LouieB Posted October 1, 2011 Share Posted October 1, 2011 From the Cleveland Scene - The first negative review I have seen. LouieB You can't really trust this supposed return to form from a band that has gotten a free pass for the past decade. Even though the cacophonous "Art of Almost" holds its own for a seven-minute opener — dig that thrashing Frippertronic ending — the organ-fronted "I Might," swaggering "Standing O," and sleazily lovely "Open Mind" could be considered hooky if only you could remember them in the morning. Unfortunately, the snoozy "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" is longer than all three put together. That's one of several long, slow stretches of broad strokes found on Wilco's eighth album. The Whole Love evaporates where even the least-interesting songs on 2009's Wilco (The Album) curled interestingly if you strained through the silence. You could throw out your back trying that trick here. — Dan Weiss Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jimtweedy1977 Posted October 1, 2011 Share Posted October 1, 2011 There's something about Capital City that reminds me of 'Good Company' by Queen. was hoping for a more cohesive album, since one of my biggest problems with Wilco (TA) was that it didnt seem to have much focus. However if the songs are good, then it could feel more like a variety show. Adding the extra bonus tracks will definitely make it a lengthy listen. also I wouldnt be too scared about the jazz aspect of Capitol City. I'm sure it's still a rock song with jazzy aspects, kind of like Steely Dan or something. I'm interested to hear it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
augurus Posted October 1, 2011 Share Posted October 1, 2011 From the Cleveland Scene - The first negative review I have seen. LouieB You can't really trust this supposed return to form from a band that has gotten a free pass for the past decade. Even though the cacophonous "Art of Almost" holds its own for a seven-minute opener — dig that thrashing Frippertronic ending — the organ-fronted "I Might," swaggering "Standing O," and sleazily lovely "Open Mind" could be considered hooky if only you could remember them in the morning. Unfortunately, the snoozy "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" is longer than all three put together. That's one of several long, slow stretches of broad strokes found on Wilco's eighth album. The Whole Love evaporates where even the least-interesting songs on 2009's Wilco (The Album) curled interestingly if you strained through the silence. You could throw out your back trying that trick here. — Dan WeissI'm still assured that any reviewer calling One Sunday Morning snoozy and or boring are just looking forward to the next Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus album. They're allowed to like them: they're just not allowed to have a qualified opinion. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Basil II Posted October 2, 2011 Share Posted October 2, 2011 To give you the personal response this query deserves. I think I am going to have to go PM here when I have a little more time. But cliffnotes version: Yeah, Robert, I think you'll like it. Give it a shot. --Mike thanks Mike.....I'll see about that on Monday......... -Robert Quote Link to post Share on other sites
smells like flowers Posted October 2, 2011 Share Posted October 2, 2011 He posts here regularly actually under the moniker IRememberDBoon... oh, shit I wasn't supposed to say anything about that. Move along, nothing to see here.One of the funniest recent posts I've read here and stuck in my mind for days, was by IRDB -- I think it was in the "I Might" thread -- something about "mo-fos standing next to me better look out, I'm going to be cutting a rug." It made me want to be one of the mofos standing next to IRDB! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
worldrecordplayer Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 From the Seattle Post Intelligencer: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Music-Review-Wilco-The-Whole-Love-2205375.php "More than anything else though, The Whole Love is the album which finally realizes the full potential of Wilco as a fully completed band, as opposed to their previous status as merely being chief singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy's backup crew. Must say I have to agree with most everything this reviewer writes. Plus, anytime I get a Nels reference to Jorma is a good day in my life! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
choo-choo-charlie Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 From the Cleveland Scene - The first negative review I have seen. LouieB You can't really trust this supposed return to form from a band that has gotten a free pass for the past decade. Even though the cacophonous "Art of Almost" holds its own for a seven-minute opener — dig that thrashing Frippertronic ending — the organ-fronted "I Might," swaggering "Standing O," and sleazily lovely "Open Mind" could be considered hooky if only you could remember them in the morning. Unfortunately, the snoozy "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" is longer than all three put together. That's one of several long, slow stretches of broad strokes found on Wilco's eighth album. The Whole Love evaporates where even the least-interesting songs on 2009's Wilco (The Album) curled interestingly if you strained through the silence. You could throw out your back trying that trick here. — Dan Weiss I don't think I'd ever put the word "sleazily" in a sentence describing "Open Mind." Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sweet Papa Crimbo Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 From the Cleveland Scene - The first negative review I have seen. LouieB You can't really trust this supposed return to form from a band that has gotten a free pass for the past decade. Even though the cacophonous "Art of Almost" holds its own for a seven-minute opener — dig that thrashing Frippertronic ending — the organ-fronted "I Might," swaggering "Standing O," and sleazily lovely "Open Mind" could be considered hooky if only you could remember them in the morning. Unfortunately, the snoozy "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" is longer than all three put together. That's one of several long, slow stretches of broad strokes found on Wilco's eighth album. The Whole Love evaporates where even the least-interesting songs on 2009's Wilco (The Album) curled interestingly if you strained through the silence. You could throw out your back trying that trick here. — Dan Weiss Is the Cleveland Scene a 'free' newspaper?Never heard of it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LouieB Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 Is the Cleveland Scene a 'free' newspaper?Never heard of it. Obviously you are not from Cleveland. Lots of papers are free and have fair to middling journalism (I would count the Chicago Reader in this category.) The Scene has been around since the 70s, but of course that doesn't mean that the review was good, just that it was there and I saw it when I was in town this past weekend. It does not represent my views on the album, just posting it up. LouieB Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sweet Papa Crimbo Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 Obviously you are not from Cleveland. Lots of papers are free and have fair to middling journalism (I would count the Chicago Reader in this category.) The Scene has been around since the 70s, but of course that doesn't mean that the review was good, just that it was there and I saw it when I was in town this past weekend. It does not represent my views on the album, just posting it up. LouieB I didn't mean to indicate that free newspaper = shoddy journalism. The Dallas Observer is a pretty good rag here in the Dallas area.There does often seem to be an iconoclastic view in the free newspapers. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LouieB Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 I didn't mean to indicate that free newspaper = shoddy journalism. The Dallas Observer is a pretty good rag here in the Dallas area.There does often seem to be an iconoclastic view in the free newspapers. Oh yea, for sure. But we are talking Cleveland here. It is my old hometown so I guess I can dis it a bit. LouieB Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Oil Can Boyd Posted October 9, 2011 Share Posted October 9, 2011 Magnet Magazine is back in print. There is a nice article about them along with the a pretty negative review. It's not online yet but they give it five out of ten stars. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Fritz Posted October 9, 2011 Share Posted October 9, 2011 This is more of a post-review article from yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/where-theres-a-wilco-20111006-1la6o.html Where there's a Wilco October 8, 2011 The alt-country pioneers step once more into uncharted territory with their eighth studio album, writes BERNARD ZUEL. Jeff Tweedy just can't seem to get it right. Let's face it, we're talking a rookie mistake, a commercial misstep you learn to avoid in first-year marketing.The 44-year-old mainstay of Chicago band Wilco, Tweedy is not exactly a greenhorn after a career that began in 1987 with Uncle Tupelo, one of the pioneers of the underground country rock revival known as alt-country. Since 1994, along with several side projects, some poetry and two children, Tweedy has made seven albums with Wilco, a band that at one point looked like it changed members and musical styles as often as he changed strings. Now on their own label, they couldn't even keep a record company for a while, being dropped by one arm of the Warner conglomerate (because highly paid executives thought the unreleased album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was unplayable) before being picked up by another arm of the Warner conglomerate (because highly paid executives thought the same album was potential genius). The latter proved to be closer to the truth and the highest sales of their career confirmed that wisdom. However, any producer worth his gram of coke would tell you that you should follow up a 2009 record called Wilco (The Album) with either Wilco (The Sequel) or Wilco (The Album) 2: Wilco Harder. Make a point, repeat the point. Then repeat again. Instead, the Chicagoans returned this year with their eighth album, an eclectic collection called The Whole Love. Clearly, repeating yourself is a lesson Tweedy has failed to learn in 27 years. ''I think that would be a good lesson to learn if you had a hit the first time around. It doesn't make much sense to have a sequel of a record that wasn't a hit,'' Tweedy says drily. If having a hit is out of the question, it's probably the only thing that Wilco fail at. They are now routinely described as the great American band of their generation, the successors to R.E.M. and the transatlantic twin to Britain's Radiohead, for their variety, audacity and technical ability.Every Wilco album has been different from its predecessor; most have been different from song to song. On the evidence of The Whole Love, this is a band that not only is capable of doing anything it wants but has the confidence to put out a country song, a pop song and a guitar-heavy song on the one record and make it all sound like Wilco. ''There is certainly a willingness to try anything in this band, a band of guys who have made a lot of different types of music and played in different environments. But then we don't tend to put things on the record that fall short,'' Tweedy laughs.Long clean from an addiction to painkillers taken to alleviate a lifelong problem with migraines (''I … spit and swallowed opioid,'' he sings on the new album), Tweedy has also shed a reputation for difficulty and moroseness that, to be fair, had only a small connection to the truth but doggedly stuck to him nonetheless. ''People say that I'm difficult but they are usually people who haven't met me,'' he says in his defence. ''I'm kind of shy in a weird way that can come off as something other than shyness.'' Former colleague (and school buddy) Jay Farrar, who co-founded Uncle Tupelo but hasn't spoken to him since that band's breakup, might not agree; nor perhaps the late Jay Bennett, who was his right-hand man in Wilco for many years until he was sacked in an ugly end to the recording of the career-changing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. However, it's telling that the Wilco line-up has been unchanged for the past four records, not only the best of their career but the most successful. Four years ago, Tweedy said of this line-up that ''this is the first time in my life I've ever been part of a band that can really mine something that deep and have that kind of stamina and attention''. Today he joyously declares that ''there is a real passion in the band for lots of different stuff and we have a lot of curiosity''. The Whole Love suggests they've reached a plane few groups can reach, Tweedy finding a sparring partner of rare skill and fire in fellow guitarist Nels Cline but also comfortable in the imagination and flexibility of bassist John Stirrat (the only other original Wilco member), drummer Glenn Kotche, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen. ''I'm always happy when a song happens and I'm finally doing the work to make a song happen but I think I was able to take my time and really have fun this time,'' Tweedy says. ''We have a lot more time to explore and stretch out and use some of those elements we have. As a band I think we are very conversant with each other musically. I'm excited that there is more of that.'' But maybe the best example of Tweedy, the different man, is work he did outside the band last year, producing an album of spiritually aware songs for the great Chicagoan gospel and soul singer, Mavis Staples. ''I think that that was a healthy environment, a healthy thing to do for me, to help somebody else make a record,'' he says. ''That's a break in itself, focusing on someone else's music and taking a lot of my energy outside of the shows I was playing at the time.'' Staples has said that she'd been sceptical about working with Tweedy at first. She didn't know him, she wasn't that familiar with Wilco's music and he seemed so enthusiastic that she wasn't sure whether it was coming from a fan's perspective or something else. What was it that connected these two people with vastly different backgrounds of age, sex, race and religion? ''I don't know, I really don't know,'' Tweedy says. ''I loved her family's music for a long time, I loved her father's guitar playing and songwriting and I don't know if you've ever met Mavis but she is pretty hard not to like. I don't know what she saw in me but there's definitely a kind of mutual love - we had built a deep, sweet spiritual connection.'' Did they have the sort of conversation that is deconstructed in the Wilco album's final track, One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend), the story of a philosophical and religious argument Tweedy had, with lines such as ''I said, it's your God I don't believe in/No your Bible can't be true/Knocked down by the long lie/He cried, I fear what waits for you''. ''No. We focused on common ground. It never honestly came up,'' he says. ''I think she knows enough about me to have a fair idea of my belief system, I guess, and her type of spirituality, Christianity, whatever you want to call it, is very different from the kind that gets a lot of bad press and rightfully so; she's extremely tolerant. ''The common ground we found was music. I do believe in something bigger than myself and music is as close to it as I think I can get.''The Whole Love is out now. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LouieB Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Magnet Magazine is back in print. There is a nice article about them along with the a pretty negative review. It's not online yet but they give it five out of ten stars. That's tacky. LouieB Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Shakespeare In The Alley Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 How so? Ignoring the fact that the review and the interview aren't necessarily the same writer, I think it's tacky to assume a cover story guarantees you a good review. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bleedorange Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Yeah, I would hope that the presence of a cover story didn't influence the review. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
lamradio Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 "Hey, we'll interview you.. It'll be great publicity! But yeah... the album review.. not so great publicity.. " Tacky indeed. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Shakespeare In The Alley Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 I'd much rather know that the magazine maintains a bit of integrity and still reviewed the album honestly, cover story or no cover story. Besides, a cover story is likely done before a review. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Oil Can Boyd Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Boston Herald Grade: A-No new tricks here, instead Wilco’s eighth album is a collection of its best old tricks — and what a collection it is. Jammed together are wild experimental rock (“Art of Almost”), ace power pop (“Dawned on Me”) and sublime folk (“Black Moon”), giving the band a fresh, bold sound. Much credit goes to Nels Cline’s flat-out-sick lead guitar and Jeff Tweedy’s songwriting — how his melodic skills are still improving astounds me. For a bright, brilliant new wave nugget, download “Standing O.”— JED GOTTLIEB Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Speed Racer Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 I think its tacky because the cover story suggests, "Hey, this is a newsworthy band making newsworthy music," and a 5/10 review suggests, "Meh, nothing to write home about." It's inconsisent. Put Wild Flag on the cover, generate some press for their upcoming album, and include Wilco in the magazine without drawing so much attention to them. OMG, I agreed with LouieB. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tinnitus photography Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 We're all getting old. I think the weirdness has more to do with the fisheye lens than anything. That and everyone looks like they need a nap. sorry to chime in late, but that's not a fisheye...it's taken w/ an ultrawide lens (16-35mm f/2.8 Canon lens, to be specific). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
-seven Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Yeah I realized that later. I think the way Mikael is leaning made it look like that to me at first. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LouieB Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 OMG, I agreed with LouieB.Shocking..not even sure who you are. What was your old name? LouieB Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sweet Papa Crimbo Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 sorry to chime in late, but that's not a fisheye...it's taken w/ an ultrawide lens (16-35mm f/2.8 Canon lens, to be specific). Dude...that photo on the splash page of your website is OUTRAGEOUS!!! (What show was it taken at?) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Kilgore Trout Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Magnet Magazine is back in print. There is a nice article about them along with the a pretty negative review. It's not online yet but they give it five out of ten stars. Here is a link to an online version of the mag: http://issuu.com/redflagmedia/docs/magnet_flip_81 The review is on page 61. Basically calls the slower stuff self-parody and says OSM doesn't go anywhere. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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