Official reviews of The Whole Love

[SeattleC]

The bottom one is pretty much what I'd expect from a No Depression blogger (i.e. "I can't believe this is the same band that made A.M." -- psst, it isn't!)

 

The top guy gets it. He probably should blog elsewhere.

 

Ahem, thanks! Like here, eh?

 

Wilco Gets Serious

 

It is one of those cherished musical events in life when you hear an album for the first time and it sounds perfect, like the album you’ve always been waiting for the artist to make, if you were able to imagine it in the first place. The last year has been kind, with the release of the Decemberists The King is Dead, Gillian Welch’s The Harrow & The Harvest, P.J. Harvey’s Let England Shake and now the latest release from Wilco, The Whole Love.

 

 

Wilco fans have been in a bit of a holding pattern lately. Wilco (the Album) was not critically acclaimed by diehard Wilco fans. But it was fun. Just look at the cover art of the camel on the deck near Mader’s classic German restaurant in Milwaukee, with the birthday hats and cake. Also, who would have the nerve to put Wilco (the Song) on an album? I’ll give them credit for that, and understood the farcical nature of it after seeing them debut it on Stephen Colbert, when the lines ‘Wilco love you baby’ became ‘Stephen loves you baby’. There were some fine moments. Black Bull Nova was as intense of a song as Jeff Tweedy has ever written.

 

This album is different, and is bound to get more critical acclaim from fans and the media alike. I love how many diverse musical roots come together in it. I hear influences from recent collaborations with Mavis Staples and Neil Finn, as well as many threads reaching back to earlier Wilco and Uncle Tupelo. I was reminded several times of the sounds of Summerteeth, which was released more than 10 years ago. It also is the most Beatlesque album they’ve ever made. Listen to the guitar riffs on the dramatic finish to 'Born Alone', for example, that reminded me of the end of 'I Am the Walrus'. 'The Whole Love' reaches from those early roots to songs you perhaps couldn’t imagine them doing before, including the opener, ‘Art of Almost’.

 

‘Art of Almost’ may surpass ‘At Least that’s What You Said’ as the best start to Wilco album. That’s a tough call, as those who share my love for the latter will understand. On 'Art of Almost', the techno beat that comes in early might make some long term fans worried, but they won’t be by the end of the song. By then, with sounds ranging from vintage moog flourishes to guitar god guitar shredding, I was loving the messy breakdown nature of it all. Listen to John Stirratt’s bass on this song, and you’ll wonder what school he attended lately, as I’ve never heard him sound like this. He really shines on this album, with his lines on the next song, ‘I Might’, a high point of the album. I kept thinking of Paul McCartney’s forward bass on Revolver and Rubber Soul.

 

An album that opens so well also closes well, with ‘One Sunday Morning’. This is the song that I would want Jeff Tweedy write, if I could imagine it in the first place. It ties it all together, beyond just this album, going back to his roots. Everyone I’ve talked to who has heard this song brings it down to one word: “beautiful”. It’s the shortest twelve minute song I’ve ever heard, and I wanted to start it right back over from the beginning as soon as it ended.

 

As for the other 10 songs in between, there is an ocean of sound and verse that awaits you. Have fun with it.

 

 

 

 

 

Wilco at Marymoor Park, Redmond, Washington, 2007

[mpolak21]

From the LA Times review:

"Wilco made "The Whole Love" available for streaming on its website a month before its release, and Tweedy spent the weekend watching fan comments arrive."

 

Maybe he was following our thread?

 

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.

[Albert Tatlock]

The Independent

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-wilco-the-whole-love-dbpmanti-2359183.html

 

The last line is a bit bonkers ...

 

Album: Wilco, The Whole Love (dBpm/Anti-)

Reviewed by Andy Gill

Friday, 23 September 2011SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA LARGE

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Having spent the better part of the last 15 years constantly touring and recording, building the Wilco "brand" with a dedication that includes customised posters in the classic counter-culture style for each of their shows, Jeff Tweedy decided to take a break for the latter half of last year and re-charge his batteries.

 

Some break: he returned with enough new material for two albums, which the band have trimmed to the dozen tracks that comprise The Whole Love, another detailed mining of the heart from possibly America's most personal songwriter. Tweedy writes the kind of songs that leave you slightly uncomfortable, as if eavesdropping on another's emotional turmoil, even when the choruses are calling you in to sing along lustily. As he sings here at one point, "I will throw myself underneath the wheels of any train of thought running off the rails," a self-devouring metaphor that captures both the openness and the recklessness of his craft.

 

But it takes more than just a great songwriter to make a great band; and in its latest incarnation since multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and berserker avant-rock guitarist Nels Cline joined the ranks in 2004, Wilco has become as great a band as any in America.

 

Effectively, they've wrested the alt.rock crown from R.E.M., with whom they share similar roots in mutant pop and country-rock, and like whom they have developed a flexibility that allows them to thrust confidently into new and unexpected sonic areas. So they manage to slip from the cheerful exuberance of "I Might", with its poppy organ and strutting bassline, straight into the more tentative territory of "Sunloathe", where the plaintive piano and celesta are subjected to whiskery effects akin to a Sparklehorse patina, with no grinding of gears. Sometimes, they effect the manoeuvre in the same song, as in the confluence of Tweedy's whistling and Cline's guitar noise in "Dawned on Me", a genially chugging rocker with another singalong open-heart lyric: "I've been young, I've been old/ I've been hurt and consoled/ Heart of coal, heart of gold, so I'm told".

 

They open the album almost apologetically, sidling into the seven-minute "Art of Almost" on glitchy, hesitant drums, which are gradually subsumed under a swell of strings before the vocals arrive, before eventually developing a throbbing momentum. It's balanced at the other end of the album by the gently meditative canter of the 12-minute "One Sunday Morning", a song whose intrinsic modesty and charm ensures it doesn't outstay its welcome at all, the recurring guitar motif never losing its appeal throughout the rumination on life, responsibility and duty.

 

In between these bookending tracks are others which bring to mind influences as disparate as Devo, Doug Sahm, and Van Dyke Parks, songs in which whining pedal steel nestles alongside garage-rock organ, twinkling glockenspiel and strident guitar weirdness, a riot of expansive sonic colour. If it's not quite the landmark that was Wilco (the album), it's not far behind, as absorbing as any you'll hear this year.

 

 

 

[ih8music]

If it's not quite the landmark that was Wilco (the album), it's not far behind, as absorbing as any you'll hear this year.

wow. I'm half-inclined to dig up Mr. Gill's review of W(TA). Even among people who like it more than I, I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to it as a "landmark."

 

Unless he's being sarcastic and I'm being almost-drunk.

[gryffe]

wow. I'm half-inclined to dig up Mr. Gill's review of W(TA). Even among people who like it more than I, I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to it as a "landmark."

 

Unless he's being sarcastic and I'm being almost-drunk.

 

Andy Gill was the guy who gave Around The Sun by REM a rating of 5 stars!!

 

No seriously!!

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-rem-550574.html

[Autumnteeth]

I think Kot's review has been the most accurate so far. At least, accurate in the sense that it lines up perfectly with my sentiments.

 

The only song I'm having trouble embracing so far is "Open Mind."

 

I couldn't help but think Kot has skin in the game, and may be trying to over compensate by being somewhat negative for the sake of credibility. The term vaudeville didn't resonate at all, I think whomever mentioned ragtime at least had the right idea. And I got the idea he was saying the middle was filler. I may be wrong. Anyway, I think that Born Alone is a great song, and I love Open Mind too. In the end ,a review is the opinion of the writer, and I thought he did a good job, just wondering if he was critical to maintain credibility. Cant knock him though, he is good.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

 

Andy Gill was the guy who gave Around The Sun by REM a rating of 5 stars!!

 

No seriously!!

 

http://www.independe...rem-550574.html

 

I find it harder and harder to take reviews of records seriously until a year or so has passed. Everybody has their own take on things, but in the long run, the immediate vomiting forth of strong opinions is usually regretted in the light of posterity.

[junkiesmile]

Those guys at No Depression crack me up. They're still mad at Wilco for recording pop songs. I remember when Summerteeth came out it was like they had pissed in the Cherrios of alt country music.

[SeattleC]

Those guys at No Depression crack me up. They're still mad at Wilco for recording pop songs. I remember when Summerteeth came out it was like they had pissed in the Cherrios of alt country music.

 

 

There is alot of good stuff going on over there. Some of the crusty ones can't handle the change, but I can, as can alot of other people involved with it.

 

Also I don't think you can put it in a box of those guys over at No Depression, because I think you'd find it's more diverse than you realize.

[junkiesmile]

 

 

 

There is alot of good stuff going on over there. Some of the crusty ones can't handle the change, but I can, as can alot of other people involved with it.

 

Also I don't think you can put it in a box of those guys over at No Depression, because I think you'd find it's more diverse than you realize.

Oh I love No Depression and all of the music that they cover. I just find it odd that certain people who write for them can have great taste in some music and totally disregard other equally good music because it doesn't fit into a certain genre.

[lazy locomotives]

 

Definitely some similarities. Definitely not even an homage. If I had a ton of time to waste I could post five pop rock songs that have similar chord progressions or melodies. If you know how to chop these chords out on a guitar or piano you will realize how much they are like so many songs.

 

Meanwhile, 'Dawned on Me' is good. So is Supergrass.

Totally agree...the 'similarity' is so superficial that I'm not even sure it was worth bringing up...

[choo-choo-charlie]

Those guys at No Depression crack me up. They're still mad at Wilco for recording pop songs. I remember when Summerteeth came out it was like they had pissed in the Cherrios of alt country music.

 

No kidding! I inadvertently got attacked over there for saying Wilco's melodic pop songs are brilliant...there's still pissing and moaning about no more A.M., no more "unpretentious twang." Someone said "when I heard 'Less Than You Think,' I heard all I needed to hear to determine where Wilco was going." Sheesh.

[Autumnteeth]

 

No kidding! I inadvertently got attacked over there for saying Wilco's melodic pop songs are brilliant...there's still pissing and moaning about no more A.M., no more "unpretentious twang." Someone said "when I heard 'Less Than You Think,' I heard all I needed to hear to determine where Wilco was going." Sheesh.

 

I forgot what I was reading on the site it reminded me of Spinal Tap Mach 2. If I had never heard Wilco I would have thought they were a jazz band playing sets on Saturday's in a Super Target parking lot. See Wilco, get a funnel cake, $2.00

[SeattleC]

 

No kidding! I inadvertently got attacked over there for saying Wilco's melodic pop songs are brilliant...there's still pissing and moaning about no more A.M., no more "unpretentious twang." Someone said "when I heard 'Less Than You Think,' I heard all I needed to hear to determine where Wilco was going." Sheesh.

 

Some are still pissing and moaning about no more Uncle Tupelo.

[junkiesmile]

 

 

Some are still pissing and moaning about no more Uncle Tupelo.

Well I enjoyed your review.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

[Albert Tatlock]

The Independent

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-wilco-the-whole-love-dbpmanti-2359183.html

 

The last line is a bit bonkers ...

 

The Independent (sunday edition) has a second bite at the cherry. This time I think the last line might be spot on ...

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-wilco-the-whole-love-dbpm-records-2360807.html

 

Album: Wilco, The Whole Love (DBPM Records)

Reviewed by Simmy Richman

Sunday, 25 September

What have we come to expect from a new Wilco album – the Beatles-y pop of Summerteeth, the experimentation of A Ghost is Born or the laid-back vibe of Sky Blue Sky?

 

The band's understated eighth studio album delivers all these things and more.

 

Will it satisfy every Wilco fan's expectations? No. Nothing could. But with REM's announcement last week, there is a sudden vacancy at the top of the US rock tree and the truth is that Jeff Tweedy's songwriting talents have outstripped Michael Stipe's for years. There will be those who consider The Whole Love a mish-mash, a cop-out. Try to please these people, and you stagnate before you can say REM.

 

Listen to The Whole Love on headphones. Because it may not be the best Wilco album ever, but with care and consideration it may well turn out to be your favourite.

[Albert Tatlock]

The Observer

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/25/wilco-the-whole-love-review

 

Wilco: The Whole Love – review (DBPM)

 

Kitty Empire

The Observer, Sunday 25 September 2011

 

By the time a band's eighth album rolls around, listeners usually know what to expect. One of the greatest attractions of Wilco is their continual ability to wrongfoot expectations. They straddle the span between rock and leftfield hard places with the surefootedness of mountain goats. Periodically muttered-about as one of America's best current bands, they are a recombinant six-piece anchored by singer Jeff Tweedy. Early albums were bittersweet primers in Americana, and the band can still inhabit those heartlands. Here, graceful "Black Moon" is a minor-key acoustic ramble, lapped by lap steel. But a more troubled mid-period allowed Wilco to be dubbed "the American Radiohead", thanks to an abrupt leap into leftfield. The pivotal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) remains their best-known album.

 

Since then, Tweedy has recovered from a prescription drug habit. Wilco's volatile line-up has stabilised, and their music has grown more elegant. Recent albums – Wilco and Sky Blue Sky – have brokered more resolutions than they have picked fights, prompting many Foxtrot–era fans to wonder whether Wilco have lost their edge. "It Dawned on Me", one of the breezier tracks here, does actually features a little whistling. Bits of Tweedy's vocals, meanwhile, track the structure of Supergrass's "Alright" alarmingly well.

 

Those seeking Wilconian wig-outs should start at the beginning. "The Art of Almost" kicks off this first release on Wilco's self-run label; the title could stand as a succinct description of what Wilco do. It's a restless seven-minute opener, pregnant with possibility, mustering uneasy beats, strings, and a Krautrock work-out in which gifted guitarist Nels Cline scrawls outside the lines with glee. At the other end of the album is "One Sunday Morning", an unobtrusively lovely 12-minute lop that offers a kaleidoscope of emotions surrounding a father's death, delivered in Tweedy's matter-of-fact rasp. We're ushered out with ticks, rustles, plinks and the merest wail of lap steel.

 

In between, Tweedy cleaves closest to the chipper end of his repertoire, contrary to his contrarian reputation. "I Might" is the sort of unabashed 1960s psych-pop that could teach MGMT a thing or two. "Sunloathe", meanwhile, lovingly channels the Beatles. Listen a little more closely, though, and "I Might" gives up a sample of the acerbic "TV Eye" by Iggy and the Stooges, while "Sunloathe" is hardly an idyll. The album's title isn't just soppy; it refers to a criminal's complete confession to the police. It's safe to assume Tweedy finds the polarisations that dog his band unhelpful. He had this to say in a recent interview about his maturing work: "The definition of growing up is being able to tolerate ambiguity. Not being able to tolerate ambiguity creates all kinds of problems for the world. It creates religious zealots... It's a scourge. Ambiguity is our world."

 

The Whole Love, then, is a nuanced, feel-good album full of open-endedness, laced with the kinds of observations only instruments can make fluently. It may not rank among Wilco's boldest works. It could have done with more wig-outs. But it captures the art of the almost with both hands.

[LouieB]

From Wilco chronicaler Greg Kot today in the Trib.

 

LouieB

 

After seven studio albums, capped by the summing-up statement “Wilco (The Album)” in 2009, the Chicago band seemed to be out of surprises. The music had soul and low-key integrity, but had turned predictable. So it’s gratifying to find that assumption shattered from the get-go on “The Whole Love,” the sextet's first album for its homemade label, dBpm.

 

The first sound on the album is the crackle of static over a fragmented beat. Keyboards shudder into the mix, and Tweedy sings from the middle of a parched landscape of strange sound effects: “I can’t be so far away from my wasteland.” Distorted chords suggest muffled gun shots. Percussion percolates and then glides into a steady electronic pulse as if out of a science-fiction soundtrack. It’s a movie playing out between the headphones, and then after four minutes the scene dramatically shifts. A guitar drones, then breaks into a sprint, racing alongside drums and a rollercoaster bass line to a thrilling finish.

 

“Art of Almost” is an exciting, if instantly divisive song, like “Misunderstood” or “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” from an earlier phase in Wilco’s career. There’s nothing else quite like it on the album, but it serves as a timely reminder that Wilco is still a long way from coasting into its middle years.

 

The uptempo “I Might” amplifies that impulse. John Stirratt’s overdriven bass rips through the speakers like a rusty saw, and Tweedy issues a threat over bright garage-rock organ chords: “You won’t set the kids on fire/But I might.”

 

“Sunloathe” sounds like the aftermath of a long night, the narrator too exhausted or too narcotized to do anything more than blink into a remorseless sun. His voice drifts in and out of a dream-like atmosphere of twinkling keyboards, disembodied guitars and wordless vocal harmonies. It’s a whirring slice of Beatles’ chamber pop, with Tweedy delivering a final kiss-off: “I don’t want to lose this fight/I don’t want to end this fight/Goodbye.”

 

After that bracing beginning, the middle of the album is more workmanlike: The autumnal folk of “Black Moon” and “Rising Red Lung,” the country ballad “Open Mind,” the jaunty vaudeville of “Capitol City,” the arena-rock chords of “Standing O.” It’s not exactly Wilco by numbers, but it feels tame in comparison to the first three tracks.

 

Yet, as a sheer sound experience, “The Whole Love” is rewarding, a tapestry of tiny details that invites close listening. On most of the songs, Tweedy indulges in lyrics that blur the line between nonsense and poetry, revelation and obfuscation. The words, it turns out, are really mostly about sound rather than sense. So it’s no surprise that he speaks through the band most clearly. As the album’s producer with keyboardist Patrick Sansone and engineer Tom Schick, Tweedy uses the band’s Northwest Side recording studio as another instrument to complement, enhance and distort the musicianship.

 

Stirratt, besides Tweedy the band’s sole constant since its inception in 1994, is an anchoring force, his bass playing consistently brilliant. The keyboards of Sansone and Mikael Jorgensen color in a wealth of detail, Glenn Kotche’s drumming adds orchestral flair, and Nels Cline gets a bit more room to roam on guitar.

 

It all comes together on the final song, “One Sunday Morning.” Over 12 patient minutes, Tweedy tells a tale of familial conflict, death and regret amid a cocoon of acoustic guitars and piano. It’s a poetic narrative that recalls Wilco’s take on Woody Guthrie’s “Remember the Mountain Bed.” The song winds down and then back up, a hypnotic pattern of decline and rejuvenation that mirrors life itself. It makes for a quietly stunning bookend to the opening track’s take-it-or-leave-it boldness.

[gryffe]

http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-whole-love-r2241771/review

 

With 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco finally shed the "that guy from Uncle Tupelo" baggage that had kept them from gaining the respect they clearly deserved, and Jeff Tweedy gained the confidence to follow his muse in previously unfamiliar directions with increasingly rewarding results. But with so much space now open to Tweedy and his collaborators, Wilco's post-YHF studio work, while often brilliant, didn't seem quite as cohesive as Being There or Summerteeth, albums that were eclectic but revealed a unified core the newer albums somehow lacked. Part of this can be chalked up to frequent lineup changes, and the group seemed to be shaking this dilemma on Wilco (The Album), the second studio set from the band's strongest lineup to date, and with The Whole Love, they've finally made another album that pays off with the strength, consistency, and coherence of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Like YHF, The Whole Love is the work of a band that's stylistically up for anything, from the edgy dissonance of "The Art of Almost" and the moody contemplation of "Black Moon," to the ragged but spirited pop of "I Might" and the cocky rock & roll strut of "Standing O," but more so than anything the band has done since Being There, The Whole Love sounds like Wilco are having fun with their musical shape shifting. Even somber numbers like "Rising Red Lung" have a heart and soul that's warm and compelling, and these musicians consistently hit their targets both as individuals and as an ensemble; Mikael Jorgensen's keyboards bring a playful whimsy to songs that could sometimes use it, the guitar interplay between Tweedy, Nels Cline, and Pat Sansone never stops bubbling with great ideas, and bassist John Stirratt and drummer Glenn Kotche hold down the rhythm with equal parts of imagination and precision. With The Whole Love, Wilco have made an album where the whole is as strong as the individual parts: the musicians play off one another with the intuition and understanding that separates a real band rather than folks who simply work together, and the songs cohere into a whole that's rich, intelligent, and often genuinely moving. Quite simply, this is the work of a great band at the peak of their powers, and The Whole Love is a joy to hear, revealing more with each listen and confirming once again that Wilco is as good a band as American can claim in the 21st century.

 

http://www.anydecentmusic.com/review/3643/Wilco-The-Whole-Love.aspx

 

The UK's answer to Metacritic

[-seven]

From the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.c...age-review.html

 

In the rain at Central Park SummerStage on Friday night, Wilco started its set by implying that it wasn’t going anywhere soon. No snappy opening ditty for this concert; instead, Wilco played the two extended songs that end and start “The Whole Love,” its new album.

 

“This is how I tell it/ O’ but it’s long,” Jeff Tweedy sang to begin “One Sunday Morning,” a prodigal-son tale that has a Grateful Dead lilt, a folky instrumental refrain and jam-band tendrils of overlapping piano and guitar. The song repeatedly dissolved into a psychedelic haze and re-emerged, always stubborn about its leisurely pace. Then came a bristling electronic excursion: the cryptic love song“Art of Almost,” which blipped and buzzed with synthesizers over a motoric ostinato, building to a frenetic squall of guitars.

 

It was Wilco staking out some extremes, and they weren’t the only ones the band visited in a 24-song set that included two-thirds of the new album, which is being released on Tuesday. There were Motown stomps, latter-day garage-rock, quietly finger-picked ballads and howling feedback finales. They reflected “The Whole Love,” an album that reinvigorates Wilco after two unnecessarily restrained ones, “Sky Blue Sky” in 2007 and “Wilco (the Album)” in 2009. Even in the three- and four-minute songs that fill most of “The Whole Love” (dBpm/Anti-), Wilco makes room for the obsessive and the otherworldly.

 

Wilco has reconnected with its self-reinvention a decade ago, when it was struggling to make and release the album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” On that album Wilco opened up its music, letting noise, dissonance and other disruptions transmogrify what had been solid, straightforward roots-rock. Feedback, distortion, avalanches of percussion and stray sound effects might appear in a song at any moment; the reassurance of familiar sounds and structures was joyfully undermined. The band played half of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” on Friday as well, including a near-apocalyptic crescendo in “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”

 

By the time “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” appeared in 2002, Mr. Tweedy had ousted his longtime songwriting collaborator, Jay Bennett, from Wilco and replaced the drummer. Since 2004 only Mr. Tweedy and John Stirratt on bass remain from Wilco’s initial lineup. With Nels Cline on lead guitar, Mikael Jorgensen and Patrick Sansone on keyboards and other instruments, and Glenn Kotche on drums, Wilco has become a live band that can go from down-home to hallucinatory — or back — in an instant.

 

That’s what it did in “Born Alone,” from the new album, in which Mr. Tweedy observes, “Sadness is my luxury.” Most of the song was forthright folk-rock, yet after a few verses the key shifted with descending chords, steady strumming turned to frantic tremolo, the lead guitar hook danced skyward, and the drumbeat swelled into rumbles and crashes: a glimpse of chaos within.

 

It was a measured glimpse and integral to the song. Wilco never applied noise indiscriminately. In songs from the 1990s like “Misunderstood,” guitars and keyboards were stalwart as ever, as the current band dug into the old dynamics. Then and now Mr. Tweedy puts melody first, while his lyrics flicker between the oblique and the candid. On “The Whole Love” he grapples with self-doubt and self-acceptance, and finds a refuge in love. The structures Mr. Tweedy learned from 1960s rock, pop and soul keep his songs sturdy and clear. But the 21st-century Wilco has more than roots and reassurance: it knows that at some truthful moments, things can get unhinged.

[SeattleC]

Nice review!

 

I have never been so wet at a concert than at the Summerstage for a David Byrne show some years back. Once he started playing, it didn't matter, and I'm sure it was the same Friday night when Tweedy opened with One Sunday Morning.

[bleeinternets]

Pitchfork review is up -- 6.9 with a generally positive review. They probably could've gone anywhere between 6.5 and even 8.0 with the same written review.

 

http://pitchfork.com...ms/15856-wilco/

The best thing about

The Whole Love

, Wilco's adventurous, elliptical eighth LP, is the ease with which they've recaptured some of that old unpredictability: From

Being There

through

A Ghost Is Born

, the band's best work has always perched itself upon the edge of traditionalism and experimentation, and

The Whole Love

is the first of their albums in years not to shy away from such risks.

...

It took Jeff Tweedy years to get comfortable with his place in

Uncle Tupelo

, and a few more to truly settle into Wilco's first act. After a few years of constant sonic flux and personnel shifts,

Sky Blue Sky

and

Wilco (The Album)

found the band feeling more resolved than ever, a consistent lineup settling into what seemed increasingly like a signature sound. But Wilco's always seemed their most creatively surefooted atop uneven ground. So the weird, winsome

Whole Love

is certainly Wilco's least consistent LP in a while, but inconsistency has its own rewards. At its best,

The Whole Love

finds Wilco casting aside the caution, reveling in their own contradictions.

[WishfulThinking13]

I hate Pitchfork's reviews.. that was written like a 4/4.5 out of 5 review anywhere else, but of course they just slap a 6.9 on there in order to becritical enough to maintain their snarky pretentiousness when talking about seasoned bands.

[gryffe]

I hate Pitchfork's reviews.. that was written like a 4/4.5 out of 5 review anywhere else, but of course they just slap a 6.9 on there in order to becritical enough to maintain their snarky pretentiousness when talking about seasoned bands.

 

6.9 is actually a fairly decent mark in my opinion, although I would rather they just gave marks of 6, 7 or 8 or whatever, rather than pretentious 6.9, 7.4 etc.

I mistakenly used to think that a mark of 6 or 7 meant that an album was poor, but on reflection 6 actually means above average and 7 is normally portrayed as good. 8 probably means very good, 9 means excellent and 10 is a classic.

At this stage of listening to the album (approx 2 weeks and a dozen plays)I don't think The Whole Love is a 9 or a 10, the argument would be whether it is a 7(which the Pitchfork guy basically gave it, and which Popmatters have given it http://www.popmatter...the-whole-love/) or an 8. I would say its a 7 just now with the potential of an 8 after repeated listening. This time next year it might even be a 9, the hidden depths have still to be revealed yet, but If you are pushing me I predict that this album is an eventual 8, which means very good in my book.

.

As I write this my CD of The Whole Love has just popped through the letterbox, so I am now on the real journey to 8 or 9 hopefully.

 

(checking back on my post it reads more like a kids arithmetic lesson, with nearly as many numbers as words in my post )