the band come around

As a longtime fan, I must say that Wilco have never veered far off my radar. To me, it speaks volumes for Wilco that even when the band don’t seem eager to challenge themselves too much, Wilco (the album) still sounds effortlessly ravishing. Their seventh studio album, coming after the nice change of pace that was Sky Blue Sky (2007), practically finds Jeff Tweedy and company wielding out some outdated strategies with grizzled gusto rather than unease – yes, Summerteeth (1999) and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) would still be the watershed Wilco albums for most fans, but hey it’s kinda nice to hear Jeff Tweedy now sounding more comfortable in his own skin instead of indulging in light-duty moping. Indeed, Tweedy seems infinitely more relaxed throughout Wilco (the album); he has a good laugh at the expense of youthfully misdirected angst on “You Never Know” (“Come on children, you’re acting like children/ Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world”), gentles out a simple duet with Feist on “You And I”, and then combs over the mendacity of loneliness on “Solitaire”. Even the lovely “Country Disappeared”, for all its tender shades of Tweedy’s typical self-effacement, sounds more spontaneously rendered than usual. And Wilco (the album) is enough proof that the questing creativity of Tweedy is indebted to his band mates. For instrumentally wise, Wilco remains a pretty damn serious force to be reckoned with. On the standout “Bull Black Nova”, sort of a revisit of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” which the band tackled with half indifference and half menacing ferocity, Nels Cline’s bellowing guitars perfectly match the uncannily ominous, Krautrock-driven setting the band whipped up. In a way, the brooding psychopathic groove of this inscrutable song will have you confounded and feels a little out of place with the other, more charitable songs – the darkened flashpoint where sunny feelings are taken away, indeed.