On Wilco

Tuesday, May 15. I purchased Wilco's latest, Sky Blue Sky, from my local record store Melody Records. Now, first something on Melody and local record shops. I admire you, independent record store. I find the idea of record shops in this day of iTunes and eMusic and Napster and all that shit nostalgic and quaint and existentially awesome (who knew retail could be quaint or existential). And this is why I am willing to pay $3-$6 more per album than I can purchase the music for on-line. I often venture into Melody on Tuesday afternoons to see what came out that week. For me, having the liner notes and something physical to flip through on my first few listens to any new album makes for a much fuller experience, as opposed to buying digital files of songs off the internets. So thanks Melody, and good luck to you.

As for Wilco, I think it is very commendable that they continued their recent tradition (since YHF) of making the album available to listen to on-line before it is available to purchase. Does it encourage piracy and discourage record sales? According to recording industry conventional wisdom, yes. But I don’t really trust or respect the recording industry’s wisdom on much, so fuck them (especially RIAA). And so: props to Wilco. I think since they have been doing this they have even increased their album sales, so keep on keepin on, fellas.

Anyways, onto SBS. [Note: It's sort of annoying to me that Wilco encourages the reduction of their album titles to acronyms, starting with YHF—which actually made some sense given that the moniker is a reference to the Radio Operators Alphabet Always—and then continuing it with AGIB, but whatever.] Since I admire Wilco’s practice of releasing the music early and since I am a big fan and since I like liner notes and album art (nerd, I know), I had to buy this album on Tuesday, the day it came out (would a real real fan have pre-ordered it on-line? Not sure, but I like my local record shop [see above] and enjoy the physical activity of going and searching through tons of music). ANYWAYS, always the sucker, I paid $19.99 for the deluxe edition of this album. This means I got the DVD with 8-9 songs recorded live from The Loft, as well as fragments from an interview with Tweedy. AND, the real bonus of buying it in the store was they were giving away free Wilco SBS t-shirts to the first few hundred buyers. Nice touch.

DVD Review: Wow, so this is what a sober Jeff Tweedy looks like. Still whiny, still paranoid, still completely out of touch with reality, only now he has this nervous tick that the painkillers were apparently covering up in previous interviews. The live recordings were fine, I think some of the rockers from this album will be awesome live (see below). Nels Cline makes seeing Wilco live totally worthwhile, he’s probably one of the best guitar dudes around these days and could easily be headlining his own gig.

Album Review: I dunno. As a studio album it leaves A LOT to be desired. It’s good, not great. But I think they made this one for the road. Or at least that’s how it comes across to me. The songs in general are departure from the previous two Wilco records in that it doesn’t bother with studio-created sonic soundscapes. The tracks are all straight up, and apparently mostly recorded live in the loft with very little overdubbing (if you believe the interviews seen in the aforementioned DVD). You are my face and Hate it here are both great. Impossible Germany is good except for the senseless lyrics (especially funny is Tweedy trying to explain what the lyrics mean on the DVD, he starts out saying something about a place and ends up talking about himself, or something… he’s crazy, hard to tell WTF he is talking about sometimes). Walken will be loads of fun live. So will Shake it off I think. What light is the sing-along song (not to mention Tweedy’s best attempt at Dylan). Side with the seeds is a bluesy folk song that will probably stretch into some ten minute long jam sometime shortly after the song effectively ends at 3 mins (the studio album leaves with about 50 seconds of what the jam will probably sound like live at the end of the track). And then there are the boring ballads, which are probably good in a live Tweedy solo acoustic format, but have little to no place on a Wilco album, IMO (yeah, I am looking at you Patient with me, Sky blue sky, Leave me…, and even to a lesser extent Either way and On and on and on, both of which I do sorta like but am not overwhelmingly impressed with). On the whole I’d describe SBS as Stealy Dan meets Joe Cocker, (because all album reviews are contractually obliged to try to evaluate one person’s music in reference to someone else’s music, which is a lazy form of reviewing if you ask me and why I saved it for my last comment.) There are also some very clear moments of The Band and Dylan (but certainly not Dylan with the Band), and maybe, if I am not mistaken, a few Billy Joel moments in there too (circa mid-1970s Joel), but don’t quote me on that one.

DVD Grade: B. Worth the extra 5 bucks if you are an apeshit fan that needs to have everything they have released, even this stupid book. (Yep, I own it).

Album Grade: B-. Hey, it’s my favorite band, of course I am going to grade them on a curve. Lowest they could have gotten was a C, really. And I will almost certainly listen to this album about a billion times and probably find things I love about it. But it is definitely a bit of a let down for me.