SBS Review In Lexington Paper

[j4lackey]

Critic's pick

 

Wilco

 

Sky Blue Sky

 

The most arresting and disarming aspect of Wilco's seventh album (and its first studio effort in three years) is how reserved it sounds. When listened to alongside such latter-day Wilco innovations as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, the new Sky Blue Sky, which hits stores Tuesday, sounds positively streamlined. There are no ham radio style interludes as on Foxtrot and no extended ambient blackouts as on Ghost. The new album instead breezes along with a greater and more immediate pop accessibility. But beware. Despite its summery tone, Sky Blue Sky is no bundle of sunshine.

 

Perhaps more than any other Wilco album, Sky Blue Sky mirrors the often aloof emotional scope of leader Jeff Tweedy's vocals. The wide-eyed, almost childlike register of his singing has always suggested vulnerability. Inevitably, volcanoes then blow and Wilco erupts with either psychedelic shades that morph the music before your very ears or shards of electric fire that recall Neil Young's finer Crazy Horse records.

 

To be sure, all that happens on Sky Blue Sky, as well. You Are My Face's fragile domestic bliss, which already seems built on a house of cards, slowly loosens from its bright piano-led introduction until guitars transform the tune into a cautionary blur before tearing into one of the album's few basic rock romps.

 

"I trust no emotion," Tweedy sings early in the tune. "I believe in locomotion." But a verse later, he reveals how "my heart has been outgrown." Such are the clouds that pepper Sky Blue Sky.

 

The album opening Either Way, with sparse guitar lyricism and keyboard colors that present a swirling sweetness, is as lovely and delicate as anything on the album. But the romantic uncertainty at the heart of its lyrics borders on resignation ("maybe you still love me, maybe you don't; either you will or you won't"). That the sort of restless muse that inhabits Sky Blue Sky to an almost disturbing degree.

 

That doesn't means the album doesn't vary its pitch. The title alone to Hate It Here suggests an emotional torrent that a suddenly solitary life unleashes in the wake of a breakup. But this time the tone borders on the comical ("I even learned how to use the washing machine, but keeping things clean doesn't change anything") while the music chugs along with a brassy, bass-savvy bounce.

 

Sky Blue Sky attempts to tack a happy ending of sorts onto such fractured romanticism. But On and On and On, which is propelled by wintry guitar minimalism highly suggestive of Heathen-era David Bowie, stops short of celebration. Yes, Tweedy sings in terms of two. But the song's heavy concern with mortality ("one day we'll disappear together in a dream") suggests love and happiness arrived a touch too late.

 

In lesser hands, the darker sentiments of Sky Blue Sky would have held all the charm of a trip to the dentist. Wilco's continued gift is its ability to mask uncertainty and sadness with such contemplative music. So modest is its makeup here that differentiating Tweedy's guitar work from that of avant-garde giant Nels Cline (who joined Wilco after A Ghost Is Born was completed) will be tough even for fervent fans.

 

That's the beauty of a great band at work. Tweedy remains its visionary. But it takes all of Wilco to create one of the year's truly masterful curve ball albums. Few records will have you humming through heartbreak the way Sky Blue Sky will.

 

WALTER TUNIS, CONTRIBUTING MUSIC CRITIC

[theashtraysays]

Tunis has always been a pretty big Wilco fan. KTV and Mobile have been on his Pick's before, and he's had some good reviews of the shows in LVL and Cinci lately. I expected to see SBS as his pick this morning in the paper... it's amazing, but everybody here still goes "who?" when you mention Wilco.

[j4lackey]

... it's amazing, but everybody here still goes "who?" when you mention Wilco.

I know. I've pretty much stopped trying.

[froggie]

> I know. I've pretty much stopped trying.

 

a few days back, in the office, i was quietly listening them and a guy nearby asked me what i was listening to. i said "wilco". he said "meatloaf?".

 

"nevermind"

 

 

true story!

[j4lackey]

:lol

[david]

I know. I've pretty much stopped trying.

 

I hope it stays this way, let it remain our little secret from the masses