Paging Dr Wilco: Get the defibrillators and save this album

[owl]

This woman gets pretty damn annoying:

 

Paging Dr Wilco: Get the defibrillators and save this album

 

 

Every week, Jude Rogers puts on a new release and reviews it in real-time. Today, she listens as Jeff Tweedy rushes in at the last minute to rescue Sky Blue Sky.

 

1. EITHER WAY

0.32 Like a trusty chum or an "oopsie, wasn't me Sir!" politician, you can habitually rely on Wilco to do what is expected of them - not share a bottle of Cava or fib (unfortunately), but sprinkle some exciting new life onto contemporary Americana's dry, lonely wasteland. Question is, will they kick off sixth album Sky Blue Sky with some Krautrock grooves or some noise and drone, like all that exhilarating stuff they squeezed into 2004's A Ghost Is Born?

In a word, no. Here are some bright, Simon and Garfunkel-style arpeggios and a line that sounds straight out of rehab: "Maybe the sun will shine today/The clouds will blow away/Maybe I won't feel so afraid." Fairly pleasant though, and given that frontman Jeff Tweedy - no relation to Girls Aloud's Cheryl, as far as I know, but I couldn't rule it out - has just got over an addiction to painkillers, it's not surprising.

0.51 "Maybe you still love me, maybe you don't/Either you will or you won't." How very "whatever", Jeffrey.

2.02 The niceness is getting dull. At this point on the last LP and 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - middle-eight o'clock! - it's usually time for weird stuff, but not THIS - a guitar solo plundered from Fleetwood Mac's Albatross, bent out of shape, and made even cheesier. What a horrifying start!

 

2. YOU ARE MY FACE

1.37 Let's try not to ruin a lovely tune this time, shall we? Here's a good start - some Midlake-y piano, evolving gently into some Abbey Road-style Beatles grooves. My toes are wiggling a bit.

3.28 So why's this song staggering? "I'm looking forward to shadows chasing bones/And faces stitched in sewing," whimpers Tweedy, intimating cancer and car crashes like some sicko doctor. Back to medical school with you, Dougie Howser!

 

3. IMPOSSIBLE GERMANY

0.26 Have I put in the new Crowded House album by mistake? Some unusual clashing guitars are interrupted by Tweedy's spot-on "Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be Neil Finn!" turn. How peculiar.

4.19 At last - a weird solo. This sounds like Television's Marquee Moon would if it was wearing a cardigan and eating custard creams on a Sunday afternoon.

5.18 Sounds like it's fallen asleep in front of Bullseye.

 

4. SKY BLUE SKY

0.56 This is nice - a 70s soft-rock sound made modern, like Elliott Smith on one of his better days. And here's a line about how "the drunks were ricocheting" - always a boon!

1.50 That woe-is-me stuff's back again, though. "I survived", Tweedy whimpers, "it's good enough for now." Pull yourself together, boy, like the doctor said to those curtains! And bring the defibrillators - this song's starting to flatline.

 

5. SIDE WITH THE SEEDS

0.07 Side with which Seeds? The Bad Seeds? Now that I'd like to hear! Wilco pepping up their anaesthetising niceyness with some ear-bleeding fuzz, a red right hand perhaps, or a bit of killing Kylie with a rock.

1.20 I'd like that much more than yet another Crowded House pastiche full of non-committal Tweedy-isms, which this - in case you were wondering - is.

 

6. SHAKE IT OFF

0.15 A cheeky, bouncy piano here, straight out a Peanuts cartoon. Maybe Jeff's cutting loose!

1.43 Hello, he is! Our boy listens "for your lips to break apart into words" - the wacko medical lyric book again, there - and the twee tune breaks into a slow, sultry swagger, like the Stones used to after some light refreshment.

3.35 "So many hearts bleeding in one place..." I'm not coming to your hospital, love.

3.54 "A body full of holes" ...paging Patricia Hewitt!

4.34 "I'm going to shake it off, shake it off, shake it off, shake it off." Shake off what? Your various ailments?

5.37 Or all of your interesting experimental persuasions? Sounds like it from this dull mooch to the finish line.

 

7. PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH ME

2.46 No. Why should I? I saw you live two years ago and your fizzing Neu-isms and Laurel Canyon-gone-nutty stylings rocked my world. Saying "there's nothing I can do to make this easier for you/You've got to be patient with me" is a cop-out. Unless there's something fabulous waiting at album-end.

 

8. HATE IT HERE

0.12 Oh dear, now there's a track made especially for Magic FM! I feel like I'm in the back of a minicab at 3 in the morning, drunkenly smiling at sentimental stuff.

0.54 This one's about a girlfriend leaving. "I even learned to use the washing machine." Hey ladies, progress!

2.27 What if our boy runs out of shirts to fold or lawns to mow? Well, he can nick the riff off the Beatles Birthday, make it sound a bit like The Faces and Last Night by the Mar-Keys (better known as the theme tune to Rik Mayall's 90s shitcom Bottom), and end with this fromage-filled solo.

 

9. LEAVE ME LIKE YOU FOUND ME

4.04 Alright then, most tepid track in the world, I will.

 

10. WALKEN

0.57 Let's go mad a bit, eh? Get Chas and Dave on the joanna, rhyme "Walken" with "I was talk-en", and squeeze in some guitar burps that sound like they should accompany pratfalls in a Hale and Pace skit. Yes, readers, that good!

2.18 Could be Captain Beefheart, this bit, although without the scope or the vision.

3.26 A better ending, though - crazy guitars and minimalist chugging. But is it too little, too late?

 

11. WHAT LIGHT

0.19 God damn it, it's not - those boys HAVE left the good stuff for the home run! This is gorgeous, like a lost Dylan song from the mid-60s, with a lyric to suit: "If you feel like singing a song/And you want other people to sing along/Just sing what you feel, don't let anyone say it's wrong." YES, it's passive-aggressive rehab nonsense talking again but hell, it WORKS.

2.01 Plus pedal steel, a lovely chorus, and a tune that winds to its end with finesse.

 

12. ON AND ON AND ON

0.57 And another belter! A gorgeous clashing pair of two-note figures, both weird and wonderfully and wilfully old Wilco, leads us into a subtle, formidable tale of a crumbling relationship.

2.42 And THAT'S what I call a solo - scattergun drums, slow-burning, building guitars, a sudden, successful change of pace - brilliant!

3.49 "You and I will stay together, yeah? You and I will try to make it better, yeah?" If you sing me songs like this one, Tweedy, only more of them, and often, I might have to say yeah.

IN CONCLUSION

Imagine a lazy, if devilishly handsome and talented boyfriend, moping around the house, making excuses for his lameness, only to allow occasional flashes of his former loveliness to break through his listlessness. And then, when you're almost to the end of your tether, he only bloody goes and gives you the greatest kiss of your life. Wilco, you're maddening!

[cryptique]

This woman gets pretty damn annoying:

Understatement.

 

 

The fact that she uses Crowded House as a negative comparison (twice) immediately negates any credibility she might have otherwise had.

[Atticus]

I'm open to negative SBS criticism, but what a twat. That was painful to read.

[quarter23cd]

Ha! That was actually kind of entertaining in a pointless kind of way.

[entropy]

That reminds me of a friend's little sister, trying desperately to find stuff about his record collection she can make fun of, just so she can try and seem grown up and mature.

 

Negitive criticism is perfectly acceptable, but not when you reduce it to a series of un-funny observations and direct references to the lyrics-- one thing I can't stand is when critics of anything, be it film, music, tv, or whatever, attempt to take lines, taglines or any other component of the work and respond directly to it, like answering a question or participating in a conversation.

 

This reads like her editor looked it over and went "Well, I don't think it's very funny, but she works here so she must have some sort of credibility."

[owl]

That reminds me of a friend's little sister' date=' trying desperately to find stuff about his record collection she can make fun of, just so she can try and seem grown up and mature.

 

This reads like her editor looked it over and went "Well, I don't think it's very funny, but she works here so she must have some sort of credibility."[/quote']

 

That pretty much sums up my opinion.

[embiggen]

it's DOOGIE Howser.

[Sir Stewart]

I glossed over that, reading about three sentences - it gave me a horrid vision of what their The View appearance may be like.

[quarter23cd]

Oh, wow. I didn't notice that this was from the Guardian. It reads like it came from a blog where somebody is trying desperately to be clever. Somebody actually published this? I hereby rescind my tepid praise.

 

PS - "Dougie" Howser was my favorite part.

[wheelco]

it's DOOGIE Howser.

that was basically my only reaction

[Szabo]

Holy shit does she suck, that may have been the most annoying review I've ever read.

[entropy]

I just like how no one can get through a review without mentioning painkillers or krautrock. Looks like someone learned how to work the Google.

[Synthesizer Patel]

I don't think many non-British people will get a lot of the references used in that piece. I thought it was funny to read, certainly more like a blog than a national newspaper review, but entertaining none-the-less. I don't agree with them, though.

[loraaw]

After reading a bunch of middle-aged American music journalists trying to show off their musical snobbery and pinholing Wilco into genres, THIS review made me laugh.

 

It's just fun to read something different. I might not think so if I lived over there and read her all the time.

 

Loosen up, guys.

 

-Laura

[Chris_H_2]

Isn't this the same publication that got into a pissing match with Colin Moloy's wife/girlfriend after the review of the Decemberists' show in November?

[uncle wilco]

i couldn't get past the first paragraph.

 

expect alot of bashing reviews for this album. it's inevitable. while i love sky blue sky, too many others pidgeon-hole bands such as wilco and will not resist stomping on them when they don't fit their expectations. reviews for this album should be avoided by those with thin skin. it's not gonna be pretty.

[FixedBayonet]

Yep, annoying as hell and sadly, I found some of her comments witty. But bloody hell, leave the comedy to those best suited for it in a medium where it's sorta appropriate. That really shat me off. Now - I'm glad I wasn't the only one with a feeling of uncertainty about the 'Dougie' Howser reference.

Oh no - Krautrock and painkillers. Really? Glad that we can kind of dumb the whole Tweedy/Wilco experience into two key phrases.

Here's my two phrases for our correspondent - Overpaid. Undergraduate.

And obviously if it sounds like Crowded House (which it doesn't), then that's got to be a bad thing, right? God help me, Finn and Tweedy are about the only two songwriters who (for mine) can turn out gold with every album.

When critics pan, I write in your defense!

[oatmealblizzard]

Yeah, Sky Blue Sky is a really, really good album in my opinion. But I am fully expecting more than a fair number of poor reviews as the album is not as overtly "daring" or "experimental" as some of their more recent work has been perceived. Thus it is an obvious target for critical backlash. It is a good album, though, and I love it. That's all that really matters to me.

 

But yeah ... this bitch is annoying. I could hardly finish that. Painful....

[mountain bed]

Maybe stuff like this is why Wilco gave us the record to listen to before it is officially released. Doing that allows us to make up our own minds about the music, rather than relying on some smug scumbucket critic's opinion to decide if we want the record or not.

[Calexico]

I kind of speed read it and even then it hurt to try and read her terrible style, or lack of it. Then again she works for a paper and she thinks she is down with the kids...I am sure someone in her stockbroker circle of friends found it a marvellous jape all together.

 

Try reading Kitty Empire, the bint who reviews stuff for the Observer.....there's a clueless skank if ever I saw one.

[owl]

reviews for this album should be avoided by those with thin skin. it's not gonna be pretty.

 

Agreed. This album may actually be better than AGIB, but the reviews won't show it.

[Calexico]

Agreed. This album may actually be better than AGIB, but the reviews won't show it.

 

 

Who buys anything based on a review anyway? I have never done that in 30 years of buying music.

[unposed_question]

So just because you disagree with her, you're going to say she's annoying? That doesn't make sense. Why should

her opinions about the album (or Crowded House for that matter) be any more or less valid than yours or mine?

[cryptique]

So just because you disagree with her, you're going to say she's annoying?

No, she's annoying because of the way she writes.

 

Why should her opinions about the album (or Crowded House for that matter) be any more or less valid than yours or mine?

Because she's annoying.

[Calexico]

I totally agree with whoever it was that said that. Except if it was cryptique.