WILCO

Wilco travel beyond genre on The Whole Love

The Burg staff

By Matt Ashare

If Vegas had laid down odds on which founding member of the semi-legendary late-’80s/early’90s band Uncle Tupelo was more likely to go on to greatness when they broke up in 1994, most of the good money would have been on Jay Farrar, not Jeff Tweedy. Sure both sang and had songwriting credits on their four studio albums. But, Farrar always appeared to be the band's alpha dog — the one with the voice, the vision, and, well, the tools to take the alt-country stylings of Uncle Tupelo to the next level, wherever that might be. Tweedy, who'd started out playing bass in the original trio before moving over to guitar as Uncle Tupelo took on new members, possessed a certain boyish charm and playful charisma, but for most of the band's seven-year career, he clearly seemed to be playing second fiddle to the more stolid Farrar.

       As the leader of Son Volt and as a solo artist, Farrar has indeed continued to carry the alt-country torch. And he's acquitted himself quite well, retaining a loyal cult following among Americana enthusiasts. But Tweedy's exceeded all expectations by embracing an expansive musical sensibility that goes well beyond rote roots with his band Wilco, whose highly anticipated eighth studio album, The Whole Love (dBpm), hit stores this week.

       If there was a turning point for Wilco, it was the 2002 release of Yankee Foxtrot Hotel (Nonesuch). Tweedy and multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, who left the band after the Yankee Foxtrot Hotel sessions in ’01 and passed away in May of 2009, had already begun to broaden Wilco's sonic palette by exploring the possibilities of digital production on the 1999 disc Summerteeth (Reprise). At the same time, the band earned critical kudos for Mermaid Avenue (Elektra), a collaboration with British folkster Billy Bragg that set previously unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics to rootsy riffs and went on to earn a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Folk category. But with the production help of Chicago avant-guitarist Jim O'Rourke, Wilco went out on an experimental limb that married Tweedy's earnest introspection with something akin to the paranoid android alienation of Radiohead on on Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, a disc that found a sweet spot between impressionistic soundscapes and solid songwriting

        Wilco haven't exactly been running in place since 2002. In fact they've kinda been all over the map, reprising airy experimentalism on 2004's A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch), revisiting rootsy guitar rock on 2007's Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch), and settling into something of a ’70s-style groove on 2009's somewhat tongue-in-cheek Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch). But, The Whole Love is a whole different beast. Easily the Tweedy's most ambitious in scope, it's also at times his breeziest in the sense he and the current incarnation of Wilco – longtime bassist John Stirratt and more recent recruits Nels Cline (guitar), Glenn Kotche (drums), multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and keyboardist Mikael Jogensen — sound comfortable and confident enough to try just about anything in the name of fun.

       That's not to suggest that The Whole Love doesn't have poignant, reflective, and even rather serious moments. In fact, the disc ends a particularly somber note, with Tweedy nearly whispering words to a departed father over a quietly skiffling beat, loungey piano, and softly strummed acoustic guitar for the full twelve minutes of "One Sunday Morning." "I said it's your god I don't believe in," he intones in Dylanesque fashion, "No your bible can't be true/Knocked down by the long lie/He cried 'I fear what waits for you.'" But the heaviness of lines like that are offset by the peaceful, easy groove the band stay locked into for the long ride home.

       In contrast, the disc's opener, "Art of Almost," is a skewed, seven-plus minute electro-acoustic opus that begins, Radiohead-style, with a glitchy beat that leads into a swell of strings before giving way to Tweedy's strained delivery of stream of consciousness lyrics, a subsonic bassline, periodic interruptions from a distorted synth, and Cline's avant guitarisms. Elsewhere, Tweedy and co. take an infectious romp through the upbeat, organ-laced ’60s pop of "I Might." They slow things down for a Lennon-style, reverb-laden balled ("Sunloathe") that gives Cline the opportunity to channel another Beatle, George Harrison, in a sweetly played solo. An they deploy some tasteful twang to accentuate the countryfied feel of the romantic "Open Mind.” And that’s really just scratching the surface of an album that simply defies categorization.

       It’s admittedly a lot to take in, especially in one sitting. But it’s well worth the effort.