wilco

i probably think "Hate It Here" is my favorite Wilco song.

http://www.spin.com/2016/07/wilco-new-album-schmilco-new-song-listen/

Nice.

For a minute there I (accidentally) forgot Wilco existed. I never listened to the last record and not sure I can remember anything from the one before it (I liked it?), been a while since I saw them live or even seen any of them around. But the radio played "You Never Know" from "Wilco (The Album)" this morning, and it was pretty good! I should probably catch up on the last decade of Wilco, see how it sounds with clear ears.

The Whole Love was the last one of theirs that I really liked across the board. Star Wars and Schmilco are kind of boring.

xp
I never liked them until their two most recent albums, which I think are terrific (I had this same convo w/you or someone else in the Dad Rock thread?)

last song on star wars is incredible but their album art is generally more exciting than their records now

they are a great live band at this point

agreed that "you never know" is a v good song. the problem with wilco (the album) is it's just kinda like "you never know" for 40 minutes

oh yeah they still rule live

i appreciate them mainly as a reliable source of income for nels cline at this point

last song on star wars is incredible

Haha, that's the weak one (IMO)!

Star Wars is appealingly buzzy-sounding, particularly Random Name Generator. Schmilco didn't make much of an impression on me but I do like Someone To Lose

for some dumbass reason they split the opening track of star wars into two tracks - kept together it'd be one of their best songs (i also love the closer)

but these pale before the opener and closer of the whole love which are worth the entirety of wilco being a thing

"Random Name Generator" and "The Joke Explained" are my primo back-to-back dad-rock jams

i am willing to fight anyone who denies that one sunday morning is the pinnacle of alt-country fyi (i mean, what else could be?)

idk for me it's "gun" by uncle tupelo ymmv

sike i actually said that to fish for good alt-country

lol i mean all i did was name another tweedy song (and "gun" is just kinda replacements cosplay so it was a cheeky response)

in terms of early jeff alt-countrier stuff i think this song is astonishing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbgsMhAjMJs

tweedy is the boss of this game tbh. linkous the holy spirit maybe

i am willing to fight anyone who denies that one sunday morning is the pinnacle of alt-country fyi (i mean, what else could be?)

― imago, Tuesday, September 4, 2018 11:23 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

waiting for the sun by the jayhawks?

pinetop seven will always be my favorites but they're probably a little too ornate to count as straight alt-country

with The Night's Bloom as his/their apex

Yeah, Pinetop Seven, while awesome, are sort of too esoteric. I think Jayhawks might be apex, or the first Son Volt. Wilco dropped the country stuff pretty fast.

They dropped it by Summertooth, but AM is basically an Uncle Tupelo record there are still some choice alt-country cuts on Being There, like Someday Soon (one of my fav tracks on either disc), Far Far Away, and Kingpin

I love pretty much every Volebeats album but I wish their stuff was easier to find.

Kingpin is a goof, Far Far Away was less country per se and more a nod to the Dead, I think.

I can't even believe this slander about Jay Farrar

Tweedy had great songs in Tupelo, but Farrar was the force imo

it's been twisted by the success of Wilco and the relative non-success of Farrar/Son Volt

if you want an alt-country album that Nels Cline is on, the best one is not by Wilco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_(album)

Faithless Street by Whiskeytown is really great though Ryan Adams turned into douche

Kingpin is a goof, Far Far Away was less country per se and more a nod to the Dead, I think.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, September 4, 2018 12:38 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kingpin isn't a goof. it may be goof-y, but it's not without merit. is a fun swamp-rock workout.

far, far away definitely screams alt-country to me, with the chugging, brushed drums and the pedal steel.

if you're gonna count sparklehorse as alt country (a stretch imo)

then you gotta give it to giant sand

xpost Oh, whoops, I was thinking of Forget the Flowers, that's totally Dead-y country.

yeah agreed about Forget The Flowers (which has always reminded me of Dead Flowers too, not just because of the title). Someday Soon has echoes of the Dead in there too, but scans more country.

Uncle Tupelo is pretty clearly one of the towering peaks of alt-country but i also agree on the Jayhawks. Wilco's first album has some nice cuts but at the time it seemed like Farrar was going to be the genius and Tweedy/Wilco would be forgettable. i think part of it tbh was Farrar's singing voice being very serious and "my god that man has things to say about life." and that first SV album is great, i was all-in on them that one time.

when i think alt-country now i also think about the classic Bloodshot compilations and early Neko Case (though she wasn't really mining the same territory, it was less "alt" than she is even now to an extent.

the relative non-success of Farrar/Son Volt

You know, considering how much I love the Tupe's four albums, I really have no excuse for not pursuing Farrar's post-Tupelo output. I mean, I discovered them like a lot of other people did in retrospect in the early 2000s when the initial remaster campaign and Wilcomania first hit. I recall being in the Great Basin microbrewery in downtown Sparks many years ago, just drinking Icky like it was water and getting really happy drunk, waiting for Feist to take the stage. Somebody played a song and it was a really great, Zuma-sounding atmospheric country rocker. I was kind of taken aback when somebody told me it was Son Volt, as I gad just assumed Son Volt to be Jay Farrar's "solo acoustic" project.

*I had just assumed

Farrar is the Sonic Boom of alt country

I recall being in the Great Basin microbrewery in downtown Sparks many years ago, just drinking Icky like it was water

love it when austin posts take me back to nevada

I do what I can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LklxmPb-J9w

Revisiting Schmilco this morning has reaffirmed its greatness... you guys are missing out if you're sleeping on this album!

She gave her body to science
So I'm not sure what's in her place
Maybe roses or Tanqueray

The Jayhawk's "Blue Earth" is one of the great alt country albums (and named after my home town)

i think the Jayhawks are perpetually slept on, they didn't really fit into the alt-country scene bc they didn't really shitkick at all, they were more jangly and folky but they were great. maybe they *are* great too, i haven't heard the recent work.

the Jayhawks album that's stuck with me is Sound of Lies, which sounds more like a Fleetwood Mac album than an alt.country stalwart.

sound of lies rules. not even close to a bad song on it, and it gets heartbreaking toward the end of the album. "the sound of lies rings funny against the truth . . ."

("blue" (tomorrow the green grass) might be my favorite ever alt.country jam, if not "chickamauga" (uncle tupelo (anodyne)) or "mountain girl" (opener on blue mountain's second album, dog days))

blue mountain was good!

Personal low point for me is Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album), I don't think they are bad records per se, but they don't grab me at all except for a few highlights. Since the Whole Love they've been consistently good at doing pleasant albums. They are not unlike post-NYC Ghost and Flowers Sonic Youth or present day Yo La Tengo. You can make very valuable stuff after the peak and give incredible shows.

i still like sky blue sky a lot, those are all really strong songs

Sky Blue Sky is a personal monolith of an album for me. It wasn't always that way, though. In my 2007 year-end roundup, I wrote of it under my "biggest disappointments" category:

Wilco — whatever it was called; some repetitive piece of esoteric dreck (Nonesuch, parent company of which is Warner, who also owns Reprise, but you knew that already, you Wilco-loving whore, who probably also loves this album even though it sucks me hard)
Hi, I’m Jeff Tweedy*. I like to think I’m as brilliant as everybody says I am, much like David Bowie. However, as my latest album will prove, I’m just another mediocre songwriter riding on the coattails of being an ‘American’ roots-rocker, relying on tired out twanginess and pseudo-‘Americana’ (which is a term I don’t even understand, but it gets me five star reviews and commendable sales) riffs to pull the wool over my audience’s eyes. But I have Nels Cline in my band and he’s a ‘musician’, so it counts, y’know? I don’t even care that he rips off John McLaughlin (who is a way cooler human being) most of the time. Here’s my new album. It’s about stuff. Stuff that I’m not sure about, but I’m an American songwriter, so it’s resonating whether it really is or not. That guy at Rolling Stone likes me, so why don’t you? Also, you know all those fun dynamics that Jim O’Rourke did on our last two albums that he mixed and mastered? Well, those are gone. In favor of LOUDNESS and COMPRESSION!! Yay for contemporization of recorded music! I’m brilliant, haven’t you heard?
*(review not really written by Jeff Tweedy, but may as well have been)

Some years later, after selling all my Wilco records and swearing off the band shortly after the above was written, the backstory to that shellacking was fully disclosed and revisited upon reacquisition of Sky Blue Sky:

I was in a bad place when this album came out. I was working a terrible job at Barnes and Noble that paid next to nothing and was struggling through a relationship that I was just beginning to realize was a complete failure. It was not the wonderfully gloomy and romantic escape that A Ghost is Born was (post-script note here: A Ghost is Born was an absolute milestone to me when it first came out). It was honest, no nonsense and blunt. And, most of all, not necessarily sad, but realistic. It had songs for days, but they talked about things in a way that was not fun, in any stretch of the imagination. I went to work every day, had to hear this fucking thing confront me —usually two or three times in a shift— like a small child sticking its tongue out, taunting me, "I'm one of your favorite bands and I just made you feel worse about your life!" I, of course, trashed it, like any honest person in my position would have. And I basically swore off Wilco after walking out on that job (my first walkout of two, within a year's time, in case you were wondering [you weren't]). So, yeah, fuck these guys, right? Fucking assholes; providing such wonderful escape for two albums and then going MOR dad-rock and forcing me to pay attention to the lyrics — because, let's face it, the simple arrangements here don't offer much in the way of hearing the words "that aren't there." And what about these lyrics? They suck, right? Well, me of years past says, "YES, OBVIOUSLY" and gives you this look (angry cat image). Me now, for lack of better words, gets it. Ghost is Born was recorded while Jeff Tweedy was in the grips of pill addiction, while Sky Blue Sky is the first thing he attempted after coming clean about his dependence. I was doing my own chemical coping in those days, so why shouldn't I have loved Ghost is Born, despite my own issues? But when Sky Blue Sky came out, I was still toiling. Such stark emotional confrontation was not what I wanted from one of my favorite bands when, in the previous five years they had provided the ultimate escape: a look back at youth through the eyes and mind of someone awestruck with America's (now inexplicable) enduring prominence in the post-World War II era. Jeff Tweedy even sounds angry at his own generation (one which was now officially "old" when this album was released). His —and the band's— ambitions here seem so much less interested in being "cool" than they are in being honest with themselves. You have to rewind a bit here and understand: these were the last days of GWB's run in office and they were —and I don't think I'm going out on much of limb here saying as much— a rather bleak time. We all knew that we were under the leadership of somebody that was not looking out for us. Couple this with my own internal issues, another horrific season of summer wildfires in Reno and, yeah, it was like this plastic, sugar-coated version of someone saying, "Hey, you're not going to be okay" and then smiling the most unpleasantly empty smile at me. Fuck them. Fuck it. Fuck it relentlessly. It was not fun to hear your favorite, previously unpredictable band go Prozac Dave Matthews on you. It was excruciating, to be completely honest. They truly were the one thing I had that I knew would be mine for all time. And now, a meddling soft rock turd was excreted to leave me alone and floating again forever. Except, why now, do I hear it and just acquiesce? Like it was just a really good album all along? I have not answers for that question. But, as bleak and creepy cheerful 70's AM pop as this thing is, I have only more questions. Why was it recorded as crappily as it was? That's not what Jim O'Rourke would have done. He would have forced the band's ambition to be emotionally stark naked for their audience into the background where some keen investigative listening would have revealed it. In other other words, he would forced the band's most human album to be another weird collage of good tunes and obscure sounds (he does, however, contribute some ultimately inconsequential string arrangements). But there's a lot to be said and admired about the fact that the band chose to just streamline everything and mask nothing. I also know that this was the second of two big lineup changes in Wilco in those days, so coupled with Jeff's substance dependence-shedding, it just reeks of a back to basics strip fest. Throw things out that you can't deal with anymore. The sort of record where it sounds relatively tame to the rest of us, but was actually a very traumatic and life-changing event for those involved (see also: David and friends). What is it about? Everyday life. What does it mean? It means you're okay while you're listening to it — in the classic sense of the blues, its misery wants your company until you both just want to hug each other and smile without effort. It's very 70's soft folk rock (think the Crosby/Nash albums, America's third album and Aztec Two-Step) and there's not a whole lot here that sounds that great when played outside of the context of the album. It will pat you on the back in the locker room after dunking on your head in a game of one on one and say some sidestepping compliment like, "Your new sneakers are cool." It's one of the friendliest arch rivals you'll ever encounter. That said, 'Impossible Germany' is easily one of the band's best tunes. One generation taking the next to task through an overthought metaphor, it's an absolute masterpiece on an album that definitely needed one. This is probably my most personal review ever; very telling that it's for this album — and this band. For such a lightweight sounding album, it's pretty fucking intense on closer inspection. I just. . . I mean I can't even. . . just. . . man. It's a lot better than it's reputation. Just wish I had known better at the time.

Pretty good album, I'd reckon.