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Music, The Critic »

by Rudy Klapper [16 Jul 2009 | No Comment | 155 views]
THE CRITIC: New Wilco Album is Their Most Confident

Wilco has always been a band more than willing to change things up to fit whatever wild musical direction they felt like pursuing. From the sunny pop harmonies of Summerteeth, to their oscillating experimentalist rock on A Ghost is Born, to the big middle finger to the music industry that was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jeff Tweedy and company have not been content to sit on their laurels. That’s why it was a little disheartening to hear their 2007 work Sky Blue Sky, a record rightly criticized for its fairly tame material and, dare I say it, a boring Wilco record. That isn’t to say Wilco is at their best when they’re experimenting or throwing all songwriting conventions to the wind; indeed, Summerteeth more than proved this band had the chops to make bright ‘70s pop their own, and opener “Wilco (The Song)” only supports them further. As Tweedy asks “are times getting tough / are the roads you travel rough” over a crunching backbeat and guitarist Nels Cline’s distorted shrill, it’s even more obvious than after Sky Blue Sky that Tweedy has left his millennial demons behind him. When the chorus of “Wilco, Wilco, Wilco will love you, baby” hits, it fires off the album in the best kind of pop direction, one bursting with vibrancy and the kind of energy the band seemed to lack on their last effort.