Thanks for all that info!  it's funny about sitting since everything I've seen about the festival emphasizes dancing.  Looks similar to a hippie or jam band festival from their vids.

 

Our plan is to stay Downtown (not exactly sure where yet, though we definitely plan to hit up the Forks area) and take the shuttle to the festival.  Not sure which days we'll go to the festival.   It's possible we'll rent a car so we have more flexibility.

 

I'll hit you up again as the date approaches.  Maybe we can meet up at the festival.  Would be fun to meet a VC'er in person.

Have any of you been to this festival?   We're flying up from Atlanta to Winnipeg while this is going on and bought four day tickets.  We'll probably only go two days. depending on the schedule.

 

Anyway, looks like a really fun festival with a wide variety of music.  This will be the eighth province we've visited.

 

Any tips?  Winnipeg tips in general?

17 hours ago, Brian F. said:

I really love both Cruel Country and Cousin, especially compared to Schmilco and Ode to Joy, and my understanding is that the former albums were both products of collaboration more so than the latter two (former/latter referring to my preceding sentence, not the release dates of the albums), so I'm not sure I get the pre- and post-Star Wars demarcation. I actually think Star Wars-Schmilco-Ode to Joy is the low point of the band's catalog, regardless of how those albums came together. If I were ranking the albums, those would probably be Nos. 11, 12 and 13, with a big gap between whatever No. 10 is and No. 11.

 

My problem with Ode to Joy is that it feels more like an intellectual exercise than an attempt to create enjoyable songs. A lot of it seems to be Glenn deconstructing rhythm to the point where the songs have no momentum or sense of anything pulling them forward. When that album came out, I listened to it every day for about six months to try to uncover what it had to offer. When I went back to it again a couple of years later, several of the songs barely even seemed familiar to me. That's how little of an impression they made despite hundreds of listens.

 

I have similar feelings about Ode to Joy.  I didn't come close to giving it as many chances as you, but I listened to it plenty, saw them on the tour (their choice to open with two aggressively morose songs lends credence to your observation that it felt like an intellectual exercise), kept trying for quite a while after, watched Glenn explain all his beats (I'm a drummer, so normally this kind of thing will hook me), tried to convince myself that I was starting to dig certain things about it.  But I just couldn't get there with it, and eventually gave up.

23 hours ago, lost highway said:

 

 

 how the songs are dressed, not how they're structured. 

 

This is a good way to put it.  I recall some years back Tweedy had a bee in his bonnet about people's reaction to the production on YHF and AGIB, and he was insistent that his songs could be played by him alone with an acoustic guitar.  And he proved it by going on solo tours and doing exactly that.  

 

But I think that statement has painted him into a corner.  I'm not particularly interested in hearing what one guy from a six piece band can do on his own.  I want to hear what six incredible artists can do when they work together to create pieces of music that none of them could perform on their own.  The idea that every song, no matter what the other five people play on it, can be stripped down to an acoustic guitar and one voice seems like such a self-limiting concept. 

20 hours ago, Brian F. said:

 

 

Thirty bucks for a 17-minute EP in a plain brown sleeve is a ridiculous price

 

 

This seems to be merch table price at a lot of bands that operate on this level.  I saw Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives last week, and their vinyl was $35.  I'm sure I could have found it for $20-ish in a record shop or online.  If I was still an active buyer of vinyl, I wouldn't have paid that price.  I mostly only buy vinyl now at gigs, and I figure the premium helps them way more than buying it from Amazon or a record store would.  But yeah, vinyl process have gotten ridiculous.

On 7/6/2024 at 9:32 PM, TCP said:

Just wanted to pop in and say I like the EP a lot. Livid is a ton of fun and I agree it could have been longer. While I have no issues with Jeff's voice these days, I've been saying this for awhile, and this EP only convinces me more, that Wilco should do an instrumental album. Or at least an album more focused on instrumentation. Jeff has a lot of outlets for his songwriting these days, which is fantastic because he's an incredibly consistent songwriter. I will always want more of his songs. But what makes this iteration of Wilco special is the way they play together... the most exciting Wilco songs in the last few years have been Livid, Many Worlds, and Bird Without a Tail. It's easy to see the pattern there. Let's give some room for Mike to do more of what he does, John to get more melodic with his bass playing (and Glenn with his drumming, for that matter), and Pat, Jeff, and Nels lots of space to let it rip.

I made a similar suggestion on a different Wilco forum and was roasted pretty thoroughly for it.  A lot of Wilco fans, especially on that forum, don't understand that there's a huge difference between "instrumental music"  and "shredding."  The minute you suggest the band is being underutilized, folks say "you just want to hear Nels shred."  Which is dumb.  

30 minutes ago, lost highway said:

 

Yeah, and this has been true for like 3-4 albums for you (I imagine). Judging by how firmly he's landed in this sonic approach/vocal delivery I think it's permanent. It doesn't bother me, but I think I know what you're hearing. He doesn't project or have as much grit as he used to.

 

True, going back to Schmilco, probably.  To my ears, Tweedy's singing used to include a much wider range of passionate emotions, from goofy humor to deep despair, with many stops in between.  That's what I want from music.  Now he sounds like he's being dragged along by the song, sometimes against his will.  That can be a great approach on some songs, but not on all songs.  

 

I'm not trying to convince anyone.  That's just how it comes across to me. 

I'll just come out and say it:  Tweedy's singing doesn't connect with me anymore.  I don't know if it's the way he's recorded or mixed, or the way he sings.  But whatever it is, I'm no longer a fan.  It's not his fault.  He can obviously do what he wants.  Maybe I've had my fill.  Don't take it personally Tweedy.  I've had my fill of John Coltrane, too, so you're in good company.

 

Aside from Livid, which Tweedy doesn't sing on,  I'm not hearing them put anything new on the table with this release.

 

I do think Wilco is an incredible ensemble of musicians, easily one of the best live performing groups in the world, and I like the direction they're hinting at on this EP, but it's the tiniest of baby steps towards what I have been hoping to hear from them. I'll check back in on the next one.

 

 

51 minutes ago, nalafej said:

 

VV's been playing bass, flute and adding vocals on all (almost all) shows since a year or two ago. It was pretty cool to see Sima and Macie shredding the hell out of their guitars on Hungry last night while Spencer and VV kept up the "Now I only feed MYSELF" vocals.

 

Oh cool.  I haven't seen them since they were touring for Parts, and figured they'd need more musicians in order to perform their newer material.

21 hours ago, nalafej said:

The album's great. Going to see them perform it for the 3rd time tonight!

 

Are they performing live as a three piece still?  I've seen some pics of a bass player on their Instagram page, but couldn't tell if that was someone playing with them, or someone from an opening band.

This is one of my top two or three favorite current bands, but this one is a little spotty for me, mostly due to the sequencing.  I think the opening and closing tracks are the clear weak links here.  The opening track starts fun, but is aggressively repetitive and overly long.  It's kind of a chore to get through it and move on to the rest of the album, which is much more rewarding.  Then the last song is a little too Lilith Fair for my tastes.

 

Lot of cool stuff on here, though.  I feel like to an extent, Tweedy Wilco-ized them, which is kind of an odd to me since this band is one that delivers to me what Wilco albums used to but haven't in years.  In that way, it feels like a step backwards for Finom.  If you want to know what a top-tier Wilco album would sound like with way better singing,  look no further.

I was a huge Allmans fan in the late '80s/early '90s.  Still am, but that's when I was going to see them in concert.  At that time I was also into punk/alternative/whatever, and went to see Mike Watt, where I discovered Nels.  Had I not been a fan of the Allman's I don't know if I would have connected so strongly with Nels' playing . There's always been things Nels plays that are obviously inspired by certain guitarists from the past, and Dickie is one of the big ones.

Girls5eva has been very enjoyable.

We were on the waiting list to be on that cruise.  Glad we didn't make the cut.  But hell, put a bunch of country songwriters on a boat loaded down with so much alcohol that it barely floats and what do you think is gonna happen?  

 

RIP Mojo.  

Maybe he was just trying to get in on some of that priceless Elle King publicity.  Look for her to be added to the SBS lineup for 2024.

I'm not concerned with Tweedy's opinion on any given song, but the idea that people have a natural inclination to reject things they can't do is so ignorant and obviously false that it blows my mind.  Especially coming from Tweedy, who I have always found to be really eloquent and insightful.

 

Does Tweedy reject Nels Cline's guitar solos because he cant play guitar the way Nels can?  Of course he doesn't, nor should he.  But if he believes what he said in this interview, then yes, he should reject Nels's solos.

10 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Interesting thoughts - thanks. I like reading about how people receive their music, and in an environment where they are not jumped on for expressing personal opinions one way or another.

 

Same here.  This isn't a cult.  None of us are required to love everything Wilco does, or pretend to love everything they do.  It'd be inhuman if we all did that.

 

I'm confident everyone who has ever been in Wilco would agree with that.  

 

Having said that, I think the new album is pretty good, even if it doesn't scratch my itches in a way Wilco music did for a long time.

20 hours ago, jackpunch said:

 

Their last album was as "organic" as anything they've released in years. 

 

True, and I like some of it.  

1 hour ago, 5hake1t0ff said:

 

I think you're just saying you prefer the guitar-led rockers to other styles of Wilco music

 

Not really.  I don't care if the song rocks or not.  Some of my favorite Wilco moments are things like the first half of Muzzle of Bees, the unusual note choices Nels makes at the end of each verse on Bull Black Nova, or pretty much everything about Ashes.  I'm the one who's always complaining because the quiet parts are the most interesting part of their concerts, yet that's when people really start running their mouths. 

 

But sure, I like the rockers, too.  In a rock ensemble, I want the instruments to be recognizable as the instruments they are the majority of the time (I welcome some dicking around with sounds and effects, but my ear tells me that in Wilco, Nels overdoes it).  I also want to hear active interaction between the musicians.  Sonic beds for Tweedy to do his thing over is not active interaction (this doesn't have anything to do with recording as a live band vs. recording one track at a time.)   Effects are fun and are great for enhancing or damaging the sound of things in various ways. But when the effects take the sound over entirely and remove every remnant of the sound an instrument would naturally make, as is common with modern era Wilco, I check out. 

21 hours ago, 5hake1t0ff said:

How Wilco Became the Most Misunderstood Band on Earth - InsideHook

Honestly the best thing I've read on Wilco in a long, long while.

 

I enjoyed that article and agree with many of its points.  But, then there's this lazy old chestnut:

 

It’s beyond reductive to say they’re not being utilized properly because of a lack of traditional guitar shredding.

This comment itself is reductive and arguably dishonest, because nobody is asking for more "shredding."  Like finger tapping or chicken pickin', shredding is a specific, definable style of guitar playing.  One that typically is not utilized in Wilco at all, except as the grand finale of a guitar solo in concert.  It's always been a vanishingly small percentage of what Wilco does.  (If you want to hear Nels shred, listen to Contemplating the Engine Room...there's a lot of shredding on there, and aside from Art of Almost and a very small portion of the guitar solos on a very small number of other songs, there's nothing like that on any Wilco studio album.)  It doesn't just mean "guitar solos" or the occasional "hot lick" as this writer seems to think, and it's not at all what the people he's referring to are calling for. 

 

Rather, some segment of the fanbase love the experimentation, but would like to hear a little or a lot more of the touchstones of rock and roll music incorporated into it.  This combination is a hallmark, perhaps THE singular hallmark, of Wilco's best work (and many other artist's best work) in the studio and on stage, and when they don't bother with it, it's not wrong for a rock music fan, or even a Wilco lifer, to feel like sometimes the meal Wilco makes for us just doesn't taste very good. 

 

I still like Wilco a lot, but every single person I've ever known has disappointed me at some point in our relationship.   I don't see any reason why that would be any different with music groups.  And I don't see why it's wrong to have certain criteria that determine whether or not you like a record.  Frankly, I think having criteria makes for educated analysis and is a lot better than simply loving everything you're served, which is really just Standom.

 

 

13 hours ago, Brian F. said:

It seems plausible to me that they would have ordered a batch of 1,000 LPs to satisfy preorders.

 

Those numbers are interesting.  Considering how difficult and time consuming it is to press a record these days* (see: the massive Cruel Country delay), I doubt any "name" band would do a run of 1000 only to blink and immediately need a full pressing.  I'd be curious to know what their typical sales are on vinyl in the first year of a new release.   

 

*Wilco may have figured out how to beat this problem by...if I'm remembering correctly....partially bankrolling a Chicago pressing plant, which surely lets them jump to the front of the line when they need to press vinyl.   

 

EDIT:  https://www.chicagomag.com/arts-culture/record-plant-smashed-plastic-is-keeping-it-local/

 

Smashed Plastic pressing plant.  Tweedy/Wilco bought them a pressing machine.  Surely this gives them leeway to press as much or as little as they want, any time they want (within reason), making the 1000 run for preorders plausible.  But I'm still skeptical.  Seems if they were going to do this, there would be something different about the preorder version (and maybe there is and I just don't know about it....different color wax? something different about the cover art/inserts/etc.?)

 

According to the article, Wilco typically presses 30,000 records.

  

I've only listened once so far.  First impressions are that the highlights are Sunlight Ends, Cousin, and Pittsburgh.  Soldier Child was the low point for me.  One review said there are some songs only true believer Wilco fans will be able to tell apart from some older songs.  I think that's a reasonable criticism, and this song is an example of that.  I did enjoy the outro, but this one might end up in the Midco file.

 

I'm looking forward  to reassessing that sometime down the line. 

 

Overall, to my ear, there's more meat on the bone here than on their recent releases, and they sound more like WILCO than Jeff Tweedy ^{and wilco.}  Both of those things are huge improvements, imo.

 

 

49 minutes ago, jackpunch said:

 

I wonder if that's the article from this month's Uncut magazine. It's more of an interview/press release than any sort of review of the album.

 

No, that was from an LA based publication.  More a promo piece for their show than an album review.

6 hours ago, RainDogToo said:

ALBUM REVIEW: Wilco taking risks again on ‘Cousin,’ and it shows

https://riffmagazine.com/album-reviews/wilco-cousin/

 

I said I wasn't going to read any more reviews.  I guess that was a lie.  This was a promising review.

29 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

http://www.ladowntownnews.com/arts_and_entertainment/closer-than-we-think-wilco-releases-13th-studio-album-cousin/article_3b5be97e-59a3-11ee-966b-6f3f48bbef84.html

 

Which I can't actually read as it's not available in the UK.

 

 

Here you go:

 

Led by alternative rock legend Jeff Tweedy, Wilco has maintained a steady rhythm for almost 30 years. Not many bands have stood the test of time, let alone released 12, soon to be 13, albums.

 

Wilco’s 13th studio album, “Cousin,” is set to debut on Friday, Sept. 29, through dBpm Records. It comes on the heels of the release of its lead single, “Evicted.” In conjunction with the album’s release, the band is on a U.S. tour, including multiple shows at the Theatre at Ace Hotel from Wednesday, Oct. 4, to Friday, Oct. 6; and Wednesday, Oct. 11, and Thursday, Oct. 12, at the Bellwether. At both venues, Wilco will be joined by My Brightest Diamond, the project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Shara Nova.

 

Produced by Welsh musician and producer Cate Le Bon, “Cousin” marks the first time an outside collaborator has taken the production reins since the band’s sixth studio album, “Sky Blue Sky.” Le Bon steers the album into a sonically alien landscape compared to Wilco’s usual stripped-back, folk-influenced sound, incorporating elements such as saxophones, inexpensive Japanese guitars and a cinematic, New Wave-style drum machine. The result is darker and more experimental than Wilco’s previous work yet still retains the earnest quality of Tweedy’s lyrics and voice.

The record — related but not tethered to the present moment — echoes this sentiment and pushes the band’s musical boundaries, resulting in an emotional perspective from the outside looking in. The result is an album that tackles the pain of trying to find connection to others and failing, while reveling in a hopeful truth: we are closer in relation than we remember. “It’s this feeling of being in it and out of it at the same time,” Tweedy explained. 

 

Wilco and Le Bon, long-time admirers of each other’s work, initially crossed paths at the band’s Solid Sound Festival in 2019. The connection was immediate, inspiring Tweedy to invite Le Bon to the band’s famed Chicago studio, The Loft, in 2022 to work on the album. Le Bon challenged the band to oppose habit and enter the unknown while maintaining the fearlessness that has defined Wilco as a band for the last three decades. 

 

“The amazing thing about Wilco is they can be anything,” Le Bon said in a statement. “They’re so mercurial, and there’s this thread of authenticity that flows through everything they do, whatever the genre, whatever the feel of the record. There aren’t many bands who are able to, this deep into a successful career, successfully change things up.”

 

“Cate is very suspicious of sentiment,” Tweedy said, “but she’s not suspicious of human connection.” Connection is the cornerstone of the album, explored in vignettes throughout the 10-track record. In “Evicted,” the album’s first single, a narrator grapples with their responsibility for a love lost, accentuated by Marc Bolan-inspired guitars. 

 

“I guess I was trying to write from the point of view of someone struggling to make an argument for themself in the face of overwhelming evidence that they deserve to be locked out of someone’s heart,” Tweedy commented. “Self-inflicted wounds still hurt, and in my experience, they’re almost impossible to fully recover from.”

 

The project began long before Le Bon stepped into the picture. During the pandemic, for almost 50 days, Tweedy sent out demos of songs or ideas. His five bandmates would add touches and overdubs to the tracks, passing them along until the demos transformed into fully fleshed-out compositions. 

 

Despite this, the band “didn’t want to make a pandemic record,” Glenn Kotche, Wilco’s drummer, explained. The real work began when the group started working on the tracks in the studio. Some songs began to coalesce as more straightforward folk songs, which “didn’t need a lot of fussing with,” Kotche said. These tracks would become the band’s 2022 album, “Cruel Country.” After “Cruel Country’s” release, the band reconvened in December 2022 to tackle the more nebulous tracks along with Le Bon. 

 

Kotche splits the album into three camps, with the experimental, edgier songs alongside the pop-oriented, more psychedelic, folksy tracks unified by Le Bon’s sonic vision and Tweedy’s unmistakable timbre. “Infinite Surprise” — the album’s opener — “Sunlight Ends” and “Levee” remain a few of Kotche’s favorite songs on the album. 

 

Wilco was formed in 1994 by the remaining members of the alternative country group Uncle Tupelo after the band dissolved following singer Jay Farrar’s departure. During its first decade, the band’s lineup changed frequently, with only Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt as a constant. Since 2004, the lineup has remained unchanged, consisting of Tweedy, Stirratt, Kotche, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen. 

The six bandmates, spread throughout the continental United States, are all involved in their own solo and side projects. 

 

“When we step away from the band, we come back with fresh enthusiasm and new ideas and skills, which get incorporated into the band, so the band just keeps evolving,” Kotche explained. “(The band) hasn’t gotten stagnant yet.” Even after 13 albums, Kotche said he still feels like the band is just “scratching the surface” of its musical potential. 

 

Experimentation has defined the band from its inception. What began as an alternative country group has since shifted to incorporate more experimental aspects, including alternative rock and pop elements, touching many eras and genres. 

 

“We like being challenged,” Kotche said. “What excites us maybe the most is not only music that has some resonance to it, but also something that is surprising to us or something that we haven’t heard before on other records.”

 

Kotche likens Wilco’s musical process to a sprouting seed. The core of an album begins with Tweedy’s songs, often rooted in a certain folk sensibility, which are then dressed up in various ways. “We explore and experiment to see which versions resonate or excite us the most,” Kotche explained.

 

The setlist in LA will vary from night to night, incorporating tracks from the new album and songs from the rest of the band’s extensive repertoire, providing fans with a multi-genre buffet, from folk to rock to pop and everything in between. Coming to LA is always “fun; we know so many people there,” Kotche said. “It’s a lot of busy days, with friends coming to the shows.”

 

Seeing Wilco live is wildly different than listening to an album at home. “The songs take on a new life during live performances,” Kotche explained. “Seeing different songs from different records all in the same space gives the audience a better idea of what the band is all about than listening to any one record.”