Paging Dr Wilco: Get the defibrillators and save this album

[Smokestack Joe]

this person is looking for attention...

[people are leaving]

Dear Jude,

 

You need to listen to the record 5 or 6 more times. Then enroll in a course on non-fiction writing. Then punch a clock for a few years to gain life experience. Then scam free albums from your day job. Then consider writing for a jerkwater music website. Then think better of it and slink off into the night.

[Calexico]

Dear Jude,

 

You need to listen to the record 5 or 6 more times. Then enroll in a course on non-fiction writing. Then punch a clock for a few years to gain life experience. Then scam free albums from your day job. Then consider writing for a jerkwater music website. Then think better of it and slink off into the night.

 

 

You forgot the bit about prostitution.

[caliber66]

It is so fucking fun to read people react to unflattering Wilco reviews. Someone get me some popcorn.

[jff]

I couldn't make it past "oopsie".

[owl]

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

Well, I know that I sometimes don't buy things based on reviews.

 

Nowadays, though (for music, anyway), I usually listen to it first and then decide if I want to buy it. But if I like it, I almost always buy it.

 

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?

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

Ah, there we go.

[WilcoFan]

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

 

 

This is the first bad one I've read.

[owl]

I saw another mediocre one today that called the album "pleasant enough," or something similar.

[entropy]

Yeah, I've seen only one or two other slightly negitive ones, the main complaint being "well, this is still brilliant, but it's only semi-brilliant compared to their other stuff." For every bad review, I see six or seven good ones, so in terms of press I don't think this'll be as brutal as most of us seem to think it may be. Hell, SBS doesn't even have a drone.

[Szabo]

All she does is compare each song on the album to some other band from the 70's or 80's, that's not a review.

[owl]

Hell, SBS doesn't even have a drone.

 

Thank God for that. It doesn't have Krautrock, either, which is apparently now Wilco's calling card- even though they only did one song, ever, in that style.

[Calexico]

From what I recall, Mojo and Uncut sort of damned it with faint praise too. Fair enough, each to their own but I think this is a really good album. Wilco still hasn't made a bad album, in my opinion.

[bjorn_skurj]

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

And a dumb name too. She thinks she's the only person in the world ever to listen to Big Black?

[Calexico]

And a dumb name too. She thinks she's the only person in the world ever to listen to Big Black?

 

 

Are you English or do you read the paper online? Every week she nominates an album of the month and then proceeds to address what is wrong with it or to talk about the album previous or some band that are like the band she is meant to be reviewing. A total clueless cow.

[You Can Be The Stone]

" This sounds like Television's Marquee Moon would if it was wearing a cardigan and eating custard creams on a Sunday afternoon. "

 

 

 

Uh, yeah, I pretty much hated the review all around, but I'll gave to give her two points for this one. Even though I love IG.

[jethro]

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.

5/5

 

This will not be the last negative SBS review, at least this one had some kind words thrown in here and there.

[myboyblue]

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?

you're annoying.

[owl]

now, now

[Gobias Industries]

I have IB Music for my comparisons of music cultures and artists.

 

Seriously.

[Peanut969]

Leave Me Like You Found Me tepid?!? That is my numero uno Wilco jam right now! And it's funny to me that the 2 songs she actually liked happen to be my least favorite on the album.

 

I am also not a fan of her Crowded House comments! I'm no music snob and I am pretty tolerant of other's musical tastes, but Crowded House is one of those bands that if you don't like them, I can't help but think something ain't right with you.

[giraffo]

I don't really care what anyone says about the album, but I do care HOW they say it. This review is just plain obnoxious and the only thing more tepid than LMLYFM is her asinine referencing every two seconds in conjunction with poor jokes.

[Nonlinear Nonfiction]

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.

 

Has she ever heard a Dylan tune before? Of all Tweedy lyrics, What Light is about as far from Dylan as I think one can get.

[fletcher]

who, for a magazine etc, publishes their opinion based off first impressions? can you imagine how many earth-shattering records would have absolutely "sucked" if this smarmy bitch spouted her opinion with less than one complete spin? How can you knock a Wilco song :30 in?

[Bad Ambassador]

Isn't the feature supposed to be throwaway observations and occassional humour? It makes it quite clear that it's a first listen, when very few of us can immediately say a record is great. I don't think this is intended to be a serious review - there is an offical review in the same paper, a couple of pages away from this.

 

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky (3/5)

 

Dorian Lynskey

Friday May 11, 2007

The Guardian

 

So it looks as if, beneath all the static and the krautrock jams, Wilco never wanted to be the American Radiohead after all. In a U-turn that could have been no more decisive if they had smashed their computers with lengths of wood, they've looped back to the hazy soft-rock summers of their youth. Jeff Tweedy opens his first album since kicking painkiller addiction by crooning, "Maybe the sun will shine today and crowds will roll away", to the sound of Laurel Canyon 1972. On its own terms, Sky Blue Sky succeeds: it's tender, poignant and sumptuously textured, occasionally jolted into fiery life by flaring guitar passages redolent of Neil Young or Television. But anyone who thought Wilco were interested in the future of Americana will be profoundly disappointed.

[JazzCat]

In general, I've noticed that there has been a historical divide between British and American tastes. This kinda reminds me of when Dylan came to England with The Band, and then everyone wanted him to be there a little folk god, but he wouldn't play down to them. They were to preoccupied in pretentious notions of "selling out." Wilco has made a daring album and thats evident by the fact that every review mentions how it doesn't sound like YHF or Ghost. This makes it just as challenging as anything they have ever done.