I can’t live if living is without you.
Come December, when Top Ten lists are compiled by every music publication and blog throughout the known universe, you will assuredly find Wilco highly-rated among nearly 100 percent of the americana/alt-country/ roots rock lists. Over a 20-year career, they’ve carved out a permanent niche in the hearts and minds of folks partial to that style of music even though they have slowly but surely become more adventurous and eclectic with each flip of the calendar.
Founded when the relationship floundered between Uncle Tupelo’s two front men, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar started rival bands. Son Volt burst out of the gate in 1995 and took the lead with “Trace”, which sold 300,000 albums and received actual critical acclaim. Meanwhile, Wilco’s debut “A.M” had moderate success, though not enough to satisfy Tweedy and company. The band had experimented with the alt-country formula, folding some indie rock into the country pudding, which worked on some cuts like their call-and-response answer to Creedence’s ‘Proud Mary’. For ‘Casino Queen’, a riverboat that Tweedy and his dad boarded one night to gamble, they “borrowed” Brian Henneman, who had been guesting with Son Volt, to add a bluesy, down-and-dirty punch.
One record after another was churned out like the propellers on a riverboat sending frothy waves of ambitious alt-country far down the river. In Wilco’s two decades as a band, there has been a bountiful yield of thirteen studio albums, three live albums, seven EPs, five collaborations (three with Billy Bragg and one each with The Minus 5 and 7 Worlds Collide/Neil Finn), twelve singles, four videos (two documentaries and two live concerts) and two compilations: a 4CD box set of rarities (“Alpha Mike Foxtrot”) and a mind-numbing eleven LP Record Store Day extravaganza of alternate takes and live versions of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” songs. And that’s not counting assorted side projects, including The Autumn Defense, Pronto, The Nels Cline Singers, Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy, the “supergroup” Loose Fur (Tweedy, Glenn Kotche and Jim O’Rourke of Sonic Youth), and lastly a Jeff Tweedy solo record.
Most of that huge output has been from very good to excellent, and Wilco has toured relentlessly for the majority of those twenty years presenting their brand of americana to the world. This article is intended to choose two from the band’s discography as its best and could have been better albums, keeping in mind that we’ve come to praise Wilco not to bury them. So said the pundit holding the sharpened object behind his back while his colleagues urged him to plunge it between the lyrics, “I would like to salute the ashes of American flags”. It caused some blowback in defense of those who had given their lives for America, but fans rushed to Tweedy’s defense, saying the reference to burning the flag shouldn’t be taken literally, that he was bummed about Bush being re-elected, a supposition that didn’t hold water. A bootleg exists that is a 4-disc compilation of tracks from the “A Ghost Is Born” tour. During his introduction to ‘Ashes of American Flags’, he mentions it has to do with saluting people who have the courage to burn the flag. The damage done, nothing could save that song from the skip-track button nor “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel” from being passed over for the top spot.
If you were to poll critics and fans to pick the best Wilco album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” would be the odds-on favorite with “Summerteeth” also in the running despite Tweedy wearing his anxieties and paranoia on the sleeve of ‘Via Chicago’, casually dropping the line “I dreamed about killing you again last night and it felt alright to me”. Nevertheless, despite a couple hiccups, there is no shortage of really good songs on either album.
Can’t Live Without It: “Sky Blue Sky” (2007)
This was the first album Wilco recorded with the six-piece band that remains unchanged to this day. Jeff Tweedy and bass player John Stirratt added Glenn Kotche, a great drummer with four, say, peculiar percussion-based albums on his resumé at the behest of Jim O’Rourke, then Mikael Jorgensen (keyboards) from the band Pronto, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, a bandmate with Stirratt in The Autumn Defense and the avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline, whose provocative solos and dissonant chording were the reason I once sprung for a Geraldine Fibbers CD. An argument could be made that Cline inspired Tweedy to take the band’s sound from comfortable “dad rock” to a more challenging signature.
Limiting the use of Jim O’Rourke, whose apparent disdain for alt-country brought a severe case of “experimentitis,” was a good move. With Cline on board, O’Rourke’s sonic flights of fancy weren’t needed. There is a wealth of guitar throughout. Besides Cline, Tweedy and Sansone often joined the fray. You sensed Wilco was determined to make a record that would attract new fans while the core followers were reassured they’re still in the company of old friends. The opener ‘Either Way’ sets the tone. Tweedy is on a quest, likely prompted by the time out for rehab he took after “A Ghost Is Born” was finished two years earlier: “Maybe the sun will shine today The clouds will blow away Maybe I won’t feel so afraid I will try to understand either way”. The picture he’s painting is carried over on the title track, inspired by the time he was back in his hometown of Belleville, Illinois on Memorial Day when a parade came marching down the main street. Being strung out like a kite doesn’t feel at all metaphorical: “With a sky blue sky this rotten time Wouldn’t seem so bad to me now Oh, I didn’t die, I should be satisfied“.
‘Shake it Off’ doesn’t get off to a promising start, but it soon transforms into one you can effortlessly groove to. Over the course of the album, Cline’s jagged distortions are balanced by songs with a solid foundation and it decidedly works. Taken as a whole, the record seems like a contradiction, at times suave and erudite, at others rootsy and brash. It feels as if they had given some thought to figuring out where Wilco was going and then said forget it, just play the music and see what happens.
What puts this album over the top is ‘Impossible Germany’, Wilco’s pièce de résistance, a sumptuous delight that is arguably their best song so far. It concerns a struggle, either between two lovers or two countries – Germany and Japan – brought together by circumstances and left to figure it out. Inevitably, they separate but remain close albeit at a distance: “With no larger problems That need to be erased Nothing more important Than to know someone’s listening Now I know you’ll be listening”. For sure!
Can’t Live With It: “Schmilco” (2016)
Just the use of the Yiddish re-duplication technique of interjection (“Wilco Schmilco”) is reason enough to approach this album with a pinch of …. derision, sarcasm, skepticism, expressing doubts as in: Have you listened to “Schmilco,” the new Wilco album yet? What happened to the energy? The album is pretty much all acoustic without even any of the pyrotechnics Cline usually unleashed, none of the glam rock of “Star Wars” or the dark, baroque discord of “Summerteeth”. Tweedy described the album as: “I think this record is joyously negative. It’s sad in a lot of ways, but not in any that reach a conclusion of doom or hopelessness. I just had a lot of fun being sour about the things that upset me.” Well, bless his heart.
Tweedy becomes the family storyteller, spinning yarns of past and present generations. He’s unflinchingly forthright but after a few songs you begin to fidget waiting for the good stuff, the old Wilco to kick in but instead it’s the meds. There is a flicker of spirit in ‘Nope’, with its sudden harmonies amid the persistent three-chord strumming that imparts an unwelcome uniformity to the songs. One of the few surprises comes on ‘Quarters’, as a working-class guy with a pocketful of quarters stands alone: “Well, I stood there in a trance Listening to the jukebox play”.
On the two tracks where Wilco seemingly wakes up from a trance, ‘Locator’ startles you with jarring, spooky lines like “I hide here, below”. ‘Shrug and Destroy’ is similarly unsettling and nihilistic: “Days continue Like a knife might intrude I wonder who destroys. When nothing is left”, rejoice. Somehow, you don’t feel like rejoicing, even after a second listen. There’s a hint of nervousness in the delivery, masked by the sunny strumming as if you were in a dream from which you can’t wake up. Whether or not Wilco found what they were looking for in “Schmilco,” I didn’t.
Frankly, “Schmilco” is only deposited at the bottom of the list because I can’t remember any of these tracks all that well before putting the disc into the Walkman. It’s pleasant enough to sit on the porch on a starless night with headphones, relaxing to the acoustic guitars that drown out the thousands of chirping tree frogs. But don’t let yourself fall asleep. Playing it again sent me right back into that fitful dream, one that kept me in its grasp until the disembodied voice echoed the title of the last song, ‘Just Say Goodbye’.
A.M. is a real favourite of mine.