I read Tweedy's autobiography over the weekend and liked it very much, sort of despite myself. By way of an explanation, I've always thought Tweedy has had to fight against a perceived notion of being an everyman, someone who, without closer examination, seems to be one of those monolithic musicians who are a fixture by default - the de facto white guy with a guitar for a generation.
And the first few chapters are a perfect illustration: workmanlike, unfussy - telling the American rockstar origin story we've all heard a hundred times. I'm tempted to say that section was Tweedy leaning into his (lack of) status, deliberately painting an ordinary background as if to say 'yes, it's all true'. But as the book opens out, the gentle (ordinary) wisdom that suffuses his music slowly bleeds through the prose and it becomes a kind of celebration of the quotidian. Not in the Springsteen register - bombastic, sentimental, semi-deifying - but droller, resigned, making a virtue of keeping going and how he's worked his arse off to stay where he is.
Unreliable narrator caveats aside, he seems honest about the Tupelo stuff; it's not Lanegan, but he's candid about his addictive personality and where it's led him. Some of the score-settling is kind of ugly, inevitable but ugly (particular score-settling with Jay Bennett, a dead guy).
I guess it's kind of weird that he's become the songwriting self-help guy over the last few years but the sections of the book where he discusses his song and lyric writing processes are fascinating. Fwiw, I think he's a brilliant (and terminally underrated) lyricist. I'm off to steal Emily Dickinson verbs. For the next 5 days at least, I'll feel like I can write again.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Tuesday, 31 May 2022 09:39 (two years ago) link
You should read his follow-up book How to Write One Song, it's full of exercises to stimulate lyrical inspiration.
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 31 May 2022 11:53 (two years ago) link
Self xp - christ, that reads like a man discovering what has been up-front and centre with Wilco for about 20 years. Worse, it reads as an apologia for a shy conservative. Eck.
Moments when you feel you're going mad (and possibly the last to know. Again.): when you play Star Wars on Spotify, the time bar is a lightsaber.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Tuesday, 31 May 2022 19:39 (two years ago) link
“Charlie’s fixin’ his band with the left-arm tan”Jeff’s note to self to get a better drummer
― calstars, Wednesday, 5 July 2023 21:08 (one year ago) link
hmm, I thought it was "van?"
― henry s, Wednesday, 5 July 2023 22:15 (one year ago) link
Doh
― calstars, Wednesday, 5 July 2023 22:23 (one year ago) link
Or is it “fixin’ Japan”
― calstars, Wednesday, 5 July 2023 22:24 (one year ago) link
he's fixing his van, which he drives with the window down and his left arm hanging out ... getting tan
― alpine static, Thursday, 6 July 2023 05:51 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhmMb5jKItY
new album cousin out sep 29
i guess this is supposed to be the 'experimental' album they were working on around the same time as cruel country? i don't really hear that in the single, it's pretty restrained
― ufo, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 07:09 (one year ago) link
produced by cate le bon? huh
― ufo, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 10:23 (one year ago) link
Has the fandom affectionately nicknamed this album “Cos” yet
― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 1 August 2023 13:17 (one year ago) link
Pretty great cover image.
― henry s, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 13:19 (one year ago) link
Surprised the title isn't an oblique reference to their music being used in every other episode of The Bear
― omar little, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 13:33 (one year ago) link
lol was going to say the same thing.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 13:44 (one year ago) link
Yeah, this is definitely more restrained than I expected, but the choice of Cate Le Bon as producer gives me some hope for the full thing. I know Tweedy was also tossing around "art pop" a lot wrt to this album when Cruel Country came out.
― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 1 August 2023 14:38 (one year ago) link
Can’t get into the new song. It sure does trudge along.
― Cow_Art, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 15:41 (one year ago) link
cruel country was so good, really looking forward to this. new song is p lovely imo
― ivy., Tuesday, 1 August 2023 16:14 (one year ago) link
heavy george harrison vibes
― ivy., Tuesday, 1 August 2023 16:15 (one year ago) link
it's breezy and fine but nothing exciting
― ufo, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 17:34 (one year ago) link
boring
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 19:01 (one year ago) link
oh this is their psych album but it's really sleepy
― ufo, Friday, 29 September 2023 07:08 (eleven months ago) link
can definitely hear cate le bon's contribution as producer but her bad trip vibes get reduced down to a milder underlying unease
― ufo, Friday, 29 September 2023 07:23 (eleven months ago) link
Few sentences are more of a bummer re a Wilco LP than “All songs written by Jeff Tweedy.”
Sorry, Jeff, but you need to open things up a little.
This album certainly has a vibe but there isn’t enough to grab onto somehow, and looking over the discography I realized that the last time this band really IMPRESSED me - really, really impressed me - was Star Wars.
― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Friday, 29 September 2023 09:10 (eleven months ago) link
this album's filled with kinda interesting textural ideas but in service of songs that are barely there at all. complete opposite of cruel country (which i think is much better). nothing close to "bird without a tail/base of my skull" either
but i'd still take this one over some of their lesser albums like ode to joy, schmilco, wilco (the album), even the whole love outside of the bookends
― ufo, Friday, 29 September 2023 12:47 (eleven months ago) link
important final clarification lol
― imago, Friday, 29 September 2023 12:49 (eleven months ago) link
maybe these songs will be cooler live if they let nels shred all over them
― ufo, Friday, 29 September 2023 12:57 (eleven months ago) link
that's generally the case with wilco songs tbf
― imago, Friday, 29 September 2023 13:10 (eleven months ago) link
Definitely at least a cut above the albums ufo mentioned. Wish someone would impose a ban on him writing songs in first position on the guitar, or something
― PaulTMA, Friday, 29 September 2023 17:11 (eleven months ago) link
i think it's pretty good, certainly the best in a few years
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 September 2023 17:43 (eleven months ago) link
I agree that Jeff needs to significantly shake up his songwriting somehow. This has probably been true for 10 years but it gets more true with every album.
If they can't make a great album with that band and CLB producing, guess what the problem is?
― alpine static, Friday, 29 September 2023 19:37 (eleven months ago) link
Not working with a producer that will push them further?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 29 September 2023 19:50 (eleven months ago) link
idk his songwriting was the best it'd been in a long time on cruel country and so it's a shame that hasn't carried across to this one
and le bon has clearly pushed them a bit here, just tweedy is back in sleepy/plodding mode so it evens out to just being ok
― ufo, Friday, 29 September 2023 20:14 (eleven months ago) link
I haven't really listened to the last few, but I do feel they need someone to push them out of their comfort zone. Like, an *active* producer. Like, hell, get Alan Sparhawk to produce *them*.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 29 September 2023 20:17 (eleven months ago) link
I'll still catch their shows, which are great, but I definitely lost interest in their albums a while ago. I kept a few gems on each, but The Whole Love and Star Wars are the last ones I might want to play in their entirety. A Ghost Is Born is probably the last great album they've done IMHO.
― birdistheword, Friday, 29 September 2023 20:26 (eleven months ago) link
they should get sparhawk & bj burton in
― ufo, Friday, 29 September 2023 20:38 (eleven months ago) link
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 29, 2023 3:17 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
feel like you're making assumptions that Cate Le Bon wasn't active
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 September 2023 20:50 (eleven months ago) link
I haven't heard it yet! but I would say active enough that it's not boring. assuming it is.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 29 September 2023 22:11 (eleven months ago) link
You can hear her on this record, but let's be honest, it would take a pretty strong producer to push Tweedy around at all.
― alpine static, Friday, 29 September 2023 22:20 (eleven months ago) link
The new album is fine. Just don't get how he's more prolific than ever but his vibe is so lethargic
― PaulTMA, Saturday, 30 September 2023 13:12 (eleven months ago) link
he's got unlimited access to a free studio space near his home. and he has time. he goes there every day and writes another song by himself, with his friend / studio manager hitting record. there's nothing at all to push him in any sort of interesting direction or force him into any sort of urgency, etc.
the other guys in the band contribute to the arrangements, but by that time the song is pretty much set - especially the vocals and vocal melodies, which imo are the biggest issue with Wilco songs right now.
i am somewhat speculating here, but to me that sounds like a pretty direct path to the rut he has been in for 10 years now.
― alpine static, Sunday, 1 October 2023 09:37 (eleven months ago) link
idk he wrote some pretty solid stuff on cruel country so if they just took a more self-consciously arty approach to the arrangements again with some of tweedy's stronger, more direct songs then that could be quite decent
apparently the songs on this one weren't all written together or anything though, tweedy got le bon to dig through a bunch of demos & studio outtakes from the last 10 years and pick out songs to work on. it sounds like some were more recent songs that they'd been working on before they got side-tracked with cruel country, but some date further back.
― ufo, Sunday, 1 October 2023 10:09 (eleven months ago) link
oh see, i didn't know that part about le bon digging thru the archives. i guess by "somewhat speculating" i mean "talking out of my ass" :)
i agree that Cruel Country contains strong material ... it's just too long, imo, but if they'd kept it to 12ish songs, it'd be a post-YHF high point.
― alpine static, Sunday, 1 October 2023 10:44 (eleven months ago) link
i didn't either, i just read a bunch of recent interviews because i was curious. they gave le bon a lot of control over the shape of the arrangements too
idk what i'd cut from cruel country though, it's definitely longer than it needs to be but there aren't really any obvious duds
― ufo, Sunday, 1 October 2023 11:09 (eleven months ago) link
maybe what we need more of from them is exploratory jams like "bird without a tail"
― ufo, Sunday, 1 October 2023 11:11 (eleven months ago) link
They were still writing and playing with teeth on Star Wars, I guess that was 8 years ago but I had given up on them kicking out the jams again when that came out and proved me wrong. “Cold Slope” is top ten Wilco for me I think.
― assert (matttkkkk), Sunday, 1 October 2023 11:54 (eleven months ago) link
Star Was is indeed fantastic, seems odd that the Schmilco half was was the most blah thing they've put to tape
― PaulTMA, Sunday, 1 October 2023 12:24 (eleven months ago) link
That's for sure - it's like they decided to put out the interesting stuff first, and if people like it, maybe they can put out the boring leftovers as a holding pattern.
― birdistheword, Sunday, 1 October 2023 22:31 (eleven months ago) link
that’s bullshit imo, schmilco is full of great songs and bizarre shit
― ivy., Sunday, 1 October 2023 22:39 (eleven months ago) link
i understand why ppl think it’s boring, it’s a much calmer and subtler palette, but it’s pretty much just as wacky as star wars, just from the opposite angle
― ivy., Sunday, 1 October 2023 22:44 (eleven months ago) link
I haven't heard the new album yet, but... Unlike most everyone I genuinely think all of their/his albums have at least a few high quality songs. The vibe has definitely gotten sleepier and staid as he's gotten older, and its understandable why most people would interpret that as Jeff running in place creatively.
However, while the artistic "shifts" are subtler, I still believe I could distinguish near every album from one another if you were to play me a random song from side B that I hadn't listened to in a few years. And they still sound like Wilco and no one else, and I'm not sure who you could point to that sounds a lot like them making music today, and that suggests to me that they still have a unique sound that is mainly due to Jeff's songwriting and their undeniable musical talents (Glenn, Nels). I'm not going to pretend his songwriting is anywhere near as good as it once was, but I'm perfectly happy to listen to a new Wilco album every year or two even if 75% of it is just ok.
― Indexed, Monday, 2 October 2023 15:00 (eleven months ago) link