Published Wilco (the album) articles and reviews

[Dude]

perhaps they should do some research. Nels Cline definitely didn't play on AGIB, but joined the band for the tour to promote it.

 

I've seen that mistake made a few times in print.

[gopokes]

a pretty solid review from the Kansas City Star...

 

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/1282077-p3.html

[mpolak21]

Here's the first semi-critical review of a Wilco album I've ever seen from Popmatters (they loved AGIB and SBS): Popmatters Wilco The Album Review.

 

So, while Wilco (The Album) has its strong moments, it does not have many innovative ones. For a band whose reputation was built on being sonic pioneers, this can only be perceived as something of a letdown. A “solid” or “sturdy” album—which is certainly what Wilco (The Album) is—would be acceptable from many bands, but not Wilco. In the end, they may be their own worst enemy: they’ve not only set the bar unreasonably high for everyone else, but also for themselves.

 

--Mike

[Jesusetc84]

http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/wilco/wilcothealbum

 

Wilco is averaging roughly what SBS was on metacritic; a little early to tell. I was hoping for a higher score :-(.

[gogo]

The SF Chronicle rates movies, CDs, etc., on a scale of .

 

W(TA) got a (emphasis mine):

 

Even on his band's seventh studio album, Jeff Tweedy is feeling restless. After making it through more than a decade of personnel shakeups, addiction to painkillers and general industry baloney, the only thing the front man hasn't sorted out at this point is what Wilco is supposed to sound like. Fortunately, his songs are generally so engaging it hardly matters. The Chicago group's new self-titled set is an endearing mess, veering from the goofy, satin-jacketed pop of "Wilco (the Song)" to the blinkered six-minute jam "Bull Black Nova" - a clear descendant of live favorite "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" - before easing back into more familiar terrain with emotive late-night meditations such as "One Wing" and "Country Disappeared." If it's not quite as indispensable as some of the band's earlier releases - out of a trim 11 tracks, at least two feel like straight-up throwaways - Tweedy still makes a compelling case for adding an album with a camel in a party hat on its cover to your collection.

[MacGvyerisGod]

Here's another: http://ronebreak.com/2009/06/29/wilco-the-album

[fatheadfred]

a pretty solid review from the Kansas City Star...

 

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/1282077-p3.html

 

This surprised the hell out of me. A real story from the Star about Wilco. They also put his picture in the header on the front page.

[choo-choo-charlie]

This is hilarious - read it before it's corrected. The review at allmusic.com has apparently put the text for a review of a Brad Paisley album under the review for W(TA). Read it here:

 

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wnfqxzr0ldke

[thisyearsgirl]

I think this hasn't been posted yet...I've done a quick search and nothing came up.

 

I'm not quite the VC member that I once was so I don't understand the new "link posting policy" (I barely know anyone on here anymore!) but I thought all of you might be interested in listening to an audio-only interview from Tweedy at Bonnaroo on Bordersmedia.com. I received the link as part of my almost-daily Borders email. Jeff offers some insight on W(TA)'s title being inspired by Joe the Plumber. He explains the recording timeline for the new album and enjoying being away the Loft and Chicago winters. Props are also given to Feist and the filmmakers that worked on Ashes of American Flags.

 

http://www.bordersmedia.com/features/audio/tweedy.asp

 

It's not a direct link, so I think it is OK. If not, sorry, moderators. Not trying to rock the boat. Feel free to take it down.

Edited June 29, 2009 by gogo
No harm linking to an audio interview...

[thisyearsgirl]

Couldn't find this elsewhere on here, so here it is. I don't know if it is new or not, but I picked up the Time Out this morning:

 

What a bum-out it’d be to see Haruki Murakami penning Hi and Lois or Gerhard Richter painting Precious Moments figurines. Ridiculously creative artists should not be reduced to playing with their medium’s basest forms. Upon hearing Wilco’s latest, a heart sinks when Nels Cline lends his jazzy art-rock finger-scrambling to a Tom Petty knockoff or quirky percussionist Glenn Kotche ditches his dense drum workouts for tepid toe-tapping.

 

The sorta-eponymous seventh from the reigning Chicago rock champs is a warm, hypoallergenic bath of an album. Mellow-but-upbeat ballads and breezy midtempo rockers fill out the brief wheel-spinning record that rehashes the past couple of releases with diminishing returns.

 

Among the pleasant soft rock, only four tracks stand out. Unfortunately, two of them—the cheeky cheer-up “Wilco (The Song)” and the saloon-piano stomper “You Never Know”—mimic ’70s classics “Werewolves of London” and “My Sweet Lord.” The other highlights evoke the pretty experimentalism of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Not coincidentally, Jeff Tweedy’s poetry shines brightest on these as well. “I’m in a bull-black Chevy Nova,” the frontman mutters with paranoia as the band envisions Steely Dan as Berlin beatniks on “Bull Black Nova.”

 

But the beautiful “Deeper Down” is the real gem. “By the end of the bout / He was punched out / His capsized muscles shouting / Deeper down,” sighs Tweedy with the hard-boiled poeticism of Raymond Chandler reading over a chamber ensemble. Plucks and strums tick and interlock in complicated, golden clockwork.

 

Everything else struggles to capture the same level of detail. The conservative dad-pop framework confines Cline’s guitar in a pressure cooker. In each song, when the L.A. axman finally gets the chance to lay down lines, his notes trill with pent-up restlessness. The solos in “One Wing” and “Sonny Feeling” dart and hum like pesky mosquitoes. Can’t blame them, looking for any sign of flesh or swamp. After the similarly disappointing Sky Blue Sky, with the bar still merely set at pleasant, Wilco seems content to remain LeBron James dunking on a Nerf hoop.

 

Sing live-band Wilco karaoke at the Hideout’s album-release party on Monday 29.

[uncool2pillow]

This is hilarious - read it before it's corrected. The review at allmusic.com has apparently put the text for a review of a Brad Paisley album under the review for W(TA). Read it here:

 

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wnfqxzr0ldke

Still not fixed. I get weekly new release e-mails from AMG. I actually clicked on both the Paisley and Wilco albums to read their reviews. I read Paisley's then started reading Wilco's (alphabetical order, not importance). I figured it was a bug in the site or my browser!

[Gobias Industries]

Still not fixed. I get weekly new release e-mails from AMG. I actually clicked on both the Paisley and Wilco albums to read their reviews. I read Paisley's then started reading Wilco's (alphabetical order, not importance). I figured it was a bug in the site or my browser!

 

"I'll Flight" is apparently an AMG track pick, too.

[DAngerer09]

This is hilarious - read it before it's corrected. The review at allmusic.com has apparently put the text for a review of a Brad Paisley album under the review for W(TA). Read it here:

 

http://www.allmusic....10:wnfqxzr0ldke

 

dang, I went to the Paisley page hoping the review for the Wilco text would be there.... no dice.

[Guest Jules]

Something tells me Pete's only exposure to Chicago was seeing it in IATTBYH. I'm driving up there today and "bleakly windy" is about the last term I'd use to describe Chicago this time of year.

Chicago isn't really that windy, either.

[junior five]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-campbell/wilco-the-album_b_222089.html

[Dude]

http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/Album-review-Wilco--Wilco.5406789.jp

 

Album review: Wilco - Wilco (The Album)

 

Published Date: 28 June 2009

By COLIN SOMERVILLE

WILCO

Wilco (The Album)

 

****

 

Something of a wolf in sheep's clothing, Jeff Tweedy's new album flirts with electro in the process of playing the soft rock straight card. His poetry has never sounded so noir and paranoid – "I can't calm down, I can't think" he frets on the epic Bull Black Nova, which sounds like it ends drenched in cold sweat.

 

The contrast is supplied immediately with the sweetly strummed You And I, and that, as ever with Wilco records, is the charm, the gentle diversity that can take you from chilling out to something that genuinely chills. You Never Know bounces along like an Elton John piano pounder from the Seventies, with George Harrison on slide guitar, coloured with Tweedy's resigned refrain "I don't care any more".

 

Nels Cline embellishes with clever guitar motifs, from steel work imitating Hawaiian birdsong to chunky pub rock chords on Sonny Feeling. Deeper Down is where Tweedy's storytelling is best heard, studded with the detail of a Chandler or Leonard, populated by punchdrunk worthies struggling to stay on their feet.

 

Melodies? Well, One Wing takes a bit of beating, the guitar hook soaring defiantly to a groaning climax. Then the closing Everlasting Everything demonstrates that devastating ability to do the simple thing brilliantly as Tweedy has done so often in the past.

 

Not his best album, but maybe five of his best songs.

[Plumplechook]

From The Sunday Times (UK):

 

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/cd_reviews/article6576785.ece

 

Wilco: Wilco (The Album)

Dan Cairns

 

Four out of five stars

 

A band whose more fanatical followers sometimes seem happiest when disappointed by a new album (“Dude, this is so not as good as Summerteeth”, etc, etc), the Americans arrive at album seven with their latest line-up intact (no mean feat in Wilco land), their last release, the underrated Sky Blue Sky, deemed not the one to beat, but a record to improve on, and the recent tragic death of their original guitarist, Jay Bennett, potentially casting a shadow over proceedings. For those content merely to live in a world in which songwriters as wonderful as Jeff Tweedy operate, and guitarists as supremely gifted as Nels Cline get to scatter gold dust over heartbreakers such as Deeper Down, Bull Black Nova and You Never Know, this 11-track sequence of complex, nuanced strolling-pop beauties and gritty alt-country jams will enthral.

[Plumplechook]

And here's another four out of five stars from The Times (UK):

 

http://nonesuch.com/journal/times-uk-4-stars-for-wilcos-new-album-a-definitive-work-2009-06-29

 

Wilco (The Album)

 

Reviewed by Peter Paphides

 

4 out of 5 starts

 

The demons that have tormented Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy are in abeyance — and in the freshly vacated space are several of the most emotionally generous songs of the singer’s life. Solitaire is an unflinching examination of darker times, shot with gratitude at their passing. The bittersweet You Never Know could be a lost George Harrison number, while I’ll Fight is a love song to mist all but the coldest of eyes. Calling the album Wilco suggests they might consider this is a definitive work — they wouldn’t be wrong.

[Plumplechook]

From Austin 360:

 

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/music/entries/2009/06/29/cd_review_wilco.html

 

By Joe Gross | Monday, June 29, 2009

 

Wilco (the Album)’ (Nonesuch)

B+

Jeff Tweedy’s career thrives on twists. He changes up like a major-league pitcher, sometimes slow (there wasn’t too much aesthetic space between the end of Uncle Tupelo and the beginning of Wilco), sometimes faster (the transition from “Being There” to “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” was quite a leap).

“Wilco (the Album)” (which opens with “Wilco (the Song)”) is the former and probably the better for it.

The past few Wilco albums have had the smell of Big Statement about them. This has been an issue for the band since NPR fans turned “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” into “Sgt. Pepper” for people who remember where they were when the second plane hit the World Trade Center. “A Ghost is Born” got artier and oddly heavier, that live album just smoked and “Sky Blue Sky” had folks looking up Steely Dan clips on YouTube. The title of this new one is fitting: It’s the first Wilco record in a long time that sounds exactly like a Wilco album.

Opener “Wilco (the Song)” rewrites the riff from the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For the Man” and assures you that Wilco will love you (don’t think we don’t appreciate it champ).

“Deeper Down” feels like creepy ’60s L.A. kitchen-sink pop — you keep expecting Dennis Hopper to wander past with a 17-year-old gal in tow. “You and I,” a nuanced duet between Tweedy and Canadian singer/Sesame Street guest Feist, shimmers and “You Never Know” splits the difference between country-rock and Cheap Trick.

The secret weapon, of course, is still guitarist Nels Cline, who can move from crafty interplay to noise rock heckler-spray in the same song (“Bull Black Noir”) and figure out a way to rectify the Stones idea of country with the Kinks’ in “Sunny Feeling.”

Dear Wilco fans, they still love you.

[Shakespeare In The Alley]

How many articles will it take for Nels to be called a "secret weapon" enough times that it's not a secret anymore?

[Plumplechook]

From The Washington Times:

 

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/30/listening-station-wilco-solidifies-second-era/

 

By Adam Mazmanian

This is not news to anyone who follows such matters, but jazz guitarist Nels Cline saved Wilco. At the time Mr. Cline joined the band, as a touring member a few years before recording the 2007 album "Sky Blue Sky," Jeff Tweedy's durable alternative- country outfit did not particularly seem in need of saving.

 

Indeed, the first evidence of their collaboration was not particularly promising. The studio album was marred by an impulse toward schmaltz and a weirdly mature, almost superannuated vibe. Upon hearing the title track while shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond, I realized that it made for a very soothing bit of retail background music.

 

However, my impression of the album changed when I saw Wilco tour the record with Mr. Cline in tow. It was almost as if the album was a confusing architectural scheme and the live show was the finished edifice. Mr. Cline's guitar raged, bullied and screamed its way through the mellow facades of the tracks and gave an incredible shot of confidence to Mr. Tweedy and the rest of the band.

 

"Wilco (the Album)" is suffused with this newfound swagger. In Mr. Tweedy's past life as half of the alternative country band Uncle Tupelo and as Wilco's frontman, his singing has been serviceable but, perhaps, a bit of an afterthought to his lyricism and songwriting. Here, he reaches confidently for power, lilt and timbre that previously went untapped. His songwriting confidently pillages rock archives for rhythms, riffs and progressions that are gracefully stitched together into sound that harks back to the Velvet Underground and Television but also recombines Wilco's own history.

 

On the opening track, modestly titled "Wilco (the Song)," Mr. Tweedy borrows what sounds like the rhythm-guitar part of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and matches it with a jangled vocal line that sounds half-whispered and half-shouted. The insistent fury of the guitar is met with an occasional twangy, high-pitched trill building into a chorus that resolves with Mr. Tweedy singing, repeatedly, "Wilco, Wilco."

 

The East Asian trills of the 2007 song "Impossible Germany" are recalled in the off-kilter intervals of "Black Bull Nova." The bluesy guitar line clashes with the keyboard before taking over the song in a digressive solo that showcases Mr. Cline's avant-garde jazz roots. The multiple intersecting guitar parts create an intensity that electrifies. The track "Sonny Feeling" glories in its shameless Beatles riffing, but the band carries it off with pulsating intensity.

 

Mr. Tweedy duets with Canadian chanteuse Feist on "You And I." The acoustic track leaves room for Mr. Tweedy and Miss Feist to blend their breathy, easygoing voices. This track and "Solitaire" and "Everlasting Everything" manage some gentleness without descending into the maudlin goo of "Sky Blue Sky."

"Wilco (the Album)" solidifies the second era of Wilco. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" represented the band's peak before Mr. Cline joined the band, and while that album has a certain quirky intensity that the current album lacks, there's really no point in denying that Mr. Tweedy is laying down the best pure rock 'n' roll of his career right now.

[Shawndorman]

Hey Guys!

 

I don't know if these have been posted, but here are a couple big ones...one from Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. Pitchfork's is surprisingly positive, despite the 7.3/10 rating, and Rolling Stone hands out the typical 4 stars for Wilco.

 

Rolling Stone:

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/28772335/review/28811787/wilco

 

Pitchfork:

 

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13237-wilco-the-album/

[cuneyt81]

another one:

 

http://treblezine.com/reviews/3176-Wilco_Wilco__The_Album_.html

[Plumplechook]

http://www.kentucky.com/lexgo/music/story/846967.html

 

Critic's pick: Wilco, 'Wilco (the album)'

By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Writer

You could have fun all summer just with the title of Wilco's seventh studio album, especially seeing how the leadoff track of Wilco (the album) is Wilco (the song).

Both are about as whimsical as Jeff Tweedy and company have ever revealed themselves to be on a recording. Luckily, the music inside is just as inviting and summery.

 

It could be argued that Wilco (the album) is the band's first record that doesn't take a defining step forward. As usual, it wraps itself around Tweedy's alternately sleepy, wide-eyed and demonstrative singing. Just as predictably, the music still revels in allowing an attractive pop melody to melt and morph before our ears. And when the music even begins to suggest static frustration, Tweedy marches out his two prime aces in the hole: guitarist Nels Cline and drummer (and University of Kentucky graduate) Glenn Kotche.

 

Cut in three sessions - the first and third were in the band's Chicago digs, and the second was at Neil Finn's studio in Auckland, New Zealand — Wilco (the album) bears a temperament similar to 2007's Sky Blue Sky, with melodies that are light and lyrics that suggest the same but usually veer off into darkness.

 

Deeper Down, for instance, dances between vintage Brit pop and psychedelia. Chiming guitars mimic harpsichords as assorted, distorted ambience rumbles in the background. It's kind of like hearing Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd in a Merseybeat mood. It's a fun, summery listen, for sure. But, as always, there is restlessness in Tweedy's hushed singing, especially in the way the lyrics parallel plumbing the depth of one's psyche to the way a prizefighter is stalked for a knockout punch.

You Never Know, though, is something of a pop smorgasbord. Where do we start on this one? The China Grove-style piano pounding? The George Harrison-like guitar flourishes? How about the lyrical devices Tweedy employs both as a scolding in the first verse ("C'mon children, you're acting like children") and as a lunatic sing-along in the chorus of "I don't care anymore" that ups the danger element in this solid, summer pop.

 

Lyrically, the skies darken on Country Disappeared and especially during the romantic detachment of One Wing. The former is played essentially straight with echoes of vintage, mid-tempo pop-soul. But One Wing brings Cline and Kotche to the forefront with punctuated rhythms that jump-start and cruise under Tweedy's vocal despondency. Cline's arsenal of squalls, twang and string tricks are artfully let loose from there.

 

Finally — well, actually, firstly, since its kicks off Wilco (the album) — we have Wilco (the song), which sounds like the coltish offspring of David Bowie's Heroes with a hearty guitar hum and grand vocal hooks. And let's not forget the chorus: "Wilco will love ya, baby." Eat your heart out, Telly Savalas.

There are also sonic textures throughout Wilco (the album) suggesting the layered, late '60s turns Brian Wilson fashioned for the Beach Boys that underscore the record's prime selling point: that Wilco (the album) is, at heart, a masterful summer listen.

 

Now if Wilco (the album) would only incite Wilco (the band) to play Wilco (the song) on Wilco (the tour). Maybe that might even bring Tweedy, Cline, Kotche and the gang back to Lexington (the city). That sure would make me (the critic) one happy fellow.

[mpolak21]

Couldn't find this elsewhere on here, so here it is. I don't know if it is new or not, but I picked up the Time Out this morning:

 

What a bum-out it’d be to see Haruki Murakami penning Hi and Lois or Gerhard Richter painting Precious Moments figurines. Ridiculously creative artists should not be reduced to playing with their medium’s basest forms. Upon hearing Wilco’s latest, a heart sinks when Nels Cline lends his jazzy art-rock finger-scrambling to a Tom Petty knockoff or quirky percussionist Glenn Kotche ditches his dense drum workouts for tepid toe-tapping.

 

After the similarly disappointing Sky Blue Sky, with the bar still merely set at pleasant, Wilco seems content to remain LeBron James dunking on a Nerf hoop.

 

I think I would like the album that this person wishes Wilco was making instead of Wilco The Album.

 

--Mike