Albert Tatlock
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"I wanted to make a record that would be a really good headphone record"
Guess what - you did!
Pop & Hiss
The L.A. Times music blog
The secret production weapon on Wilco's 'The Whole Love'
September 19, 2011
Late in the recording process for 2009's "Wilco (The Album)," leader Jeff Tweedy placed a call that keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone was not expecting. Sansone was a five-year veteran of the Chicago-based act, having joined the band after its most volatile period had come to an end, and a decade worth of material already existed. It was Sansone whom Tweedy drafted to help him mix the album in Los Angeles.
"I needed somebody there and Pat seemed to speak up the most in that environment," Tweedy said while sitting in the band's loft-space kitchen on the Northwest side of Chicago. "If Pat is happy with the mix and I come in and do my thing, everything is going to be cool."
Sansone, however, admitted that he still felt like the "new guy" in Wilco, a feeling that has only gone away with the band's upcoming album, "The Whole Love," due in stores Sept. 27 (the album will be the subject of a Times feature to debut later this week). The band underwent a massive lineup overhaul between 2002's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and 2007's "Sky Blue Sky." With "The Whole Love," to be released on Wilco's own dBpm Records, in partnership with Silver Lake's Anti-, Wilco will have recorded three albums with the same lineup for the first time in its 17-year career.
"When I first joined, I don’t think I realized there would be some intense feelings from really die-hard fans about new people coming in," Sansone said. "I was greeted with a certain amount of suspicion by the populace. I tried not to get too involved in it. Once I became aware that was there, I didn’t want to get involved and have it color what I was doing or make me second-guess what I was doing."
For a band that doesn't sell millions of records, Wilco has been rather heavily scrutinized. A 2002 documentary, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," captured the split between Tweedy and his late songwriting partner Jay Bennett, as well as the band's rather public dismissal from Warner Music Group's Reprise Records. The current incarnation of Wilco made its debut with "Sky Blue Sky," an album that dialed down some of the band's guitar edginess and orchestral touches, instead focusing on soul-inspired songcraft.
"The Whole Love," however, is one of the band's most diverse collections yet. There's a funked-up, digitally enhanced rager ("Art of Almost"), a bass-heavy vintage rocker ("I Might"), haunted folk ("Rising Red Lung") and tracks with mini psychedelic symphonies ("Sunloathe," "Capitol City"). The album was produced by Tweedy, Sansone and Tom Schick, and early on, Tweedy made it clear that he wanted Sansone to be his studio equal.
"I have a real deep admiration for his abilities in the studio," Tweedy said. "Aside from that, I have a realistic awareness of my inability. I can’t stay focused for really long periods of time on details without losing sight of the big picture. I can’t lose sight of the big picture. I have to do everything I can to not lose sight of that. If I do, I just get completely lost and it doesn’t feel like a song anymore. There’s a real complement of those two abilities when Pat and I work together. He seems to have infinite stamina for the details."
Longtime Wilco fans may notice some similarities between "The Whole Love" and 1999's "Summerteeth," at least in its harmonic flourishes and lush, studio-driven sound. That's no surprise, knowing Sansone's abilities, as he plays with Wilco bassist John Stirratt in the Autumn Defense, a pure orchestral pop outfit.
"I can see why it would be tied to 'Summerteeth'," Sansone said. "The arrangements are very orchestral, and there’s a lot of embroidery around the arrangements. There’s kind of a Beatles-ish approach to some of the production.
"What made this exciting for me is I wanted to make a record that would be a really good headphone record. I felt like we’re the kind of band that could do that. There’s so much possibility in what we can all do, and what kind of colors we can create."
Tweedy said that Sansone hesitated at first to start ripping apart the songs destined for "The Whole Love," but that a little encouraging went a long way. Of course, Tweedy understood Sansone's tentativeness.
"It’s hard to come into a band eight years or so into its existence, especially a band that has had a certain amount of critical, if not commercial, success," Tweedy said. "I would imagine that if I were in those shoes, that would be inhibiting. You’re going to be the guy to stick your neck out? You're going to be the guy who destroyed Wilco in some idiot’s head?
"Over time, that’s bound to go away, but not without trying and not without a concerted effort to claim ownership and say, ‘That’s not the way it is. This is Wilco'."
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American Songwriter
4.5 / 5
http://www.americans...the-whole-love/
Wilco: The Whole Love
By Nick Zaino September 19th, 2011 at 9:56 am
When “Art of Almost” kicks off with what sounds like a high wind on an open microphone over a shuffling beat and a bubbling synth, it’s reasonable to think we’re heading back to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot territory. But the song that follows is, while not straightforward in its arrangement, a catchy, maybe even hummable tune. When the words run out, guitarist Nels Cline takes over, stretching a phrase tautly over is ambient background until the clouds burst around minute six.
That’s a pretty good indication of what the rest of The Whole Love is about. Jeff Tweedy continues to meld his melodic sensibilities with his band’s capacity for strange noises and unusual choices. IfWilco (The Album) was the band tempering their experimental nature into something more accessible, The Whole Love refines that approach and showcases the full range of Wilco’s considerable abilities.
“Art of Almost” runs just over seven minutes to open the album, and the twelve-minute marvel “One Sunday Morning (song for Jane Smiley’s boyfriend)” closes it. In between, the longest track is four minutes and three seconds. There is little fat on this album. Everything makes sense structurally, thematically, or melodically. Even “One Sunday Morning” is engaging all the way through. There is no chorus to speak of, just a sturdy verse and melody structure for the first eight minutes, and a story strong enough to carry it. The coda is like the closing credits to a satisfying movie.
Tweedy the lyricist is in fine form here. Often impressionistic, these songs don’t give up their secrets easily. But they are evocative, and give you an opening to explore, if you choose. What does Tweedy mean when he sings, “You won’t set the kids on fire/But I might” or “Do all lies have a taste?” Who knows, but it’s all right. On “Sunloathe,” Tweedy sings the beautiful turn of phrase, “I don’t want to lose this fight/I don’t want to end this fight/Goodbye.”
While you’re wondering what he meant by that last line, Tweedy can smack you with something straightforward and tie it all together. “Open Mind” might be the sweetest love song he’s ever written, and after pondering “the rogue waves of your brain” and what it would mean to disobey the dark, you get the gentle, earnest chorus, “Oh I can only dream the dreams we’d share/If you were so inclined/I would love to be the one to open up your mind.”
And for all the musical and lyrical absurdity Wilco embraces, they sure do love a good two-and-four rock and roll song. There are a few of them sprinkled through the album, including the warm and groovy “Whole Love” and “Dawned on Me.” Though drummer Glenn Kotche and bassist John Stirratt play with the beat, “Born Alone” has a straightforward, insistent pulse leading up to its marching chorus. And “Standing O” is the most rocking track on the album. It could be an anti-Emo anthem. How would you interpret the lines, “Instead I turn my mood on a dime/I’m finally off of my back/I come from a long, long line/I mope and I cry and attack.”
Tweedy also seems to be inviting more Beatles comparisons. “Capitol City” is a jaunty, McCartney-easque pop song that includes muffled transmissions, a la “Yellow Submarine.” “Sunloathe” is his “Because.” There are flourishes of classic 60s sounds all over the album, most notably on “I Might,” which features a happy organ sound that would be right at home with the Spencer Davis Group.
Gently arpeggiating acoustic guitars are at the core of “Black Moon” and “Rising Red Lung,” and they would sound fine in just that sort of arrangement. But with this particular group of players, how could they make music that was anything but sonically dense? Even the lighter songs are layered. There’s always something lurking in the background – a pedal steel sweeping, the vibrato of a Fender Rhodes, atmospheric guitar.
The Whole Love is the first release on Wilco’s dBpm Records, and it’s a hell of a start.
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Eagle Tribune - not a review but some words from Nels regarding making of the new one.
"breadbasket" - nice.
http://www.eagletribune.com/lifestyle/x2127773155/Wilco-lands-in-Boston-with-Whole-Love-tour
September 18, 2011Wilco lands in Boston with 'Whole Love' tour
By Alan Sculley
During Wilco's seven-studio-albums deep career, singer/guitarist Jeff Tweedy has been viewed as the musical brains behind the critically acclaimed band. But in talking to Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, it is immediately apparent that while Tweedy is the band leader and songwriter, other voices are being heard and honored in the recording studio.
When the new Wilco CD, "The Whole Love," hits shelves Sept. 27, fans will find that multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, in particular, had a big hand in helping make the record what it is.
"Well, Pat has a lot of ideas generally. I mean, he's very vocal," Cline said in a phone interview in advance of a Sept. 20 show in Boston.
"I think he was just so full of ideas, and I don't know, there was certainly not a spoken alliance that emerged with Jeff and Pat on this record," he said. "I think it was an organic one. But the next thing I knew, Jeff was kind of sitting back and letting Pat try anything and everything."
In the end, Sansone's contributions to "The Whole Love" were significant enough that he was given co-production credit, along with Tweedy and Tom Schick. This is the first time a band member other than Tweedy has been recognized as such on a Wilco CD, though the band as a whole has gotten production credit on several other recordings.
Tweedy formed Wilco in 1994 after the split of Uncle Tupelo, the influential country-inflected rock band that he co-fronted with Jay Farrar (now of Son Volt).
From the start Wilco was viewed as Tweedy's group. And a series of personnel changes that occurred prior to 2004 left Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt as the only remaining band members, further reinforcing the notion that Tweedy was running the whole Wilco show.
Cline, Sansone, drummer Glenn Kotche and keyboardist Mike Jorgensen complete a lineup that has been in place ever since 2004. Cline said a collaborative atmosphere in the studio has existed on all three CDs this lineup has recorded - 2007's "Sky Blue Sky," 2009's "Wilco (The Album)" and now "The Whole Love."
"There was a lot of freedom for sure and a lot of experimentation and a lot of ideas just put out there," Cline said of "The Whole Love" sessions. "We were able to see what made the cut without getting to precious about it."
As a result, some songs, such as "Art Of Almost" and "Sunloathe," underwent considerable transformations. But a couple of other songs — "Black Moon" and "One Sunday Morning (song for Jane Smiley's boyfriend)" — much of original demo recording was used on the finished track.
In the end, the 12 songs that made the cut for "The Whole Love" make up one of Wilco's more eclectic efforts. The record has gentle, largely acoustic tracks like "Black Moon" and the 12-minute "One Sunday Morning (song for Jane Smiley's boyfriend)." There are also several compact poppy rockers ("I Might," "Dawned On Me" and "Standing O") that feature immediately enticing hooks. A couple of other catchy songs stretch out a bit more with instrumental segments ("Born Alone" and "Art Of Almost").
Cline is very pleased with the finished CD.
"This record has some pretty strong bold rock with big choruses," he said. "It's not super heavy, but I think it still packs a punch. I think that's what I like about the sort of pop-rock songs on this record is that as poppy as they might be, they still have some crunch and a couple of good blows to the breadbasket."
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The Buddhist-esque lines in War on War. It's parts of the Tibetan book of the dead and other Buddhist texts alive in song!
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You have to learn how to die if you want to want to be alive.
I always thought that was from Tuesdays with Morrie
http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTuesdaysWithMorrie16.asp
Only seen the film myself - bit of a tear jerker :-)
... Oh, and apart from lots of the obvious, I love the fact that it had an engineer who could not be trusted with the demo tapes ;-)
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What's occurring on the 26th October?
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Great result for Ireland against my tournament tip Australia (well not counting the obvious favourites). They finally turned the switch to 'on' after trudging with form the last year.
If we can get out of the group that sets up a nice Ireland Wales quarter final - which means at least 1 northern hemisphere team in the semis. 4:30 am start tomorrow for Wales Samoa. It's going to be intense!
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This should get you vinyl peeps salivating ...
There's a glimpse of the insert artwork too.
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This discussion about the squeak reminds me of a discussion we had on here years ago about the little boing sound in "Far, Far Away" at the 2:39 mark. Ever since, I've never been able to hear that song without listening for it.
Ha - my work is done!
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Just noticed that the list of possible request songs is now much much bigger - perhaps it's now derived from the ex-wilcobase list of everything that's been played including covers. All sorts of weirdness there.
E.g. Easter Bunny Ditty anyone?
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Another Aussie review, and a mixed one in this case -The Vine
http://www.thevine.com.au/music/album-reviews/wilco-'the-whole-love'20110917.aspx
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The All Blacks Haka is one of the great moments of drama in sport.
Even better is when they play Samoa, Fiji, or Tonga, when both sides get their war chants going - though the actual playing invincibility of the All Blacks gives their Haka more weight.
This is actually a ruby league match, but you get the idea.
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Behind the scenes with the English squad. A bit slow to start, but quite funny - in spite of the fact that I'm Welsh a few of them look like good lads :-)
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Sydney Morning Herald
4.5 / 5
http://www.smh.com.a...0915-1ka65.html
Review: WilcoBernard Zuel
September 17, 2011
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Good god, this has been a stellar year for music. P.J. Harvey, Kanye West and Jay-Z, James Blake, Holly Throsby, Radiohead, Abbe May, Gurrumul, Fred Smith, the Unthanks, Ron Peno, Jamie Hutchings and Gillian Welch have made important - maybe even great - albums.
You can now add Wilco's eighth album to that list. Right at the very top, alongside Harvey.
It is no surprise The Whole Love is more than good, because they have been on a roll for some time and as a friend put it recently, 2009's Wilco (The Album) is the gift that just keeps giving. But this is the sound of a songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, and a band in complete control of their many and varied abilities.
If Wilco want to assay country rock or electronic pulse, if they feel like making a pop song one minute and a ballad the next, if they want to laugh at themselves then flip it to focus on weak points, well, they can. Hell, if they want to open the album with a drawled melody adorning a drone built on fuzzy electronics that cranks up to a Neu!-esque motorik beat then explodes, six minutes in, into a fabulous guitar wig-out for another minute, you can't complain.
And if they want to close the album with a 12-minute wonder that begins with acoustic guitar and almost reluctantly sung words chronicling a complex discussion on faith and hope, wanders through a verdant valley of mood and beauty as piano intervenes and leaves again through a slyly humorous country bass line that takes the listener beyond the horizon, well, dammit, be grateful.
As you can tell from the guitar in the opening song, Art of Almost, Wilco have addressed the only complaint I had about the last album: the relative diminution of the often spectacular work of guitarist Nels Cline. He and Tweedy spar and play marvellously, regularly, spiking up Born Alone like early '70s Eno and jumping on the seriously swinging glam of I Might as comfortably as they delicately work through the rootsy Whole Love. But then their playing is matched by John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Patrick Sansone and Mikael Jorgensen on the late Beatles-esque splendour of Sunloathe and Dawned on Me, the atmospheric warmth of Rising Red Lung and the eased-on-down of Black Moon and Open Mind. Then, as if to show off how good they are, adroitly manoeuvring through the double act late in the album of the speakeasy cabaret Capitol City (what Paul McCartney might call a song your mother would know) and the organ-pumped, jumping bit of new wave, Standing O, which should come with its own skinny black tie.
This is in a sense Wilco's White Album but with the brilliant consistency of Revolver. Yes, it's that good.
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Like the Sasquatch comments - was anyone here there?
http://online.wsj.co...3459206104.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
SEPTEMBER 16, 2011
Playing in the Rockers' Clubhouse.
By JOHN JURGENSEN
As a kid, Jeff Tweedy watched "The Monkees" and pictured a rock 'n' roll group as a clubhouse full of musical pals. For the past decade, the headquarters for the 44-year-old singer's band, Wilco, has been a sprawling loft space on Chicago's North Side. A pinball machine in the kitchen and some wooden bunkbeds are among the boyish touches. Otherwise, the setting—a recording studio, racks upon racks of instruments, and a full floor of merchandise and touring gear upstairs—attests to the maturation of Wilco's career since 1994, when Mr. Tweedy started the group from the splinters of Uncle Tupelo, the influential alt-country group he'd led with Jay Farrar.
In 2002, the album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" marked a commercial turning point for Wilco when it landed with wide critical acclaim, a revealing documentary film and a juicy industry back story (the hit record had been initially rejected by Wilco's label, only to be bought and released by another label under the same parent company). At the time, however, Mr. Tweedy was in the midst of a personal slide. In 2004, the songwriter went to rehab for an addiction to painkillers. On the new Wilco album "The Whole Love," due Sept. 27, Mr. Tweedy sings about the seesaw between exuberance and despair in songs that veer from raw folk confessionals to red-blooded rockers. He recently discussed his new songs, the struggle to remember his old songs and Wilco's worst moment on stage.
The Wall Street Journal: How do you know it's time to start a new album? Is it just a critical mass of new songs?
Mr. Tweedy:Before this album we gave ourselves a much larger break [from touring] than we probably have forever. I know for a fact that playing those old songs and tending to that catalog takes a lot of mental energy. Maybe there's more anxiety about that than coming up with new material. I was feeling like everything I was writing felt fresher, then a couple of solo acoustic shows snuck up on me and I thought, "I can't even think of the names of any of my songs." But I did the show and everything was fine. That helped dispel that myth.
Does that challenge just come down to remembering the chord changes and lyrics, or is it more abstract?
It's an abstract, like an anxiety dream. The act is so familiar but you can't quite picture it unless you're up there doing it. There's definitely muscle memory. If I start to forget a lyric, I know that the faster I can look away from it, the faster it will come. Fortunately, our audience is pretty forgiving of me forgetting words. You get older and realize, if one show was going to take the band down, it would have happened already, because there've been plenty that would have warranted that reaction from the public.
What was Wilco's worst show ever?
The first time we played the Sasquatch festival [in 2005]. We went on after Arcade Fire, who were just becoming huge at the time. And they are so anthemic. And they're climbing on the scaffolding and they're out in the audience beating drums. It was berserk. It was like having your ass handed to you by, like, Cirque du Soleil. Then we went out and all our microphone lines had been patched in backwards. So there was high-hat coming through my vocal monitor and nothing else. Or keyboard blaring out of the drum monitor. You couldn't make things worse for a band onstage than that. What do you do? Do you stop? It was terrible. But I have met people who say, "I saw you at Sasquatch and it was great." OK, you must be deaf, I'm assuming.
Why did you open the album with the song "Art of Almost"? It's more than seven minutes long and features a frenzied rock breakdown.
It's pretty much invariably the case for Wilco records to have the first song dictate the critical shorthand that comes along with it. "Sky Blue Sky" is the mellow record; it starts with "Either Way." "Wilco (The Album)" is the funny record; it starts with "Wilco (The Song)." So that's one reason it's ideal to put ["Art of Almost"] first, because I don't know what people are really going to make of it.
"Born Alone" is just one of the songs on the album that makes reference to drugs. Musically, the song descends into a spiral but doesn't come back out.
I find that song really joyous, but I do see how on paper it's really dire. My mom told me something that I struggled with my whole life: "You're born alone and you die alone. So you should get used to being alone." And that's just terrible advice. That song felt to me like the first time in my life when I said, that's bulls—. I don't need to be fearful of being alone, or being with people. So the song gets to the end, and that rock catharsis—it's the best strategy I've come up with for consolation.
You've been playing music with your sons [spencer, 15, and Sam, 11], and put out a single as the Raccoonists.
We listen to rough Wilco mixes in the car and they say, "Why are you singing like that, Dad? Is that the finished vocal?" They love the music, but they're pretty merciless. But when we play it's really just playing. It's play. There's not that big a difference between the way the Raccoonists work and the way Wilco works. We'll go downstairs and not talk about exactly what we want to do, until something starts sounding good. Then we'll press "record."
What's the best career decision you've made along the way?
The best business decisions all boil down to us not being willing to crawl across cut glass to live outside our own means. Indie rock has kind of won. Meaning that there are still big-time movers and shakers, but for the most part nobody's going out there with the million-dollar videos and the huge tour budgets. That wasn't really ever offered to us that much, but looking at other bands and friends, it always seemed to be the thing that killed them. Wanting more than they had, faster than they could really get it. Maybe that's just touring in a bus, or having a hotel room every night. For us, it meant just not owing anyone a bunch of money.
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Toronto.com
http://www.toronto.com/article/698388?bn=1
Jeff Tweedy’s take on Black Eyed Peas trips up Wilco albumBy Nick Krewen
Special to the Star
Sep 14, 2011
A few days after becoming a YouTube viral sensation with his surprising acoustic guitar recitatives of the Black Eyed Peas hits “I Gotta Feeling,” “Rock That Body” and “My Humps,” Wilco principal Jeff Tweedy is still feeling somewhat shell-shocked.
“It’s kind of mortifying, mostly,” comments Tweedy from his Chicago home town, 10 days prior to his band’s weekend residency at Massey Hall September 16-17 to preview its latest album The Whole Love, out Sept. 27.
“I didn’t have any anticipation of that at all. I didn’t even expect people to be filming it.”
Tweedy, whose exploits was trumpeted by gossip website TMZ.com among others, says he specifically performed at the local book launch of author Dan Sinker, whose work The F--king Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel, “asks Jeff Tweedy of his imaginary world to play Black Eyed Peas covers. So I’d thought I’d give it a shot.”
The 44-year-old Tweedy hopes that he didn’t give the wrong impression about his take on the music of Will.I.Am, Fergie and company.
“I certainly didn’t mean to make it look like I was making that much fun of the Black-Eyed Peas — I really wasn’t,” insists Wilco’s chief singer and songwriter.
“I was more bemused at my inability to pull it off,” he laughs. “I’m unhappy if anybody thinks I was trying to make fun of anybody else’s music in a mean way. I felt more like I was poking fun at myself.”
“But it really f--ked up the rollout of our new record.”
Wilco’s eighth (if you exclude the Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Billy Bragg) and latest studio album, The Whole Love, is as stylistically different as each of its predecessors: the 12-song grab bag runs the gamut from electronic rock jams (“Art of Almost”) and booming alternative folk (“I Might”) to ghostly balladry (“Sunloathe”) and country odes (“One Sunday Morning”).
Tweedy admits that although there’s usually no grand conceptual plan associated with creating his band’s albums, the early stages of The Whole Love recording sessions leaned at times toward a sound a lot closer to the alt-country classic A.M., the band’s 1995 debut and first after Tweedy dissolved the influential late ’80s outfit Uncle Tupelo he’d founded with Jay Farrar.
“There was some idea early on that there were two different types of records that we could make — a rock type record and then a more acoustic, folk and country record,” Tweedy concedes. “But at some point, that notion just stopped making sense when the songs themselves started making more sense together.
“I think it’s either due to our inability to focus and be disciplined that they all end up making the same record, or a more honest representation of the band and what we like to do. The latter is probably more the case.”
There was another transition that Tweedy and bandmates John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Nels Cline and Patrick Sansone experienced between 2009’s Wilco (The Album) and The Whole Love: a departure from The Warner Music Group and a chance to form their own label, dBpm Records.
But Tweedy says the perception of artistic emancipation is solely a public one.
“Whether we’ve warranted it or not, we’ve felt pretty free to do we’ve wanted for a pretty long time,” he explains. “There hasn’t been a label presence in the recording studio with us since (1999’s) Summerteeth.
“Putting out the record ourselves is where I feel the biggest difference. It’s been really fun to let the process be a bit smaller and more manageable. On a business level, there’s not a lot of monetary waste. We aren’t sharing a big chunk of the pie with somebody where we think we’re doing a lot of their work.”
He also says there’s no hidden references behind Wilco’s cover of Nick Lowe’s “I Love My Label” — the B-side of their new single “I Might” — to their previous label situation. Nor is it the reason they landed Lowe as a warm-up act for 14 of their 24-show tour, including the Massey dates.
“We loved that Nick Lowe song, and we recorded it sincerely without irony,” says Tweedy. “The touring is just a whim. We’re big fans, and we were wondering if it was even possible that he might be interested in doing it, and he was into it. So we’re absolutely thrilled — shocked, actually — that he’s going to be on the road with us.”
Tweedy’s next Toronto appearance occurs sooner than later: he’s booked for Feist’s invite-only concert at the Glenn Gould Studio on October 8 to celebrate the CBC’s 75th anniversary and introduce her new album Metals.
Although he sang “You And I” with Feist for Wilco’s last effort, Tweedy isn’t sure what his guest role will be.
“I don’t know anything other than Leslie invited me to come play and that it was really cool of her to think of me,” says Tweedy. “She’s so generous with her time with Wilco and joining us on stages around the world and on TV shows. It was really an honour to get invited, so I’ll be there with bells on.”
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Spin 8 / 10
http://www.spin.com/reviews/wilco-whole-love-dbpm
And that photo is doing the rounds
Twelve years ago, Jeff Tweedy sang, "I dreamt about killing you again last night, and it felt all right to me." Now it's, "You won't set the kids on fire / Oh, but I might." Ideally, he's speaking to the same person. Whoever has been dismissing Wilco as "dad rock" must have pretty complicated relationships with their fathers.
Maybe there was a sense, with 2007's postaddiction comedown Sky Blue Sky and 2009's self-consciously cheeky Wilco (The Album), that these guys were settling into middle age with a sigh and a wink. Or maybe the fact that they'd learned to do more than one thing well somehow suggested MOR pandering. In any event, The Whole Love feels more of a piece with 1999's Summerteeth, the caustic pop opus on which Tweedy sped away from alt-country (or y'allternative, No Depression, whatever) in a car far sleeker (and blacker) than the one Hank Williams supposedly died in.
Amiably skronky, seven-minute kitchen-sink opener "Art of Almost" aside, there is a concerted effort to mothball the experimental tangents of recent years in favor of laconic twang, organ-driven garage pop, and tempered balladry. This is not to say there aren't moments of dissonance -- "I kill my memories with a cheap disease," goes the psych-lite lament "Sunloathe" -- but now Tweedy's showing off his journal, not his record collection. Dad's never cooler than when he's not trying to be.
By Steve Kandell
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Quick review of the show here:
http://indianapolis.m.metromix.com/mobile/music/article/wilco-launches-tour-on/2818162/content
Same words, different layout, with 9 pics too
Nick looks like a mix of Ronnie Barker and Harry Worth these days
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As of a few hours ago, Willy Vlautin and the guys from Richmond Fontaine at a free record store show. Nothing memorable to report other than just wanting to confirm what nice guys they are, and as a Brit Willy has such an exotic accent to my ears
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Not so full, but here you go:-
http://www.montrealg...4463/story.html
Talking with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy: the full Q&ABY JORDAN ZIVITZ, THE GAZETTE SEPTEMBER 13, 2011
MONTREAL - Wilco is releasing its new album, The Whole Love, on Sept. 27 on its own label, dBpm Records. The band will be previewing the new songs in Montreal on Sunday, Sept. 18 at Metropolis, 59 Ste. Catherine St. E. Tickets for the show cost $39.50; call 514-790-1245 or order at www.admission.com.
The Gazette’s Jordan Zivitz recently spoke to Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy (here's a link to that story). Here’s a transcript of the interview.
Gazette: I have to ask about this, because I’m a huge Rush nerd and the band became a bit of a running joke at your solo show here earlier this year: At the show, you mentioned almost meeting Neil Peart in Toronto. What happened there?
Jeff Tweedy: Well, he was scheduled to be on the George Popolopolopo-whatever-his-name-is show; they film a couple of them in one day, and so he was on the next show but he wasn’t there yet and I had to leave. There was no big deal, but it was pretty exciting and I was excited to get an autograph for Glenn (Kotche, Wilco’s drummer), because he’s a huge fan and the band itself overall is populated with pretty major Rush fans.
Gazette: I loved the bit of The Spirit of Radio that you plunked out at the show. I was hoping you were going to go all the way with that.
Tweedy: (Laughs) Yeah, I love Rush and I have a deep appreciation of them as people and as a band, more so now than when I was growing up, being a punk rock fan and there being a line in the sand at least at some point. And I heard it so much growing up around St. Louis – it was such a huge, huge thing that I was repelled by it. But I’ve always had a soft spot, maybe in a closeted kind of way, and I don’t have anything at this point in my life that I consider a guilty pleasure. I think that Rush has certainly earned their place, and I actually see a lot of similarities now in the way that they’ve existed … I mean, certainly we haven’t had the massive success that they’ve had, but there’s something really familiar to me about them. (Laughs) I just think that they’re nerds, and I feel like Wilco’s full of nerds, so I think that that’s probably the same thing.
Gazette: Have you always felt like that in Wilco? I think the general perception of you guys, maybe through the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot drama, is that you’re much more rebellious than nerdy.
Tweedy: (Laughs) Oh, nerds can be rebellious. It’s all about alienation, and I think that that’s a more appropriate term for it than rebelliousness. I think there’s just alienation, and I still feel fairly alienated. To be honest, I don’t see Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – the saga that has been so well publicized – as being a story of much rebellion. I see it as being a story of just doing what you’re supposed to do. I don’t think you’re supposed to change your record because somebody says the bottom line isn’t going to be favourable enough, you know? (Laughs)
Gazette: Would you still feel that way if tweaking Summerteeth like you were told to had paid off in a way that it didn’t? Would that maybe have made you more amenable to making changes to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot afterward when they came to you with similar requests?
Tweedy: Ah, that’s a pretty tough stretch for me. I knew that was never going to happen. (Laughs) When it was happening, I was pretty much sure that was never going to happen. Nobody ever really gave any indication that they were doing anything other than just f---ing with us, you know? There was never any serious interest, I don’t think. Let me put it this way: I don’t think there was ever anybody at Reprise Records that thought that Wilco was going to become a sensation. (Laughs) Like it was the goose that laid the golden eggs and we should put all our money in this basket here. That was not the case. But no, actually if it had somehow panned out where the hoops we jumped through turned into a massive hit record, I think I would have taken that opportunity to say, “Well, we have a massive hit record, so you can’t tell us what to do.” (Laughs) I think it would have gone the same way, actually.
Gazette: So were you ever tempted during that period to start your own label, like you’ve done now, or was it something that just wouldn’t have been viable for you until now?
Tweedy: It would have been an option at that point and time, but I don’t think we were really prepared for it, and I think the Internet being a part of how music is distributed wasn’t quite where it is now as well. In a way, we kind of did do that: we didn’t have a label, but we streamed our music and did what we’ve been doing for so long to take care of ourselves: touring. And I guess we could have done that indefinitely if nothing else had panned out. But I think from that point on, we worked hard at figuring out ways to be more and more self-sufficient and having a say, if not providing the services for ourselves that labels traditionally provide. And over time I felt like we were taking on so much of those responsibilities that when our deal ended with Nonesuch, it didn’t seem like there was any way that it was ever going to be fair to do another traditional record deal when the division of labour just didn’t work the way traditional record deals are usually structured. And we found a label, Anti, to collaborate with that was more than understanding about that traditional disparity not being something that’s going to work anymore. (Laughs) Not just for us, but maybe in general. There’s a label that understands that maybe a smaller piece of the pie is better than no piece of the pie. Because a lot of artists don’t really need a label presence as much anymore. They may need distribution, but even that is becoming less and less of an issue.
Gazette: I wanted to ask you about the way the album was recorded, because I know that at one point you were talking about a double record or two records released simultaneously. When it looked like that was going to be happening, did they each have their own identity, like when Springsteen did that not-very-good pair of albums in the early 1990s?
Tweedy: I don’t know if I’m that familiar with those records, but yeah, I think ours had very, very distinct personalities. It was maybe even schizophrenic – I don’t know if they sounded like they were from the same band. And I guess the irony of that is that most of the songs ended up on the same record. Really, it is a double record, if you think in terms of LPs – it’s going to be on two LPs. But yeah, one record was much more languid, sort of atmospheric country-folk songs and one record was a lot more exuberant – I call it obnoxious pop music, but when I say “obnoxious,” people think of Ke$ha or something. I mean obnoxious in the sense of the Seeds or the Sonics – a garage-band kind of obnoxiousness.
Gazette: Is that why you sampled the Stooges’ T.V. Eye for I Might?
Tweedy: (Laughs) No, that wasn’t an effort to tie it into that obnoxiousness – it was more that that lyric, every time I tried to sing it, that’s what I heard in my head. I wanted to be able to sing “brother” exactly the way Iggy Pop sang “brother” on T.V. Eye. And since I couldn’t do it, we called in the cavalry. (Laughs)
Gazette: On that song in particular, and Art of Almost and maybe a few others, it sounds like you were going for word association with the lyrics. Was that the case?
Tweedy: No, those songs and maybe a few others, the process is more like translation than any other process I could make an analogy for. I grunt and make noises and sounds that I think sound like what lyrics would sound like if I had any, and then I go and listen to them over and over and over and over again until it sounds like words, and then I write them down.
Gazette: So you’re basically transcribing grunts?
Tweedy: Yeah, basically. I try not to stand in the way too much – if I start thinking about meaning, it really derails the process.
Gazette: Regarding the other, more straightforward type of lyrics on the album: I guess you’ve been getting this question, but the parenthetical title of One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend) – are you willing to talk about how the song ties in with Jane Smiley’s boyfriend? Is he the condemning figure in the song, or maybe the condemned figure?
Tweedy: No, not at all. I do regret having that subtitle, to be honest, at this point, because it really doesn’t have much to do with … it has virtually nothing to do with Jane Smiley, but I do absolutely know her boyfriend as an acquaintance and as somebody who I enjoyed my time with, in particular one conversation we had. Mostly what I was getting at in the lyrics was to try and illustrate what I felt was poignant about that conversation, without getting into any specifics. But no, he’s not the condemning figure and he’s actually a very warm and generous-spirited guy. I really loved hanging out with him.
Gazette: Musically, it sounds like the instrumental section at the end of that song could have gone on for another 20 minutes without running out of steam. This sounds kind of stupid, but how do you know when a song is finished?
Tweedy: Well, on the LP, it goes on for another two minutes and then it ends. And I guess that’s just the musical intuition. (Laughs) On the CD, we rounded it off I guess because … I don’t know, just to make a roughly 60-minute CD, I guess. I can’t remember why we rounded it off on the CD. On the LP, we put another song on that side so that it wasn’t just a super-short side, and we let the song go another two minutes so that it’s more of a healthy LP side. I don’t know why we played the song so long to begin with. I had to write a bunch more lyrics to make it work. It just felt very hypnotic and beautiful, and the longer we played it, the more it felt like some spell was being cast, and that’s one of those moments you live for as a musician, to have everything disappear and be rooted in that moment. I just feel like I got to participate in something beautiful, and there it is. (Laughs)
Gazette: I guess not just that song, but with a lot of your songs I wonder how you know when to hang it up and move on. Like Art of Almost – the first time I heard it, it sounded so counterintuitively arranged until little bits started popping out every subsequent listen. Is that, or any other song on the album, one that you could have kept fiddling with infinitely?
Tweedy: I don’t know. I think you stay pretty open to what the shape of a song could be. Hopefully you’re going to be surprised and excited by what starts to emerge out of basically this raw material of chord progression and melody and lyrics. And I think if you’re not too married to steering the ship, if you just stay open to it, a really strong shape starts to emerge. And I guess in a band of six people, it’s kind of amazing that at some point we all start to see it. We all start to see simultaneously where this song is going and how it’s going to work. And then you just do your best to finish it – make it as good as it can be. But yeah, that song was like a collage or something. We worked on it off and on for several months. But I think fairly early on it took this shape that we just wanted to hone in on. I mean, I could use a really, really pretentious analogy, but I think it’s fitting: Inuit carvers pick up a piece of stone, and they start carving not knowing what animal is inside of it. And when they get to a certain point, it becomes obvious to them that, oh, they’re making a walrus, or this is a caribou or whatever. That’s kind of what I’m describing: you just get lost in the process, and eventually something starts to emerge. It’s like those Magic Eye posters. (Laughs)
Gazette: Has it always been that way with this lineup of the band, or on Sky Blue Sky or Wilco (The Album) were there times when all six of you were chipping away and one of you made a whale’s tail while another person was carving a unicorn’s horn?
Tweedy: I think all you have to do is listen to the records to know the answer to that question. (Laughs) There’s a fair amount of uni-whales in the Wilco catalogue. It doesn’t always work. But luckily there’s nothing really dangerous about making a bad song and putting it out into the world. It’s not going to kill anybody, and you’re certainly in good company: more people have made bad songs than good songs, and probably a lot of good people have made more bad songs than great songs.
Gazette: The thing that leaped out at me the most listening to The Whole Love was how much of Nels Cline’s guitar is on this album. Which really surprised me – not because I didn’t think he was capable of it, but because he was more restrained on the last two albums, especially Sky Blue Sky. Did he have to restrain himself on those earlier albums because those were the types of songs you were writing, or given his choice would he have been soloing all over the place?
Tweedy: No, that’s never Nels’s inclination. Nels’s inclination is almost always atmospheric, and a lot of things that he really enjoys doing are kind of like camouflaging the guitar, and being really sensitive to the song and being sympathetic to the chords. His inclination is not to shred, and a lot of times he has to be coaxed to shred. But I do think that somehow the balance that we achieved with this record was maybe the first time that the material and the process all lended itself to everybody really playing to their strengths. And that is maybe most audible in Nels’s contributions, but at the same time I can hear everybody’s personality and what everybody brought to each record maybe more than other people, because I was there. But yeah, I’m happy that people hear that, and I guess it’s “give people what they want” in this case. It wasn’t a conscious effort, but I do understand that that’s what a lot of people want to hear from Nels.
Gazette: Was it a case where it took seven years for this lineup to reach a point where everybody could play to their strengths in the studio? Did it take this long for everybody to feel each other out?
Tweedy: (Long pause) Yes and no. I’m not condemning any of the previous records that we’ve made together; I’m very proud of them. And I don’t agree with any of the common criticisms I’ve seen. I personally don’t get a lot of it …
Gazette: And that’s not what I was trying to hint at; I really like Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album).
Tweedy: But those records have taken a lot more hits than a lot of other Wilco records have. And that’s partially because the band has gotten bigger and more people weigh in – I don’t know, whatever reason. But what I was going to say is that there is something about being a band and playing so many shows together and having this longevity – you just waste a lot less time talking about things. Basically, musical intuition gets enhanced. That’s the only way I can describe it, is just a musical intuition you can’t force early on even if you are working and have chemistry together and you have a sympathetic arrangement musically. (Pause) And I think about the people who came into the band later – my assessment is that it maybe took a little bit longer for them to shed some of the inhibitions about what it is they’re joining, and not feel like they’re going to destroy some legacy or some crazy idea that this is something other than what they’re contributing to. Like they have to honour something. I guess there’s a healthy amount of irreverence, and maybe a certain amount of ownership – that this is just as much them as it is anybody else in Wilco – and maybe that’s what took time to get to and I think has finally been achieved on this record.
© Copyright © The Montreal Gazette
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First two artificial intelligence robots to be connected to each other end up having an argument. Well, it made me laugh.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14843549
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Coming to the UK in November. At last! It's been 8 years or so ...
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Brilliant, but can he crimp?
I thought the Whole Love was Revolveresque...
in Just A Fan
Posted
Leggy Mountbatten will surely sue!