“Wilco are the most important band of this time because they endure the game without submitting to its rules,” wrote ROLLING STONE editor Arne Willander about the Chicago band when they released their live DVD “Ashes Of American Flags”. . A sentence that is not only valid because Jeff Tweedy and his colleagues release a new, great studio recording every few years, but because these six musicians in times of declining record sales and media hype about trivialities have an almost unique form of existence as have found a group for themselves. One that makes music possible that could not exist in other constellations. On “Ode To Joy” they finally show in 2019 why this principle still bears magnificent fruit.
Tweedy, Stirratt, Kotche, Sansone, Cline and Jorgensen have been acting as a unit for almost 20 years, after one or the other member was sorted out in a not always friendly way (you can read about it in the rather gloomy band biography “Learning How To Die” by Greg Kott and as seen in the excellent Sam Jones documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart). The fact that such filigree musicians as the guitarist Leroy Bach and above all the multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennent, who died in 2009, had to go and were possibly simply replaced by more filigree musicians is an almost confusing form of “luxury” that many other bands could not afford .
Songwriter has been at the center of the Wilco universe since its inception in 1994, which includes its own studio (The Loft), the freedom for all members to do whatever they want and a very generous fan loyalty Jeff Tweedy, who always emphasizes in interviews that soft folk songs are basically slumbering behind Wilco’s complex sound patterns.
These musicians probably never get bored, which is why every single Wilco record has its own heartbeat, its own virtuosity.
RS author Marc Vetter reviews the albums by Wilco (which received the highest rating in the ROLLING STONE several times) in a ranking:
11. “AM” (1995) ★★★1/2
Tweedy’s reboot, after Jay Farrar had tired of Uncle Tupelo, was still in alternative country orbit and was later described by the band, supported for the only time by Bottle Rockets’ Brian Henneman, as a “failed attempt.” “ rated. Perhaps it was also due to the fact that Farrar simply went to work a little more purposefully with his new formation Son Volt and “Trace” in the same year.
Despite clear borrowings from Gram Parsons and Neil Young, “AM” rarely emerges with anything resembling a real musical agenda. The record got off to an optimal start with the stormy “I Must Be High” and flatters itself with melancholic ballads like “Box Full Of Letters”. The overly straightforward songs, which dealt with long car journeys and visits to the casino, just fit the horizon of a 28-year-old singer who knew which artistic role models guided him, but could not (for the time being) draw any profit from them.
Best Song: “Passenger Side”
10. “Star Wars” (2015) ★★★1/2
Wilco rarely cared about what might be cool. Among other things, this has earned them the accusation of being “mellow” or delivering disdainful “Dad Rock”. “Star Wars”, 2015 was put online free of charge for its own fans (and all other curious people) from one day to the next, but it was intended to be an attempt to meet the conditions of the Internet-driven hype industry for a moment – but in the Wilco way.
While the leaked title and poetry album cover ironically commented on hashtag trends, the band took on a more prickly and experiment-driven prog-rock tone, as in “You Satellite.” Many songs were deliberately designed to give the impression that these sound perfectionists could get down to business in a hurry (as in the rumbling sound sketch “EKG”) and take songs out of the game before they pull themselves together to a climax. Of course there are also the usual melancholy vignettes, like “Where Do I Begin”, where Tweedy practically crawls his voice into the microphone. In the end, however, there are many (of course great) cabinet pieces that never really want to combine into a unit.
Best Song: “You Satellite”
9. “Schmilco” (2016) ★★★★
Recorded in the same breath as “Star Wars” – a circumstance that also resulted from the diverse solo projects of the band, which, despite everything, toured almost non-stop – “Schmilco” takes one, maybe even two courses out. Folk pirouettes like “Cry All Day” or the thought-provoking “We Aren’t The World (Safety Girl)” are products of an introverted world view and the group, with almost masochistic restraint, serves a handful of sometimes demure folk numbers. But Wilco master the small form just as much as the great guitar epics – confuse with dark tinkering (“Common Sense”) just as they bow deeply to George Harrison with “Someone To Lose”. Everything sounds sad, but never hopeless.
The wonderful “Just Say Goodbye” concludes the record, which delights in its own pessimism, with solemn organ sounds. All in all, a tweedy affair with absurdly melancholic insights like “I’ve never been alone/Long enough to know/If I ever was a child”, for which the singer could now apply for a patent. The fragmentary, diary-like solo family record “Sukierae” is not far away. The audible difference, however, is the almost perfectly performed musical craftsmanship.
Best Song: “If I Ever Was A Child”
8. “Wilco (the album)” ★★★★ (2009)
Of all the LPs this band has recorded to date, “Wilco (the album)” bears the clearest stamp on their headquarters, the loft in Chicago. Somnambulistic, confidently performed pieces like “Deeper Down” (where you can even hear the noise of the elevator that is up to noisy mischief in the studio building) alternate with sweaty feedback rubble (“Bull Black Nova”) and Tweedy’s withdrawn self-insights as in “Solitaire”. Here the singer puts himself in the dock: “Once my life was a game so unfair/It beat me down and kept me there/Unaware of my naysayer/Solitaire was all I was playing”.
An enchanting duet with Feist also made it onto the record with “You And I”. Above all, however, there is the self-assured attitude that these musicians now know what they are doing (namely offering a sonic shoulder to cry on) and at the same time can laugh at themselves. Wilco have also become their own brand.
Best Song: “One Wing”
? Buy “Wilco (the album)” on Amazon.de
7. “Ode To Joy” (2019) ★★★★
Choosing the right percussion was the starting point for the recording of “Ode To Joy”. Drum virtuoso Glenn Kotche brought in an antique instrument to provide the leaden rhythm on opener Bright Leaves. It’s a Kotche affair anyway, his slowed-down drumbeats forming the heartbeat of this minimalist art-folk album, which once again conjures up shadowy creatures similar to those of “A Ghost Is Born”. Maybe because Jeff Tweedy remembered writing the soundtrack of his anticipated death 15 years ago with his moving autobiography “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back)”.
The songs on “Ode To Joy” – from the edgy “Quiet Amplifier” to the Beatles’ dangling “Everyone Hides” all have a quiet grace; far away from Krautrock brutality á la “Spiders” or guitar paintings like “Impossible Germany” – floating or bubbling or rattling. They exude a peculiar (purposeful) optimism in the face of decay (Wilco turning into the 25th year of her career) and the stubborn discourses of our time (now forever culminating in the artful use of dualisms in Tweedy’s writing: “Love Is Everywhere ( Beware)). The Beethoven title may be a bit off track. A cliché. Here’s another one: Wilco have reinvented themselves once again, for an eleventh time.
Best Song: White Wooden Cross
? Buy Ode To Joy on Amazon.com
6. “The Whole Love” ★★★★ 1/2 (2011)
Already the beginning is an announcement: The almost seven-minute “Art Of Almost” creeps up with creaking electronics until Jeff Tweedy bursts in and laments: “No! I froze/I can’t be so far away from my wasteland”. Then follow two minutes of thunderstorms including guitar flashes from Nels Cline. Happy, rumbling basses bring the listener back to reality in the subsequent “I Might”. “The Whole Love” is nothing but the truth and a declaration of love to the possibilities of the album from a band who always valued the whole over parts and who also now founded their own label (dBPM Records). Everything fits here, the sublime mixes with the dark, the sweet with the bitterly evil: strengthened by the sun, “Sunloathe” chirps, “Black Moon” melancholy sings about the irrepressible nature and “Standing O” pulls from the leather like The Who once did.
At least since the Beatles, no studio production has sounded so round, colorful and full-bodied, even if some songs like “Red Rising Lung” have to be booked as finger exercises. The surprising climax comes at the end: “One Sunday Morning”, Tweedy’s declaration of love to his late father, is a folk ballad that no other American group could currently write; 12 minutes of simple but by no means simple happiness.
Best Song: “Art Of Almost”
? Buy The Whole Love on Amazon.com
Next page: Top 5 Wilco Albums
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