Published Wilco (the album) articles and reviews

[edennis]

with the new album out, I think it would be a cool little thing to have a running post going of reviews that people find. One of my favorite sites, Spectrum Culture, has a pretty lengthy review.

 

http://spectrumculture.com/2009/06/wilco-wilco-the-album.html

 

any others?

[Guest Speed Racer]

Tons, in this thread.

[jakobnicholas]

THE ONION gave it a B.

 

For some reason, I feel the 2nd half of the record is a letdown. This Onion review tries to explain it:

 

Stylistically, Wilco has ranged over the years from stripped-down, mellow guitar-pop to music more heavily orchestrated and experimental, but the real divide in Jeff Tweedy’s songwriting tends to be structural. Sometimes the band gravitates to simple songs that convey straightforward ideas in a solid verse-chorus-verse frame; and sometimes Wilco goes more esoteric, with oddball lyrics and beguilingly sketchy arrangements. On the surface, Wilco (The Album) could be described as Wilco in meat-and-potatoes rock ’n’ roll mode, halfway between the tuneful excess of Summerteeth and the low-key classicism of Sky Blue Sky. But structurally, the album is cleanly cleaved between the sing-along Wilco and the freeform Wilco. And when the former begins to overcome the latter, the album suffers.

 

After the likeably goofy opener “Wilco (The Song),” Wilco (The Album) hits three straight songs that present Tweedy and company at their best, eschewing conventional choruses in favor of an unlikely assortment of guitar solos, rhythmic shifts, and hooky phrases that seem to have been pulled together by some ineffable force. But halfway through the record—starting with the not-quite-rousing rocker “You Never Know”—the exploratory side of Wilco starts to give way to more workmanlike material. The band is still good enough to put across (The Album)’s later songs, thanks to a buzzy ’70s sound that nods to George Harrison here, John Lennon there, and Tom Petty all over the place. But the “reaching for something indescribable” feeling of songs like “Deeper Down” and “One Wing” is sorely lacking amid the pat familiarity of “I’ll Fight” and “Everlasting Everything.” The back half of Wilco (The Album) is too sing-song-y, too underdeveloped, too “good enough.” This band is capable of so much more.

[mpolak21]

TMT gives it a two and a half out of five: Tiny Mix Tapes Review

 

--Mike

[newbornghost]

THE ONION gave it a B.

 

For some reason, I feel the 2nd half of the record is a letdown. This Onion review tries to explain it:

 

 

I've heard this a lot, and so there must be something to it, but I don't feel this way at all. Country Disappeared, Solitaire and Everlasting Everything are 3 of the most gorgeous songs Tweedy has written since YHF, in my opinion. And I actually fully expect I'll Fight and Sonny Feeling to continue to grow on me, b/c I think both of these somewhat poppy songs have more depth than originally meets the ear. Just my $.02

[choo-choo-charlie]

with the new album out, I think it would be a cool little thing to have a running post going of reviews that people find. One of my favorite sites, Spectrum Culture, has a pretty lengthy review.

 

http://spectrumculture.com/2009/06/wilco-wilco-the-album.html

 

any others?

 

yeah, what speed racer said. pay attention!

 

[Bhickman]

I was going to start a thread with this, but see that there's a whole thread, so:

 

Rock & Roll Ghost reviews Wilco (the album)

[choo-choo-charlie]

TMT gives it a two and a half out of five: Tiny Mix Tapes Review

 

--Mike

 

Well, everyone's entitled to their opinion. I can't say that I agree with anything said about W(TA) here. And why do reviewers always have to spend the first three paragraphs attempting to sum up the history of Wilco [...rising from the ashes of UT] instead of just reflecting on the album?

 

For the most part, I agree with what someone said here the other day about music critics being no more qualified than any regular Joe-Schmoe, and that folks shouldn't take album reviews so seriously. We Wilco fans are equally quick to defend our beloved band as we are to attack it.

 

How he finds enough similarities to compare "Solitaire" to "Bob Dylan's 49th Beard," or "Sonny Feeling" to "Pick up the Change" and "I Got You," I don't know. And then he says "Summerteeth" was the era when Wilco were the masters of building tension. Correct/skewer me if I'm wrong, but there's only a small handful of tracks on "Summerteeth" that showcase that particular part of Wilco's sound - even in the live recordings of that era. Some "Being There" tracks/live recordings show a little bit of this too, i.e. Misunderstood or Sunken Treasure, but they certainly hadn't mastered it yet. If anything, ST was the poppiest of poppy Wilco records, and the noise/tension came to its full fruition in the YHF/Ghost era and the subsequent tours.

 

So anyway, like I said, everyone's got their opinion, and reviews shouldn't be taken so seriously all the time, but come on. This just sounds completely uninformed, as if he doesn't really understand the band's catalog and development. Or he just cut/pasted/reworded dozens of other reviews/articles that have been written and appropriated them as his own thoughts. Or I'm just completely out of line...

[Maggie]

From Paste:

 

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/06/old-highways-revisited.html

 

Apparently they didn't want to waste space by writing separate reviews for the Wilco and Son Volt.

 

"It’s been 15 years since the two bands rose from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo . . ."

 

How creative.

[Dude]

Time Magazine Q & A with Jeff:

 

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1907717,00.html

 

Talking to Wilco's Jeff Tweedy

By ROMESH RATNESAR Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco

 

Founded in 1995, Chicago-based Wilco has become one of America's most innovative and acclaimed rock bands. Its 2007 album, Sky Blue Sky, is the group's biggest commercial success to date. The follow-up, Wilco (The Album), is out this week. TIME's Romesh Ratnesar spoke by phone to Wilco's lead singer, Jeff Tweedy, about the new album, the evolution of the band's music and its highest-profile fan: Barack Obama.

(Wilco and the rest: See TIME's top 10 live performances of 2007.)

 

TIME: What makes your new album different from what you've done in the past?

Tweedy: I think it does a lot of things that we've done before — but better. In a way, I think this record might have grown out of the experience doing the residency shows we did in Chicago, where we played our entire catalog in the course of five days. This lineup for the band has been together longer than any other, and doing that residency run — it allowed us to really own those periods of music. That's what it sounds like to me now: it sounds like it grew out of that experience.

 

A number of songs, like "Wilco (The Song)" and "You Never Know," are strikingly upbeat and optimistic at a time when things are not easy for a lot of people. Were you mindful at all of trying to give people something to feel good about?

I guess I don't think there's any reason to feel guilty about having joy in your life, regardless of how bad things are in the world. Even the most dismal and hopeless-sounding Wilco music, to my ears, has always maintained a level of hope and consolation. I think art is a consolation regardless of its content. It has the power to move and make you feel like you're not alone. And ultimately that's what everybody wants to know.

 

Did it make any difference that you were writing and recording some of these songs during the last presidential election, which was the source of hope for much of the country? Did that have any impact on your mind-set?

Kind of — the environment always has some sort of impact. The only thing I can say is that having this batch of songs and noticing myself that they actually sounded happy, it crossed my mind: if the election had gone the other way, I would have been curious how those songs would be able to survive in a world that felt just wrong.

 

You've known President Obama for a few years. Have you seen him since he entered the White House?

No, he's kind of busy. But we did get word that whoever's in charge of loading his iPod requested the record, and we got the record in.

 

When did you first meet him?

We met him when he was a state senator in 2005, at Farm Aid. He introduced us, and I think it was right around the same time he announced his candidacy for U.S. Senator. We got to hang out with him at a pretty unguarded time.

 

The current members of the band have been together for five years. Why has this unit remained intact after so much turnover during the band's early years?

We've stumbled upon a working chemistry. Maybe it's age, maybe it's experience — I think that certainly contributes to everyone being able to keep their perspective rooted in some reality. My being a much healthier person contributes to the overall stability of the band. But mostly I think it's a bunch of guys who have been playing music for a long time, who realize Wilco is a rare and unique opportunity to play at a level where you're assured of a certain audience and you're being heard.

 

One of the founding members of Wilco, Jay Bennett, recently passed away at the age of 45. What was his legacy to the band?

Jay was a really gifted musician, and we worked really well together for a period of time. It was a period where we were becoming much more expansive in our ability to take from a lot of different styles. Jay's [ability] to play different instruments facilitated a lot of that growth. He could grab hold of a lot of styles and be conversant with them.

 

It's a real hard thing to talk about, to be honest. It's been eight years since he's been in the band, and our situation was very tenuous and not very well connected. But it's a tragic end to a brilliant and gifted guy and musician. And that's really sad.

 

You mentioned you're feeling healthier than you have in the past. How do you feel you've changed working on this particular record?

I think I've always been pretty mellow, to be honest. It's just that I'm able to face a range of emotions in my day-to-day existence that was actually harder for me to face when I was not as healthy. In other words, the whole idea that you're not suffering anymore because of drugs — the point of taking drugs, at least for me, was to alleviate some suffering and actually not feel it.

 

You recorded this album in New Zealand rather than Chicago. How did that influence you?

I think on a very practical level. I've been buying instruments and musical gear for a long time. I have just an overwhelming array of guitars and noisemaking devices at my fingertips when we record in Chicago. In New Zealand, I had an amp and a guitar and another guitar, and I think one of the things we really benefited from was having some limitations like that. You go, "Oh, let's see if we can make a record with this stuff," and I think it helped with our focus quite a bit.

 

The song "Country Disappeared" seems to draw on the time you've spent on the road touring America. What inspired you to write it?

There are images in that song I wanted to convey without a lot of commentary or opinion. I just wanted to look at, say, a foreclosure auction in an impressionistic and beautiful way. I wanted to look at a devastated city from above, as if it's art, and not really trying to relate too many thoughts about it at all. That's what it is for me — a series of images. I see them, I think of them when I sing it, and that's what gives me satisfaction. I know the title seems to be provocative for a lot of people, wondering which country I'm talking about — the red country or the blue country, which one disappeared? That's not really where the song was coming from.

 

Is there a song on this album you're most looking forward to playing live?

"Bull Black Nova" — I find it really invigorating. It creates its own little universe. It can stand up to any established mood and reassert a different mood, which is nice when you're trying to build a show from one place to another.

[bleedorange]

I never thought I would read the phrase "rising from the ashes" as many times as I have over the last few days. Especially since Wilco's career has more than doubled UT's.

[choo-choo-charlie]

David Fricke over at Rolling Stone loves W(TA). Compares it to A.M., actually. I love the Big Star-in-a-barn line. Four out of five stars.

 

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

[Plumplechook]

The Village Voice weigh in. I think it's safe to say that Mike Powell is not a fan of Wilco (or mid-western white folks for that matter):

 

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/music/wilco-the-review/1

 

Wilco: The Review

Music for white people to relax to, and what's wrong with that?

By Mike Powell

Tuesday, June 30th 2009 at 1:26pm

 

"Wilco" is a five-letter word for the quiet slaughter of all that is elemental, passionate, and reverentially stupid about rock 'n' roll. Try finding a vein on a Wilco album. Oh, Wilco: middle-aged Midwesterners with stubble and suit jackets. Precise instrumentalists who make mushy, edgeless music. Two healthy guitarists who alternate featherlight solos with the sound of breeze and rustle. (The pussyfooters call this "atmospherics." Whatever it is, it's very tasteful.) Wilco: The Band That Rocks, Within Reason. Their peak party moments sound like a good time as described by someone who hasn't actually had one. "I'm trying to balance fun with crushing depression," frontman Jeff Tweedy once said onstage. "Always a challenge." In this band, that's a punch line. Is there anything dangerous about Jeff Tweedy? Is there anything dangerous about a pale father of two, comfortable in soft denim, mewling his way through a prescription-pill addiction with songs about how dishwashing just isn't the same without his wife around?

 

History calls their earliest records, A.M. and Being There, "alt-country"—"country" because such a guise can sometimes make its wearers look more grizzled and wiser than they are; "alt-" because they wanted to look grizzled and wiser without being mistaken for two-bits, social conservatives, and/or drunk drivers. (That's a slight to stereotypes, not country.) When Tweedy went to rehab, he managed to make it look polite.

 

I didn't initially bother listening to their last two albums, 2004's A Ghost Is Born and 2007's Sky Blue Sky, because the preceding one, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was turgid and boring. Not awful—just turgid and boring. (It was also the kind of superficial great-leap-forward that inspires mind-numbing critical adulation: It won the Voice's Pazz & Jop Poll that year, received a Pitchfork 10.0, and became the new standard-bearer for American art-rock.) The boredom was something I'd come to expect: Wilco's main selling point, after their bittersweetness, was that they were basically a safe ride. But high art seemed like an unnecessary turn from what was already wholesome and dependable. I wasn't ready to hear what happened next.

 

What happened, it turns out, was that Wilco's albums became less turgid and more boring. Sky Blue Sky was hyperbolically so: pale and gentle, the work of a shaky voice and steady hands. The band's sound sighed and expanded—"country" came to mean something as loose and permeable as it did to the Grateful Dead or the Byrds. For an unfortunate spell, Tweedy appeared more focused on his production budget than on what the band produced. They mellowed—the vibrant, candied sounds of 1999's Summerteeth were crushed and drained of pigment. (Most of this had to do with Tweedy being left to explore his own ass with his head after co-founder Jay Bennett—his muscular, earthy, and pop-friendly foil—was ushered out during the recording of Foxtrot. He later sued Tweedy, went to bed in late May 2009, and never woke up.)

 

But the changes to Wilco were mostly superficial. Apart from the addition of synthesizers and poetic verse, about half of Sky sounds a lot like half of Being There, which was recorded 11 years earlier. Tweedy remains eerily detached; the band, despite losing Bennett (among others) and gaining avant-garde mercenaries Nels Cline (on guitar) and Glenn Kotche (on drums), is restrained and careful. It's still rock music in name only.

 

Now here's Wilco (The Album), a title almost as disquietingly bland as the band. A tame, pleasant, weird little album. A friend (and bigger fan than I) thinks it's like the sigh after the 12th step in the program—or, "Whatever the one is where you apologize for everything." (That's the ninth.) Here, the band remembers what they do best and shakes off most of what they don't. Fewer solos than on Sky, nearly as much noise as on Foxtrot, and some of the belabored textures from Ghost, all in good measure. Tweedy sings about accepting limitations and the cruelty of high school kids. He sings about the ways relationships wane and dissolve. He trades some sweet licks with Cline. The band bucks a couple of times, hardest on "Bull Black Nova"—actually, it's the hardest they've bucked on record since before Foxtrot.

 

The 11th step: "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out." The key here is "God as we understood God." Wilco finally seem to have gripped, firmly, what they're good at: heavily supervised rock music with a little bit of grit, a few funny noises and production tricks, and enough bromides and nostalgia amid the poetry to make it hit, glancingly. God's will for Wilco? Maybe it's something like, "Give white people something to relax to." There is no way in this beautiful world for me to object to that.

 

I didn't understand what critics and friends meant when they said Wilco had "matured" because they sang about doing the dishes and mowing the lawn. Teenagers do the dishes and mow the lawn. But most teenagers aren't relaxed. They don't face their shortcomings. They could never see a relationship of ellipses and quiet misunderstandings as one worth having.

 

I also didn't understand what critics and friends meant when they would say things like, "Wilco are the American Radiohead." Wilco are not the American Radiohead. Wilco are maybe six weary Jackson Brownes. Or what sandblasted jeans would say if they could talk. Listening to Wilco is like finding a rainbow between gray and tan.I don't love them for it, but I do respect them, more and more: for sucking the sentimentality out of nostalgia, for managing to never write a single truly happy song, for never writing a truly sad one, either. For never being sarcastic. For being almost spooky-earnest.

 

There's an image I have of Jeff Tweedy I can't shake. In it, he's Wilson, Tim Allen's neighbor on Home Improvement. I remember nothing about the show but Wilson—this inscrutable, all-knowing presence just beyond the backyard fence; the neighbor whose face you never see. Wilson seemed to talk to the world through a film. Apparently, he was born in Chicago. Maybe it's a Midwestern thing. Jeff Tweedy sometimes wears a beard, but even when he doesn't, I feel like I never see his face.

[gopokes]

The AMG link to the vinyl review works for some reason (the CD review is still a review of a Brad Paisley album...)

 

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wjftxz90ldfe

[jlb1705]

The Village Voice weigh in. I think it's safe to say that Mike Powell is not a fan of Wilco (or mid-western white folks for that matter):

 

...or music?

 

Apparently dude also thinks that Vampire Weekend's music is about "subtle rebellion". I read two other reviews he wrote just to see where he's coming from, and both of the others also prattled on about what white people supposedly like. Whatever.

 

I guess next time I'll know to stop reading when I see the words MIKE POWELL.

[jlb1705]

Lance Armstrong chimes in on Twitter:

 

lancearmstrong And listening to the new Spoon (Austin homeboys). Btw, the new Wilco is very good.

[Guest Speed Racer]

David Fricke over at Rolling Stone loves W(TA).

 

There are lots and lots and lots of words I would use to describe Feist if I had to choose just one, and "Canadian" really isn't on that list at all. Especially if the phrase I use to describe the duet I am referencing is "sexual tangle."

[Rusty Shackleford]

...or music?

 

Apparently dude also thinks that Vampire Weekend's music is about "subtle rebellion". I read two other reviews he wrote just to see where he's coming from, and both of the others also prattled on about what white people supposedly like. Whatever.

 

I guess next time I'll know to stop reading when I see the words MIKE POWELL.

 

I don't have a million dollars, but if I did, I'd bet it that Mike Powell is white.

[nodep5]

The Village Voice weigh in. I think it's safe to say that Mike Powell is not a fan of Wilco (or mid-western white folks for that matter):

 

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/music/wilco-the-review/1

 

Wilco: The Review

Music for white people to relax to, and what's wrong with that?

By Mike Powell

Tuesday, June 30th 2009 at 1:26pm

 

"Wilco" is a five-letter word for the quiet slaughter of all that is elemental, passionate, and reverentially stupid about rock 'n' roll. Try finding a vein on a Wilco album. Oh, Wilco: middle-aged Midwesterners with stubble and suit jackets. Precise instrumentalists who make mushy, edgeless music. Two healthy guitarists who alternate featherlight solos with the sound of breeze and rustle. (The pussyfooters call this "atmospherics." Whatever it is, it's very tasteful.) Wilco: The Band That Rocks, Within Reason. Their peak party moments sound like a good time as described by someone who hasn't actually had one. "I'm trying to balance fun with crushing depression," frontman Jeff Tweedy once said onstage. "Always a challenge." In this band, that's a punch line. Is there anything dangerous about Jeff Tweedy? Is there anything dangerous about a pale father of two, comfortable in soft denim, mewling his way through a prescription-pill addiction with songs about how dishwashing just isn't the same without his wife around?

 

History calls their earliest records, A.M. and Being There, "alt-country"—"country" because such a guise can sometimes make its wearers look more grizzled and wiser than they are; "alt-" because they wanted to look grizzled and wiser without being mistaken for two-bits, social conservatives, and/or drunk drivers. (That's a slight to stereotypes, not country.) When Tweedy went to rehab, he managed to make it look polite.

 

I didn't initially bother listening to their last two albums, 2004's A Ghost Is Born and 2007's Sky Blue Sky, because the preceding one, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was turgid and boring. Not awful—just turgid and boring. (It was also the kind of superficial great-leap-forward that inspires mind-numbing critical adulation: It won the Voice's Pazz & Jop Poll that year, received a Pitchfork 10.0, and became the new standard-bearer for American art-rock.) The boredom was something I'd come to expect: Wilco's main selling point, after their bittersweetness, was that they were basically a safe ride. But high art seemed like an unnecessary turn from what was already wholesome and dependable. I wasn't ready to hear what happened next.

 

What happened, it turns out, was that Wilco's albums became less turgid and more boring. Sky Blue Sky was hyperbolically so: pale and gentle, the work of a shaky voice and steady hands. The band's sound sighed and expanded—"country" came to mean something as loose and permeable as it did to the Grateful Dead or the Byrds. For an unfortunate spell, Tweedy appeared more focused on his production budget than on what the band produced. They mellowed—the vibrant, candied sounds of 1999's Summerteeth were crushed and drained of pigment. (Most of this had to do with Tweedy being left to explore his own ass with his head after co-founder Jay Bennett—his muscular, earthy, and pop-friendly foil—was ushered out during the recording of Foxtrot. He later sued Tweedy, went to bed in late May 2009, and never woke up.)

 

But the changes to Wilco were mostly superficial. Apart from the addition of synthesizers and poetic verse, about half of Sky sounds a lot like half of Being There, which was recorded 11 years earlier. Tweedy remains eerily detached; the band, despite losing Bennett (among others) and gaining avant-garde mercenaries Nels Cline (on guitar) and Glenn Kotche (on drums), is restrained and careful. It's still rock music in name only.

 

Now here's Wilco (The Album), a title almost as disquietingly bland as the band. A tame, pleasant, weird little album. A friend (and bigger fan than I) thinks it's like the sigh after the 12th step in the program—or, "Whatever the one is where you apologize for everything." (That's the ninth.) Here, the band remembers what they do best and shakes off most of what they don't. Fewer solos than on Sky, nearly as much noise as on Foxtrot, and some of the belabored textures from Ghost, all in good measure. Tweedy sings about accepting limitations and the cruelty of high school kids. He sings about the ways relationships wane and dissolve. He trades some sweet licks with Cline. The band bucks a couple of times, hardest on "Bull Black Nova"—actually, it's the hardest they've bucked on record since before Foxtrot.

 

The 11th step: "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out." The key here is "God as we understood God." Wilco finally seem to have gripped, firmly, what they're good at: heavily supervised rock music with a little bit of grit, a few funny noises and production tricks, and enough bromides and nostalgia amid the poetry to make it hit, glancingly. God's will for Wilco? Maybe it's something like, "Give white people something to relax to." There is no way in this beautiful world for me to object to that.

 

I didn't understand what critics and friends meant when they said Wilco had "matured" because they sang about doing the dishes and mowing the lawn. Teenagers do the dishes and mow the lawn. But most teenagers aren't relaxed. They don't face their shortcomings. They could never see a relationship of ellipses and quiet misunderstandings as one worth having.

 

I also didn't understand what critics and friends meant when they would say things like, "Wilco are the American Radiohead." Wilco are not the American Radiohead. Wilco are maybe six weary Jackson Brownes. Or what sandblasted jeans would say if they could talk. Listening to Wilco is like finding a rainbow between gray and tan.I don't love them for it, but I do respect them, more and more: for sucking the sentimentality out of nostalgia, for managing to never write a single truly happy song, for never writing a truly sad one, either. For never being sarcastic. For being almost spooky-earnest.

 

There's an image I have of Jeff Tweedy I can't shake. In it, he's Wilson, Tim Allen's neighbor on Home Improvement. I remember nothing about the show but Wilson—this inscrutable, all-knowing presence just beyond the backyard fence; the neighbor whose face you never see. Wilson seemed to talk to the world through a film. Apparently, he was born in Chicago. Maybe it's a Midwestern thing. Jeff Tweedy sometimes wears a beard, but even when he doesn't, I feel like I never see his face.

 

This is just priceless. I love the part of my country I grew up in and call home and my favorite band being blatantly made fun of just for the sake of some pompous elitist asshole feeling good about himself. Nice.

[jlb1705]

I don't have a million dollars, but if I did, I'd bet it that Mike Powell is white.

 

Then by his logic he should absolutely LOVE Wilco. What gives?

[aricandover]

The AMG link to the vinyl review works for some reason (the CD review is still a review of a Brad Paisley album...)

 

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wjftxz90ldfe

 

 

since when do llamas have humps?

[thermocaster]

I don't have a million dollars, but if I did, I'd bet it that Mike Powell is white.

 

You win a million dollars!

 

DORKY-looking white guy, no less.

[MattZ]

I'd rather read that review by Mike Powell than the average review that (1) falls over itself to mention the ashes of Uncle Tupelo and Jay Farrar, (2) inevitably gives the album 3.5 or 4 stars out of 5 to avoid taking any sort of real stance on the album, and (3) reads as if it were drafted to protect the author 5 yrs down the road just in case time treats the album well (or poorly).

 

In other words, Powell's critique was amusing and entertaining. I don't care what he says mostly because I don't care what he thinks. At least it was different.

[Dude]

I'd rather read that review by Mike Powell than the average review that (1) falls over itself to mention the ashes of Uncle Tupelo and Jay Farrar, (2) inevitably gives the album 3.5 or 4 stars out of 5 to avoid taking any sort of real stance on the album, and (3) reads as if it were drafted to protect the author 5 yrs down the road just in case time treats the album well (or poorly).

 

In other words, Powell's critique was amusing and entertaining. I don't care what he says mostly because I don't care what he thinks. At least it was different.

 

I had a lot issues with the constant drug references, the belaboured attacking of Tweedy for daring to go into rehab, and for being a father, which apparently is about the worst thing you can be in rock music, even though you really don't hear that much about Kim Gordon being a mom rocker or Thurston Moore being a dad rocker.

 

I don't have a problem with attacking the music for being boring; it seems pretty damn obnoxious though to attack him for leading a relatively healthy, drug and drama-free lifestyle these days.

[nodep5]

I had a lot issues with the constant drug references, the belaboured attacking of Tweedy for daring to go into rehab, and for being a father, which apparently is about the worst thing you can be in rock music, even though you really don't hear that much about Kim Gordon being a mom rocker or Thurston Moore being a dad rocker.

 

I don't have a problem with attacking the music for being boring; it seems pretty damn obnoxious though to attack him for leading a relatively healthy, drug and drama-free lifestyle these days.

 

Exactly! Yes it is an intersting read and adds some life to the same ol same ol album review. Unfortunately this guy is trying to be Lester Bangs and using the same old tricks. He is a good writer, but he wants us to believe that the music isn't worthwhile if the lead singer isn't screaming, shooting up, cutting self with glass or acting generally inappropriate in public. Tweedy is boring for caring about subtlety and nuance and melody and songcraft? And the whole bit about how he needs to be an out of control drug addict, crappy father figure, who is out of control is tiresome. I never have owned an Iggy Pop or Sex Pistols album and I only slightly give two craps for VU, so this guys rehashed Lester Bangs bit is largley irrelevant to me and my view of music.

 

So am I boring if I have been emotionally moved by "edgless" music for the past 15 years?