Well this is exciting. Wilco have announced details of a new double album which lands at the end of next month (May 27th to be precise via dBpm Records) called ‘Cruel Country’ – they’re sharing the first single from it ‘Falling Apart (Right Now)’ today, which you can listen to below.
Cruel Country consist of live takes recorded at the Loft in Chicago featuring all 6 band members which follows “a loose conceptual narrative of the history of the United States” through the embrace of country music – going back to their roots as it were. “We’ve never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition, the idea that I was making country music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making country,” said Jeff Tweedy in a statement.
“It’s a style of recording that forces a band to surrender control and learn to trust each other, along with each others’ imperfections, musical and otherwise,” Tweedy continued. “But when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, it feels like gathering around some wild collective instrument, one that requires six sets of hands to play… The specifics of an American identity begin to blur for me as the record moves toward the light and opens itself up to more cosmic solutions—coping with fear, without belonging to any nation or group other than humanity itself.”
You can pre-order the album direct from the band here.
Tracklist:
1. ‘I Am My Mother’
2. ‘Cruel Country’
3. ‘Hints’
4. ‘Ambulance’
5. ‘The Empty Condor’
6. ‘Tonight’s The Day’
7. ‘All Across The World’
8. ‘Darkness Is Cheap’
9. ‘Bird Without A Tail’ / ‘Base Of My Skull’
10. ‘Tired Of Taking It Out On You’
11. ‘The Universe’
12. ‘Many Worlds’
13. ‘Hearts Hard To Find’
14. ‘Falling Apart (Right Now)’
15. ‘Please Be Wrong’
16. ‘Story To Tell’
17. ‘A Lifetime To Find’
18. ‘Country Song Upside-down’
19. ‘Mystery Binds’
20. ‘Sad Kind Of Way’
21. ‘The Plains’
