Next Wilco Album

[Magnetized]

Little blurb in Spin. No shocking revelations, outside of the fact that they apparently haven't really done jack shit yet.

 

http://www.spin.com/...pping-new-album

 

Those slackers! WTF have they been doing with their time??? (I love the picture accompanying this article, though--looks like a photo spread for a superannuated edition of Teen Beat.)

[Guest Jules]

Direction? Who cares! It's ****ING Wilco! They could do waltzes and jugband music and I'd still listen to it.

[Synthesizer Patel]

i must disagree. different strokes.

 

in agreement, however, on the IT crowd.

 

actually, terrible is a bit of an exaggeration, but i thought it started to get a bit stale. i hope they don't do any more and try something a bit different - as long as they have his brother michael (naboo) and saboo!

 

[The High Heat]

No matter what I want the next Wilco album to be sold exclusively out of the trunk of Jeff's car.

[Derek Phillips]

But you're happy dictating where this thread goes and passing judgments on its posts?

 

I enjoy discussing where the new album might go too, which is why I am, see - but I think it's impossible for someone to discuss where something might go without bringing up where they are or where they've been. You agree with me, otherwise you wouldn't have brought up how you like W(TA), the Mavis record, and how you're over 8 minute drones. That's passing judgement, both good and bad, on what they've done before. I don't think anyone has said, "Wilco MUST do this" in their thread, but we've certainly posted the same wishlists you've put in your first post - it's just that some people's wishlists are different from, or the antithesis, or yours.

 

The "you don't agree with me, therefore you must not be a fan, teehee" bit has been done before with the same results. People who like a band, nay - love a band, even - can dislike its present, past, or bits of each. That's like implying someone doesn't like a friend because of the things they dislike in that friend. If my friend wrote the songs on SBS I wouldn't end the friendship, I just might feign a cold on his or her open mike nights.

 

You are delightful.

[Guest Speed Racer]

That's exactly what my mother says.

[uncool2pillow]

Direction? Who cares! It's ****ING Wilco! They could do waltzes and jugband music and I'd still listen to it.[/quote}

 

I missed who Jules was quoting here. I used to feel this way about Bob Mould. Then Modulate came out. No matter who the artist, I want quality.

[LouieB]

I like 8 minute drones...maybe Wilco will add some saxophones...

 

LouieB

[austrya]

I would be perfectly happy with Wilco putting out another album that resembles Summerteeth. I love the poppy feel of the songs without all of the jamming or whatever it is that the latest albums seem to do. I just can't sing along to anything newer than AGIB and I kind of miss having an entire album that I can sing along to. I also love horns in songs. Horns and banjos.

[Basil II]

Born To Run is a god damned work of art.

 

And who the hell is FDOM?

 

 

Friends Of Dean Martinez

 

 

-Robert

[Bosco]

I was about to say something similar. I didn't know Wilco and Radiohead were still connected in people's minds or any other way.

 

LouieB

 

Let me see, in the last couple of years members of the two bands have recorded together, Jeff has played their songs in his solo set, and has sited consulting with them about forming his own record label, I guess I don't see the connection either.

[Tweedling]

I would be perfectly happy with Wilco putting out another album that resembles Summerteeth. I love the poppy feel of the songs without all of the jamming or whatever it is that the latest albums seem to do. I just can't sing along to anything newer than AGIB and I kind of miss having an entire album that I can sing along to. I also love horns in songs. Horns and banjos.

Hear Hear

[choo-choo-charlie]

what is "experimental?"

[jakobnicholas]

I didn't know Wilco and Radiohead were still connected in people's minds or any other way.

 

They're really not for me anymore. But Being There, Summerteeth and YHF....in my opinion...were similar to Radiohead in the sense of experimenting with different arrangements and sounds. I think a magazine or critic called Wilco the American Radiohead...a rootsier version of blissful, experimental rock.

 

Not to start a big Jay Bennett hubbub, but I really liked Wilco's sound when Bennett's arrangement skills were handy. He was maybe the Johnny Greenwood of Wilco. Greenwood used classical music as take-off points, while Bennett used older rock music as his take-off point. Tweedy and Yorke are similar....very great songwriters and directors of what the album should be and sound like. They both took Bennett's and Greenwood's ideas and sounds and made them better, adding their own bits

 

Radiohead can make Rainbows 'cause all the parts are still in the band. Wilco's hugely talented, but the last couple records definitely lack something in my opinion.

 

I'm hopeful that the band can add some fresh ideas to Jeff's always great songwriting skills.

[Sir Stewart]

what is "experimental?"

 

Music that is confounding to listen to and yet makes the listener feel that he/she should probably praise it out of fear of seeming dumb.

[jff]

what is "experimental?"

 

Attaching tubes to the hole in a drum shell so you can blow into the drum and raise its pitch might be one example of musical experimentalism.

[Synthesizer Patel]

experimental to me simply means doing something different. experimenting with your sound. to jeff tweedy it seems to mean making music that is agressively confrontational to the listener, or something negative to that effect - which is why he's recently cited the term when talking about "fans" expectations of the band. if you take the term to mean what he does, then, no, making experimental music just for the sake of it is a bad thing - because, "why has their music got to be hard for the listener to enjoy?" however, if you take it to mean just trying something different - and that difference can mean making a type of arrangement the band has never tried, but is very enjoyable and easy to get into for the listener - then expermenting is A GOOD THING!

 

the other thing is, i very rarely ever read anyone on here asking for that - if people complain it's because they want something, anything, that is better than the last album.

[choo-choo-charlie]

To me, the term "experimental" gets thrown around way too loosely. The way I see it, each record is "experimental" in some regard. To go from A.M. to Being There certainly took some trial and error, testing and discovery of new ideas, sounds, etc. The same goes with the step from BT to Summerteeth. And so on. With each record they've tested/experimented with sound, arrangements, songwriting, etc., the end product of which has been met with mixed results each time.

[Dude]

experimental to me simply means doing something different. experimenting with your sound. to jeff tweedy it seems to mean making music that is agressively confrontational to the listener, or something negative to that effect - which is why he's recently cited the term when talking about "fans" expectations of the band. if you take the term to mean what he does, then, no, making experimental music just for the sake of it is a bad thing - because, "why has their music got to be hard for the listener to enjoy?" however, if you take it to mean just trying something different - and that difference can mean making a type of arrangement the band has never tried, but is very enjoyable and easy to get into for the listener - then expermenting is A GOOD THING!

 

Yes and no. If the band decides to "experiment" with say, Kenny G-esque smooth jazz, it may be entirely new to the band, but not necessarily either experimental in the broader musical spectrum, nor good. (Which isn't to say it would automatically suck either, but it probably would.)

 

Experimentation to me is when a band either does something that is new to a particular genre (introducing pop and noise elements to more familiar country / folk songs on Summerteeth and YHF) or new to popular music in general. The vast majority of things have been done in music, period - indeed, the Beatles themselves did just about damn near everything - so we can only hope for the band to bend / mix genres and do something unique in some respects. It can be abrasive, or melodic, or both. I just would hope it sounds fresh and invigorating for these times.

[The High Heat]

In one of the many Tweedy interviews posted on here, Tweedy said he doesn't make experimental music. He said he knows what experimental music is because he listens to it. Wilco, he said, explores musical possibilities, but does not experiment with music.

[Atticus]

Music that is confounding to listen to and yet makes the listener feel that he/she should probably praise it out of fear of seeming dumb.

 

9.9

[jff]

From Uncut magazine, December 2005, page 100, review of Kicking Television (I just happen to have it sitting here, and read this quote the other day):

 

 

Why did you focus so heavily on the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born albums?

 

 

Tweedy: One of the things that people have said about our last few records is that they're experimental and weird, and we don't feel that way at all. And maybe playing the songs live illustrates that a little bit better - that they're, y'know, rock songs.

 

But theres a ton of dissonance.

 

Tweedy: I don't think that there's anything experimental about adding noise to rock music - the data is in, and it works.

[Guest Speed Racer]

9.9

 

Pitchfork only gave that post a 6.6 This morning's cool posts are, like, so over.

[ih8music]

Pitchfork only gave that post a 6.6

 

Especially since that comment came out of the ashes of Uncle Tupelo.

[Sir Stewart]

Especially since that comment came out of the ashes of Uncle Tupelo.

 

-1 for skipping the word "seminal".