L.A. Times Bumper Bundle

[Albert Tatlock]

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-ca-wilco-20110925,0,7815044,full.story

 

 

Wilco is maturing, but it is not growing soft

 

Exhibit A: 'The Whole Love.' The veteran band, accused of being restrained on its last two albums, sounds rejuvenated and upbeat on its new release.

 

By Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times

September 25, 2011

 

 

 

Reporting from Chicago —— It was three days before Wilcowas scheduled to leave Chicago to start its tour, and the band was running through songs on its newest album, "The Whole Love." Next up was "One Sunday Morning," a 12-minute cut that is at once the most traditional tune on the album and its most subtle, with slight melodic tweaks and instrumental adornments throughout.

 

The rehearsal, however, was momentarily delayed. Glenn Kotche, the band's percussionist, was missing an instrument. Could someone, Kotche shouted, bring him his "chicken paddle"? The toy-turned-instrument is exactly as its name implies — a small paddle, adorned with wooden chickens. Shake it, and the chickens peck, although Kotche has modified it so the beaks hit a metal finger cymbal.

 

"I'm sure it's the first time someone brought a chicken paddle onstage," Kotche said. "I can take credit for that."

 

Among the ranks of Wilco's accomplishments in its 17 years of musical adventurousness it is, admittedly, minor, but one that reflects the playful camaraderie that went into making "The Whole Love," due out Tuesday.

 

Wilco has never been shy about flirting with the unexpected, but not since 2001's breakthrough "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" has the band so freely utilized the studio, and never has the band sounded this consistently upbeat. Whether in the digitally enhanced explosiveness of "Art of Almost," the garage rock recklessness of "Standing O" or the orchestral psychedelics of "Capitol City," "The Whole Love" is the sound of a veteran band rejuvenated. It's an album that seems directly aimed at silencing those who would dare write off Wilco's continued move into adulthood as that despicable thing: "dad rock."

 

"This is a band that has chemistry, and that's inexplicable," Jeff Tweedy said during a break in the band's loft-space kitchen. "This is a band that has a certain amount of maturity, not just age-wise, but experience-wise, in terms of how many records everyone has made and been a part of. This band couldn't exist without having not settled for unsatisfying and ungratifying or dysfunctional situations before. Like relationships, I think a lot of bands go many, many years past where it is working in a functional way. We never had to do that."

 

In fact, the band believes it is entering its most productive period as a recording unit. "We can make a dozen different records if you stuck us in the studio tomorrow and gave us one week," Kotche said. "We can make straight-up noise. We can make straight-up pop. We can make a folk record. There's so much we have that we haven't even touched upon."

 

Credit consistency — "The Whole Love" marks the first time Wilco has recorded three albums with the same lineup — or attribute it to newfound freedom. Like veterans Radiohead and Weezer before them, Wilco is going independent. "The Whole Love" is the inaugural release on the band's own dBpm Records, which has partnered with Silver Lake's Anti-, an off-shoot of punk label Epitaph, for marketing and distribution.

 

It's a jump that seemed inevitable. Wilco capitalized on the digital-era confusion of the music business early, and the success of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" has become the stuff of industry legend. It was to be the third Wilco album released by the Warner Music Group's Reprise Records, but the label rejected it. The album found its audience after the band gave it away free online, and ultimately, "Yankee" was released by Nonesuch, a label also owned by Warner. Wilco continued to work with Nonesuch through 2009's "Wilco (The Album)."

 

Still, the band has always mixed up its approach in the studio. For 2007's "Sky Blue Sky," the band recorded it live in its Chicago space with limited overdubs. Last time out on "Wilco (The Album)," Kotche said, "Jeff had a lot of it down. Like, 'Here's the chords, and here's the lyrics.'"

 

"On this one," Kotche continued, "Jeff was very clear: 'Any ideas get explored.' … It was more similar to the way 'Yankee' was made, with just layers of stuff. I felt a lot more freedom to just mess around."

 

Co-producer/multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone said: "I wanted to make a really good headphone record. I felt like we're the kind of band that could do that."

 

Tinkering continued in the lead-up to the band's Sept. 13 gig in Indianapolis. As of Sept. 9, Wilco had never played live "Art of Almost," a pure studio creation. This wasn't, however, cause for alarm, as the confidence was evident by a lack of sweating the details.

 

"Some so-called rock situations can be quite arduous, in terms of the amount of rehearsal time and poring over tiny details," said guitar/improviser Nels Cline. "Wilco is not like that. It's much more like a country or blues band. It's more about playing in a nuts-and-bolts way and letting things be able to flex."

 

"Dawned on Me," for instance, changed throughout the day. Cline had purchased a used double-neck guitar for it, and the brief mid-section solo was growing longer and meaner with each take, at one point matching the pitch of a fire engine that roared down the Chicago streets.

 

"Ummm, that's difficult," Cline said after the fifth take as he stared down at his guitar. Tweedy, however, set aside his acoustic instrument and leaned back. "I found it to be quite easy," he said with a rock star's sarcastic snottiness.

 

The D word

 

Hours earlier, John Stirratt, Wilco's only remaining original member other than Tweedy, was discussing Chicago's top restaurants. Tweedy walked into the kitchen and interrupted with a question that came seemingly out of nowhere. "Are you guys talking about dad rock?"

 

No, Stirratt said, and proceeded with his theory that Windy City celebrity chefs, Rick Bayless and Paul Kahan among them, were the new rock stars. Tweedy looked skeptical, and then put his hands in the air in mock admiration. "That blueberry compote changed my life," he yelled.

 

Tweedy went on his way, however, before he could be asked about the phrase he uttered with withering disgust.

 

Certain periods of Wilco's history have fallen victim to the myth that suffering equals great art. The recording session for "Yankee," captured in the documentary "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," was fraught with tension. Tweedy and his late songwriting partner Jay Bennett were falling out, and the band was dumped by its label. "A Ghost Is Born," 2004's follow-up, is marked by aggressively claustrophobic guitars, believed to be the result of Tweedy's struggle with painkillers.

 

Then "Sky Blue Sky" captured a softer, more soulful side of Wilco Media reaction focused heavily on how the band's frontman, now 44, was sober, happy and approaching middle age. The members of Wilco are acutely aware of criticism of the group, especially that implying Wilco is aging tamely.

 

"Being a dad twice over now, that phrase makes no sense," Kotche said. "My life is so much more chaotic than it was beforehand. My life is chaos all the time. I understand the term means complacent, middle-aged and you have a house and a luxury car, but man, being a dad? I drink 10 times more than I did before."

 

"Sky" was the sound of a band pushing the reset button. Cline and Sansone were now full-time members, and keyboardist-computer ace Mikael Jorgensen was taking on a more prominent role. Though 2009's "Wilco (The Album)" took more chances, it hinted at the various styles explored throughout Wilco's catalog. It was comfortable rather than surprising.

 

Wilco's biggest commercial success remains "Yankee," which has sold 674,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. "Sky" and "Wilco (The Album)" sold 389,000 and 299,000 copies, respectively. The band, however, has remained influential and a powerful touring entity.

 

"I, personally, don't get a lot of the criticisms of either one of those records," Tweedy said of the perception that the band's prior two efforts were less risky. "I stand by them. I'm proud of them. I guess I can hear what people are saying when they say it sounds like a step backward, but I don't think those people heard our earlier records.

 

"First of all," he continued, "whenever somebody says experimental I know that they don't know what that word means. In the context of Wilco, there's nothing really experimental and there never has been, in the grand scheme of things. We've experimented for ourselves, and we try to broaden what we think we're capable of doing."

 

Cline would argue that Tweedy, the group's lyricist, is being modest. "Jeff is like a sculptor or collage artist or surrealist artist," he said. "He's like Robert Rauschenberg. He takes bits and pieces of this and that — some junk and some treasured items — and assembles them into a very coherent thing."

 

The first seven minutes of "The Whole Love" would seem to illustrate Cline's theory. Opener "Art of Almost" starts with the manipulated sound of a computer booting up, and then becomes a swirl of digital effects as a funky, fuzzed-up bass builds to a monstrous ending that Kotche described as an "amazing guitar raga, weird, punk thing."

 

It's long removed from where the song began. Think groovy, adult soul. "It started out as a late-night slow-jam," said Sansone, who shares a producer credit on the album. "When it was on our CD of demos, my subtitle for it was 'Sade Song.'"

 

Lofty ambition

 

Sansone said he knew early on that the follow-up to "Wilco (The Album)" would be a departure. He remembered a moment touring for the latter when Tweedy spied him and Jorgensen mixing various Wilco side projects.

 

"He said something to the effect of, 'Wow, for our next record we should make our "Sgt. Pepper's.'" He saw all the production happening around him," Sansone recalled. "Not that we made our 'Sgt. Pepper's,"' but I think there was an unconscious impulse to make a record that really utilized the studio."

 

Tweedy winced when asked about that moment. "If I said that, I meant, 'The best record of all time.' I feel that way every time. I don't think there's much fun in trying to make a good Wilco record. I think it's really fun to measure yourself against ridiculous heights of glory, with the firmly rooted reality that reaching that is impossible."

 

Tweedy is careful and considerate when interviewed. He paused regularly, asked as many questions as he received and joked often. When Sansone complimented the minor league baseball cap he was wearing, the singer leaned forward and whispered into a reporter's microphone, "They don't dare tell me my hat doesn't look cool."

 

Yet he's dead serious about Wilco's ambition and noted the band has "this hunger to make something super cool. I think it's hard to make a record that means much to people without going at it like that. There's certainly records that sound tossed off and have become important for different reasons, but those aren't the records we're talking about. We're talking about the grand scale. Why not?"

 

No doubt those at Anti- are happy to hear those words. Wilco manager Tony Margherita said Anti- first attempted to sign Wilco after the band was dropped from Reprise, but this partnership was ultimately cemented when Tweedy produced Mavis Staples' 2010 album "You Are Not Alone" for the imprint. Wilco's sales of 300,000 copies may be so-so for a major, but they're a blockbuster for an indie.

 

Wilco won't make it to L.A. until January, but by then the band will have a pretty good idea what those in the audience are thinking. 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. It was suggested that it may be healthier not to look.

 

Tweedy shrugged. "I'm reaching out. That's the whole point. You can't do this in a vacuum. It's part of the dialogue. I wouldn't be me if I didn't really want people to love this."

todd.martens@latimes.com

 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/09/wilcos-jeff-tweedy-i-was-becoming-a-cliche-.html

 

 

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy: 'I was falling into a cliche'

 

September 21, 2011 | 7:07 am

 

Wilco is happy. Get used to it.

"We’re probably the only band where everyone is early for bus call," said drummer Glenn Kotche. "When we check out of a hotel room we’re not waiting 20 minutes for such-and-such to get whatever girl was there out of the room. Everyone is there and on the bus five minutes before we’re supposed to be there. Not to make this sound like a Boy Scout troop, but we have our act together."

That wasn't always the case. Leader Jeff Tweedy uses the word "dysfunction" quite regularly when discussing parts of the band's past, namely the period around the recording of 2001 album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot."

A quick recap: Tweedy's late songwriting partner Jay Bennett and founding drummer Ken Coomer were fired. The band was dropped from Warner Music Group's Reprise Records, and Tweedy's struggle with painkillers is believed to have led to the aggressive guitars and abstract lyrics of 2004's "A Ghost is Born."

When Wilco regrouped as a six-piece for 2007's "Sky Blue Sky," the sound was softer, more soulful. In some regards, it was a first album, as guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone were now full-time members, and keyboardist/programmer Mikael Jorgensen was taking on a more prominent role. It was recorded live, "a conscious effort to focus on what a new band focuses on: playing together, and trying to get real performances," Tweedy said.

As the band was on the verge of releasing its eighth album on Aug. 27, "The Whole Love," which will be the subject of a Times feature later this week, Tweedy had little patience for the belief that a healthy, drama-less band led to a more complacent work. "The Whole Love," after all, is prime evidence that the idea that suffering fuels more animated art is nothing more than a myth. The album, the third straight Wilco album to be recorded with the same lineup, is arguably the band's most energetic, placing a greater emphasis on digital textures, psychedelic adornments and studio tinkering.

"I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful," Tweedy said. "At the same time, when I started to get healthy I realized there’s no shortage of damage there from myself. My distaste for it probably prevented me from getting help sooner. I didn’t want to admit that I was falling into a cliché."

Some

outside observers raised the idea that an older, cleaner, more content Wilco was the result of the band leaning heavily on its rootsy tendencies on "Sky" and 2009's "Wilco (The Album)." As intricate as the albums were, there were fewer of the avant touches that dotted Wilco's work on "Yankee" and "A Ghost is Born." Not so, said Tweedy, as "Sky" and "Wilco (The Album)" were the result of the latest and most consistent incarnation of Wilco finding its footing in the studio.

"The artists that have created without having any physical flaws and psychological damage don’t get any ink," Tweedy said. "And if it doesn’t exist, people find it. 'Well, he writes like that because his mother died when he was 42.' I’m endlessly fascinated by the durability of that myth, and the length that people go who don’t write, or don’t create, to defend it. It’s a built-in kind of excuse, like, ‘I could write like that, but I have a life.'"

Kotche, in fact, who has been with Wilco since "Yankee," said the band is just now entering its most progressive period. "We’re a really functional unit," he said. "I think a lot of people will think that will reflect on the record and sound complacent and comfortable. It didn’t. It offered a sense of freedom that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. It was never like, ‘OK, I’m going to get my part done and get out of here because this is weird.’

"There was none of that," he continued. "There was freedom."

[Analogman]

That photo makes me think of The Basement Tapes album cover.

[ih8music]

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. It was suggested that it may be healthier not to look.

 

Tweedy shrugged. "I'm reaching out. That's the whole point. You can't do this in a vacuum. It's part of the dialogue. I wouldn't be me if I didn't really want people to love this."

 

see? we have our very own VC lurker here, guys!

[fif1435]

"Being a dad twice over now, that phrase makes no sense," Kotche said. "My life is so much more chaotic than it was beforehand. My life is chaos all the time. I understand the term means complacent, middle-aged and you have a house and a luxury car, but man, being a dad? I drink 10 times more than I did before."

 

That made me laugh!