Official reviews of The Whole Love

[tinnitus photography]

 

Dude...that photo on the splash page of your website is OUTRAGEOUS!!! (What show was it taken at?)

 

 

thanks! you mean this one?

 

 

that was taken at last year's All Tomorrow's Parties, up in the Catskills. That's Matt Pike of Sleep on stage. i gotta say there's a refreshing lack of mobile phones and cameras in the photo

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

 

 

thanks! you mean this one?

 

 

that was taken at last year's All Tomorrow's Parties, up in the Catskills. That's Matt Pike of Sleep on stage. i gotta say there's a refreshing lack of mobile phones and cameras in the photo

 

An absolutely outstanding photo. I love how you can just make out the guitar (possibly a Les Paul) amidst the backlighting.

[choo-choo-charlie]

Another No Depression entry.More positive than the last review -- and this one might be on the way to another extended comment thread like its predecessor. Full text below. Story here.

 

***

 

Nearly ten years ago, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco were basking in the glory. Having successfully usurped the music industry by buying back the label rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the band members were gracing magazine covers, topping year-end lists, and playing to the largest crowds of their career. Since then, Wilco’s fan base has gotten exponentially bigger and watched them turn into a live juggernaut as the lineup has stabilized around the expert craftsmen Tweedy has assembled to fully flesh out the soundscapes in his ever evolving musical head. The band is a force; their technical prowess sharp enough to expertly recreate the myriad chord and note changes reflective of their catalog, yet spontaneous enough to fire off some of the fiercest freak-out jams rock music has seen. However, as strong as these credentials have become, Wilco has had a hard time winning over critics with its studio output since those Early Millennial golden years. Much division greeted A Ghost is Born, Sky Blue Sky, and Wilco (The Album) as charges of pretension, circumlocution, and most derisively “Dad Rock” were thrown about in reaction to the work. The live shows never failed to draw praise, but lots of onlookers worried that perhaps the recorded material would cease to stand up to the band’s high water marks.

 

All troubled thoughts and hand-wringing should cease however, as Wilco has released The Whole Love, a fully realized collection of tunes so versatile, commanding, and magnificent, that all naysayers should be rendered irrelevant. This album is bold, yet painted with deft touches; powerful and evolved, yet simple and stripped down when need be; grippingly philosophical yet still fun enough to demand sing-alongs. In short, it is a work of measured brilliance and a statement to the masses that Wilco is still a force to be reckoned with, capable of releasing meaningful testimonials that can stand up to the giant shadows created by the legend of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

 

Wilco wastes little time getting its point across, opening the album with the seven-minute-plus shredder “Art of Almost”. Unlike anything in their catalog, the song slowly opens with a wall of distortion and trip-hop beats before crescendoing into a gorgeous swirl of noise that opens up enough for Tweedy to begin reciting his cryptic lyrics over a buzzed-up bass beat. At the four-minute mark, things get slightly familiar as Wilco expands upon some previous tricks that have made their work so unique. As the music slowly begins to die down, (think the back halves of songs like “Misunderstood” and “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” for reference) things halt and as the listener thinks the song is ending, a searing Nels Cline guitar solo kicks things back into gear and an epic squall of jam leads the song out into its ending. This extended outro is interesting in that it references not only Wilco’s own punishing live arrangements, but those of Crazy Horse, Can, and dare I say it, Phish as well. It is sure to be a barnburner of a live staple for years to come. After this grandiose opening statement, treasures abound throughout the remainder of the album. There’s the Big Star sugary power pop of first single, “I Might”, the simply tangled beauty of “Sunloathe” that will remind listeners of some of the more harmonious numbers from Summerteeth, and the straight-ahead rockers, “Dawned On Me”, “Born Alone” and “Standing O”. “Open Mind” hearkens back to Wilco’s collaboration with Billy Bragg on the Mermaid Avenuesessions, while “Whole Love” illustrates Tweedy’s playful knack for setting simple rhyme schemes to catchy chords. “Capitol City” even surprises with its’ reverential Sgt. Pepper overtones.

 

Over the course of the album, the band seems to make a conscious effort to stay focused and leaves out any filler that may have bogged down the procession of songs. Although there are lighter moments of tuneful bliss, The Whole Loveis a weightier affair, seemingly born out of sense of purpose and assertion. Now in their mid-40’s, the members of Wilco have become elder statesmen of the music scene, serving as influence to many younger bands who were just coming of age when Wilco’s star began to shine the brightest. It’s possible to speculate that Tweedy and Co. wanted to use this release as a way of reminding some of the skeptics that the fire still burns and the opportunity to create great art still remains as strong as it ever has. The band has surely earned the right to headline large venues and festivals for as long as they please, with crowds excitedly following along. Here, however, Wilco demonstrates that they will continue to be a challenging and imposing outfit in terms of releasing new material.

 

If there was any doubt, the twelve-minute album closing “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend) should erase any misgivings. Apparently written out of a deeply poignant conversation with the boyfriend of the novelist and frequent Huffington Post contributor of the same name, the song is a masterpiece of non-linear songwriting as Tweedy’s elegiac laments and enigmatic verses (“I said it’s your God I don’t believe in/No, your Bible can’t be true/Knocked down by the long life/He cried out, I fear what waits for you”), build forth to an amazingly satisfying conclusion and fadeout. This is the type of composition that has been missing from recent Wilco albums, one where Tweedy really mines the well of emotional catharsis. He can write with the best of them and it is a welcome sight and listen to have him and the band emerge in such a concrete and conscientious manner.

[choo-choo-charlie]

The Owl & Bear weighs in:

 

Wilco‘s eighth studio album, The Whole Love, greets you like a Mack truck driving slowly and unexpectedly through your front door.

The opening song, “Art of Almost,” starts delicately — with strings and synth swelling from silence — but then the drums centrifuge around the beat, eventually reaching a peak that gives way to band mastermind Jeff Tweedy’s unmistakable voice. As Tweedy’s relaxed whisper floats over a fractured percussive pulse, Nels Cline is unleashed, barreling through a blistering guitar like a feral dog acquiring new freedom. By the completion of the chaos, a declarative statement has been made: Wilco is charting new territory. And the band does so with great ease, comfort, and success.

Wilco fans will especially love The Whole Love for its lack of limitations. The album is eclectic yet cohesive; as divergent as the Randy Newman-esque “Capitol City” is from the psychedelic experiment “Art of Almost,” there is something that is distinctly Wilco throughout. Perhaps it is the unique use of atmospherics to bait the listener into a trance, Tweedy’s descriptive-yet-sometimes vague poetics, or the great tones and dense layers on every track.

“I Might” is a great breath of garage pop, driven by Farfisa organs, catchy glockenspiel melodies, and interlocking guitar lines. On “Sunloathe,” the band strips it down to a minimal but gradually building arrangement. Tweedy sings, “It’s hard to recall / Hold on to it all / I kill my memories with a cheap disease.” These stark lyrics delivered with spacious timing traverse a landscape of haunting guitar waves, moving bells, and harmonized vocal ambiance, setting the scene for an Abbey Road feel once the drums enter.

The closest thing to a misstep may be the generic rocker “Standing O,” though, as with the rest of the album, it represents a certain era and sound that the band has embraced. It is a catchy, upbeat singalong, and thanks to its anthemic pace, serves as a nice segue into “Red Rising Lung,” a finger-picked exercise in ghostly patience.

Overall, this album sees a great rock and roll band stepping forward, relying on their past as a foundation but not a crutch. The musicianship is at its highest caliber; The Whole Love is at once adventurous, playful, dead serious, and forgiving, and it’s their best effort since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

[bleedorange]

What happened to the "I love the Whole Love" thread? Did it get deleted? Or did I just miss it?

 

Anyway, I listened to this album again yesterday and it's good. It's just not that good. I think there are definitely 7-8 great songs on here, which makes it a very good album. But the rest is fairly ordinary and nothing I would be excited about if there was another band not named Wilco attached to them.

 

The great songs:

Art of Almost

I Might

Sunloathe

Black Moon

Standing O (maybe not great, but I love where it's placed on the album and it serves its purpose well, much like I'm a Wheel)

Rising Red Lung

Whole Love

One Sunday Morning

[choo-choo-charlie]

I didn't care for I Might that much until I heard it in the context of the whole record. To me, its pairing with Art of Almost is as essential as Red-Eyed and Blue/I Got You.

[rareair]

What happened to the "I love the Whole Love" thread? Did it get deleted? Or did I just miss it?

 

Anyway, I listened to this album again yesterday and it's good. It's just not that good. I think there are definitely 7-8 great songs on here, which makes it a very good album. But the rest is fairly ordinary and nothing I would be excited about if there was another band not named Wilco attached to them.

 

The great songs:

Art of Almost

I Might

Sunloathe

Black Moon

Standing O (maybe not great, but I love where it's placed on the album and it serves its purpose well, much like I'm a Wheel)

Rising Red Lung

Whole Love

One Sunday Morning

 

i think it was deleted. seeing them live might change your mind on dawned on me and born alone.

[choo-choo-charlie]

Dawned on Me is one of my favorites from TWL. Love it.

[i'm only sleeping]

Standing O (maybe not great, but I love where it's placed on the album and it serves its purpose well, much like I'm a Wheel)

 

[Albert Tatlock]

Americana UK. 8 / 10

 

http://www.americana-uk.com/cd-reviews/item/wilco-the-whole-love-dbpm-records-2011?category_id=175

 

David Cowling

Friday, 14 October 2011

Wilco “The Whole Love”

dbPm Records, 2011

 

I’m the man who loves you

Wilco are at their most powerful when subverting expectations rather than playing up to them.  The past two records have been pandering to expectations, mixing harmonic passages with bursts of Nels Cline guitar; exactly what we expect.

These records didn’t really hang together; it was as though they were making records based on recipes. ‘A.M’ was a decent Americana record; probably exactly what we expected from Tweedy after Uncle Tupelo, it was the urge to subvert that eventually led them to make some truly great rock records. This record is as coherent and cohesive as they’ve been.  There’s a harmony, as though they’ve once again learnt how to control the dynamic elements and put them to best use, like a band, like a team. The result is easily their best set since ‘A Ghost Is Born’.

 

Confidence and control means that things don’t have to be one thing or the other, synthesis and contradictions are allowed.  Wilco can play songs of wistful beauty, like ‘Rising Red Lung’ and they can play around with form. ‘One Sunday Morning’ starts by giving the listener an easy ride; it proceeds in expected ways, phrases resolve, the melody rises, the rhythm is constant, gradually though the melody disappears.  An acoustic guitar tries to wrench it back until the elements fragment over the remaining couple of minutes, not with showers of guitar but gently dissolving. It’s a satisfying twelve minutes that conclude the record.

 

The opening is more fractious and experimental; ‘Art of Almost’ makes less of an effort to seamlessly move from one part to another, it is bound by the repetitive rhythms of Krautrock.  The opening stanza is a gentle insistent rumbling with a synthesized sheet of sound rippling out, Tweedy’s vocals appear and the song proceeds magisterially radiating power.  The electronics gradually give way to naked electric guitar with the bass and drums locked in a percussive snowball.  Nels Cline’s guitar snakes and spits like a viper with its tail in a pot of acid.

 

In-between there are beautiful moments like ‘Black Moon’, full of acoustic warmth, made beautiful by lap steel and floating ethereal strings it hits the balance of pop and something darker that surfaced on ‘Summerteeth".  The kind of relaxed melancholic autumnal song that Tweedy has always done so well.  There’s even room for the shock of an almost straightforward rocker in ‘Standing O’.

 

There are no lacklustre songs on this record, nothing you’d skip; each has something to contribute to the whole and I rather think that the record was constructed in the same way. It’s a record that summarises the progress that Wilco have made so far.  The last couple of records sounded like they came from a band in stasis, this one sounds like it comes from a band on the verge of its next great leap forward.

[worldrecordplayer]

Dawned on Me is one of my favorites from TWL. Love it.

Me too, no doubt about that. And I can comfortably go out on a limb and say my wife would say the same.

 

We drove from Boston to NYC this weekend, and back. On the way down Friday evening, after listening to Rubber Soulive and The King is Dead: Wife: "What are you putting on?" Me: "One of the recent Wilco shows." Wife: "Put on The Whole Love, I've hardly heard the album since you've been hogging it." Me: "Didn't I make a copy for you?" Wife: "No, you haven't!" (Note-she's got the discs of Solid Sound and the Wang show in her car, but apparently not TWL).

 

Return trip to Boston on Sunday: Me: "what do you want to listen to?" Wife: "The Whole Love, of course." Me: "Again?" Wife: "Definitely!" So we did, we listened to The Whole Love Again, followed by the Atlanta show with Tweedy's introduction of Duane's Les Paul. Four hours in the car, not a second of anything heard other than Wilco.

 

I've written elsewhere, but I keep on listening to The Whole Love, and every time I think what a freaking great album, start to finish. Never get tired of it, or any single song on it. And at least 6 of the songs are nothing short of spectacular. Songs that instantly put me in a great mood, no matter what. Well done, Wilco.

[jcroach]

Review from Relevant Magazine

 

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/music/reviews/26876-review-wilco-whole-love

 

Revelant describes itself as "the only magazine covering God, life and progressive culture."

 

A gimmick-free, timeless album from Jeff Tweedy & Co.

 

When a band releases a self-titled album that is not their debut, I can usually smell a disaster from a mile away. It’s like the band wants to fake a reset of sorts for commercial or artistic reasons, or they simply weren’t creative enough to come up with a real album title. Anytime that is taken one step further and you are writing a song that is self-titled on an album that is self-titled, you are probably getting a little too cute for your own good.

 

Unfortunately, that’s what Wilco did in 2009, 14 years after their alt-country debut, A.M., releasing Wilco, the sound of a bunch of former rock stars married with kids of their own, fairly domesticated and musically relaxed. Two years removed from their weakest album to date, following another change in record labels (a band with a well-recorded history of record label issues) and the drug overdose and death of former band mate Jay Bennett, the seasoned Chicago rockers release The Whole Love. This latest album would have been better qualified to be the self-titled Wilco album, as the 12 songs represent all of Wilco’s musical phases in a glorious light.

 

In a long list of Wilco’s classic album openers, the glitchy, experimental “Art of Almost” fits quite well in the pantheon. The song is long, dramatic, disjointed and dismantles itself much like the pop deconstruction they did during their experimental musical teen years on A Ghost Is Born and their masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. “I Might” follows and immediately brings to mind the sunny power-pop on Summer Teeth, with a deeply distorted bass, dainty xylophone and psychedelic organ like Elvis Costello’s best years. “Open Mind” is the sort of swaying country tune that would have been fit on their no-frills alt-country debut A.M., and “Black Moon” is the best ba llad they have delivered since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which had a multitude of affecting ballads. “Standing Ovation” is a thrilling rock roller coaster. With its circling hooks, persistent drumming and amusement park organ, the song is a surefire crowd pleaser for their already rousing live shows.

 

The psychedelic vocals and rising guitar on “Sunloathe” brings to mind the ode-to-'70s rock sound of Sky Blue Sky, but even more so Abbey Road-era Beatles. Much like the Beatles (a comparison I hate making with any band, but I continue), Wilco, at its core, is a conventional rock 'n’ roll band with an incredible aptitude for great pop songwriting—but they go off on all sorts of genre exercises and detours of music they love (like George Harrison would do with Indian music, Paul McCartney with musicals). Wilco has covered everything from avante-garde music on “I’m Trying to Break Your Heart” from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to space rock on “Art of Almost” on this album. Wilco, like the Beatles, can also do this to a fault like on one of Whole Love’s only missteps, “Capitol City,” which has frontman Jeff Tweedy taking on a show-tune with its schmaltzy shuffle and '20s horns, sort of like how McCartney would go off on his show-tune detours on songs like “Your Mother Should Know” and “Honey Pie.”

 

Wilco has always been a band of considerable contrast, especially on songs like “Via Chicago” and “I’m Trying To Break Your Heart” where the band performs lovely folk songs while the song structure behind it manically collapses. On Whole Love, similar to the songs on Summer Teeth, Wilco delivers this contrast in giving garage rock a sugary pop feel, creating “bubblegum garage rock” in the form of the first three singles, “I Might”, “Dawned On Me” and “Born Alone.” “Dawned On Me” is a grungy rocker with a piercing static guitar solo from Nels Cline, but the song is contrasted with its saccharine falsetto chorus. “Mister Rogers” whistles, lighthearted percussion and enough “oohs” and “aahs” for a Supremes song. “Born Alone” has Tweedy sounding grounded and lonely while the guitars take off like a rocket ship.

 

Jeff Tweedy has never been afraid to tackle religious and spiritual issues, all the way back to his Uncle Tupelo days (his first band with Jay Farrar, who were, in many ways, the forefathers of alt-country) to the Woody Guthrie cover albums with British political folk activist Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue Vol. 1 & 2. Tweedy continues to talk candidly on spiritual issues on the album closer “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” a song based around a conversation he had at dinner once with (no surprise here) Jane Smiley’s boyfriend where the boyfriend talked about his condemning religious father and the strange relief he felt when his father passed. “It’s ‘your god’ I don’t believe in,” the son says to his father in the song, a 12-minute epic narrated gently above poignant piano and rustling percussion. As Tweedy explained to Chicago Magazine, the son felt relief about his father’s passing because, “Now he’s going to know he was wrong and that there is an only loving God,” a fascinating focus in the situation.

 

The title track comes right before the album closer, and the song is simply Wilco doing what they do best. On “Whole Love” Tweedy’s feathery vocals hover gracefully over the biting drums and hopping guitar, like a bird flying gracefully over its predators, as each verse brings its own new adventure with subtle touches only Wilco can bring.

 

Whole Love is elite musicians creating timeless rock music. An overflowing sea of music that begs you to be different, Wilco sees no need to play strange African instruments, have 20 band members, wear wild costumes or have any other gimmick; this is just six humbled musicians from the Midwest making rock music with substance and tact—something worth applauding.

[Albert Tatlock]

http://theamericanshot.com/wilcos-whole-love-a-whole-lot-better/

 

There was a review a whole back that said something like 'It may not be the best Wilco album, but it may end up being your favourite'. I am converging on agreeing with that. Black Moon and Rising Red Lung have grown on me a lot, not to mention the obvious solid gold tracks.

 

Wilco’s Whole Love – A Whole lot Better

November 5, 2011 by Kevin Korber

Jeff Tweedy seems to refuse to let us have any sustainable perception of who he is as an artist. He’s leapt from country-loving punk to adventurous studio architect to Starbucks troubadour in the space of a decade, all the while frustrating sections of his fanbase. The alt-country fans who loved 1995’s Being There balked at the impressionist rock of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, while Foxtrot fans likely didn’t find a whole lot to enjoy about the band’s recent, conventional pop-rock albums.

The Whole Love may be Tweedy’s first attempt to win back some of his older fans, specifically the ones who left him after the band followed the inscrutable A Ghost Is Born with the sleepy Sky Blue Sky.

 

“Art of Almost” announces from the start that this record probably won’t be comfortable for the Starbucks set as it sputters to life with keyboard noise and the staggered rhythms of drummer Glenn Kotche. Kotche and guitarist Nels Cline, long the band’s wasted experimental weapons, are allowed to flex their muscles for once. Cline’s guitar paints moods with different sonic textures whereas he often is reduced to playing classic-rock retread solos. But on The Whole Love, his guitar colors otherwise weaker songs like “Black Moon” with an emotional resonance that they would have otherwise lacked.

 

Sadly, Cline and Kotche can’t save every dud on The Whole Love. “Open Mind” sounds like a cast-off from the Mermaid Avenue that probably would’ve sounded better with the late Jay Bennett behind the boards. “Captiol City,” while charming at the start, starts to become grating before reaching the point where it’s unbearable. The title track, too, recalls moments of Wilco (The Album), specifically its aggressive mediocrity.

Despite flaws like this, and despite the fact that I really hate “Capitol City,” I’ve liked The Whole Love more than anything the band has done since their excellent live release Kicking Televison. The band on The Whole Love has the vigor and excitability expressed on Kicking Television and at the dozens of live shows they’ve played since, which can’t be said for their last few albums. There’s nothing as lazy as “Impossible Germany,” nothing as pandering as “You and I,” nothing as flat-out embarrassing as “Wilco The Song.” Even more conventional songs like “Dawned on Me” and first single “I Might” shine through strong melodies and Tweedy’s welcome return to a more abstract lyrical style, emphasizing wordplay and free association over the singer-songwriter clichés that plagued some of his more recent singles. I have no idea what “Magna Carta’s on a slim jim brother/the sunk soul with a clean toe mother” means at all, but it’s a godsend after hearing Tweedy declare that he didn’t care anymore.

 

There’s nothing abstract about The Whole Love‘s final song, “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” but its relative straightforwardness makes it a powerful piece of music nonetheless. Where “Art of Almost” shocks the listener to attention with its stream of adventure, “One Sunday Morning” soothes the album to a conclusion, relying on a simple yet strong melody and a haunting vocal performance from Tweedy, who has earned a place among rock’s greatest vocalists by now. At twelve minutes, it’s the band’s longest song, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s a slow burn in the vein of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” detailing thoughts about faith, belief, and the hereafter. As the song drifts into its coda, it falls apart only to return to its melody, which brings The Whole Love to a close.

The Whole Love is not a masterpiece; no Wilco fan would mistake this for Summerteeth or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But it’s always a shame to see a talented band-and Wilco are one of the most talented bands in the country-start to spin their wheels in middle age. While The Whole Love may certainly feel familiar to longtime Wilco fans, it feels alive and vital in a way that the band hasn’t been for years. Hopefully it leads to a creative renaissance for the band, but for now, it’s good to know that the band has still got it.