaking of the Byrds, if I were to place a pin of where I think Cruel Country is sitting, what I've heard/read so far is firmly planting it in late-period 1969-1972 Byrds territory (Ballad of Easy Rider, Untitled, Byrdmaniax, Farther Along) with some Gram Parsons and Jackson Browne vibes. Given McGuinn and the Byrds are a big influence on Tweedy that's not really a surprise. A fifth pre-release track, "Country Song Upside-Down" just dropped behind the paywall on Starship Casual and

Read somewhere that it's definitely Pat on the left channel playing a Telecaster with a Parsons/White B-bender. Certainly suited more to Pat's background. Brilliant guitarist in my opinion, his 12-string solo on Emma Swift's Dylan cover of "Queen Jane Approximately" (Blonde On The Tracks) demonstrates just how good his sense of phrasing and space is.

Based on that review and the preview of the tracks I've heard so far, I'm getting very excited about the new album. For me, "Tired Of Taking It Out On You" expresses some of the things I liked the most about Sky Blue Sky and WTA. I really hear a lot of 90's/2000's Neil Young in it. There's such a richness and warmth to these arrangements and Tweedy's singing with a really gritty, throaty, open-voiced tenor, which we haven't heard on record in AGES. The review's mentions of synths and a little skronk also allay any concerns I might have had about this being a one-note genre exercise. Bring it

Heh, heh - Glenn still looks like he's 25. Something that came to mind about the overtly countri-fied pitch with this one is that - to my mind - there will hopefully be a lot more for Pat (and even Mikael) to do. Aside from the muted vocal delivery on the last two records, something that irked me a little about Schmilco and Ode To Joy was the lack of more fleshed out arrangements with some prominent guitar and keys counterpointing and harmonising the songs. Both Pat and Mikael can play and do really interesting things and I just feel like their roles had been diminished somewhat by

Marvellous artwork! Excited!

I am really hoping that some of the demoes that were behind the paywall at Starship Casual make it as actual cuts on this album, especially "Lou Reed Was My Babysitter" and "Soldier Child". If that's the case, it's going to be wild.

I imagine so! I checked in here around 7am (ACST) so - for the sake of precision - that's about 5:30pm (GMT-4)? I'll just go on record and say that this is the most surprising single they've dropped in a long, long time.

I could listen to it here in Australia. That's some good stuff and a genuine stylistic surprise! So much twang going on..I immediately had Merle Haggard's "Workingman's Blues" come to mind. Based on the little tidbits via Starship Casual and Glenn's Instagram, I suspect we're in for something fairly eclectic, which is really, really exciting.

The hints I've seen of the new album - mostly via Glenn's beat-a-week contributions - look promising. A lot of my love for Wilco since YHF has centred around Glenn's creative drum work. Overall, I'm hoping for something a bit more dynamically variable than the last couple of albums. Less waltzes and whispery vocals would be welcome as well, though I really liked Ode To Joy and thought it was the best, cohesive work they'd produced since Sky Blue Sky or WTA. On A Ghost Is Born and the drone on "Less Than You Think", personally I think it's essential to the pacing of the album and is

My two-cents. From a sound-nerd perspective - and consistent with what chisoxjtrain alluded to - the mixing process of YHF is a bit of an outlier in Wilco's catalogue. So much of why the album sounds like it does is because of Jim O'Rourke's amazing editing work, where he stripped back multiple layers and paced arrangements and sections; essentially decomposing everything and rebuilding the songs back up with Jeff and (I think) Glenn present at the tiny SOMA studio. This is one of the critical parts of the making of YHF that regrettably never got a look in during the filming of I A

So, my pre-order should arrive tomorrow here in AU, but in fevered anticipation (driven by the positive hype) I've been up tonight so it landed on Spotify at the crack of midnight. What I can say is that this is certainly their most interesting, complex and dark release since A Ghost Is Born, and for me that's a very, very good thing. It's deeply affecting as well. And, ohh..this is a very, very good album. Whilst it shares production similarities with Schmilco and Tweedy's WARM(ER), it's far more sonically rich and has a depth that was absent on those records. Furthermore, Ode To Joy represen

Absolutely brilliant show - on par with some of the most enjoyable gigs I've ever been to. Given it had been 16 years since I last saw Wilco/Tweedy, my anticipation levels were pretty high and this was certainly worth the wait. The setlist was great and the banter with a *mostly* respectful and appreciative crowd was excellent and genuinely hilarious. Whilst there wasn't any heckling per se, I was right next to the woman (close to stage left) who made things a bit too much about her on a couple of occasions - requesting "Reservations" three times, telling Jeff it's just an "existential crisis"

Really enjoying these reviews - thanks! A nice taste (perhaps) for what's to come in Adelaide tomorrow!