Wilco (The Album)

Wilco’s eponymous seventh album is both a testament to the range of Jeff Tweedy’s songwriting and a kind of extract of the band’s best music. The frontman is in top form right off the bat with (what one suspects will become) the band anthem ”˜Wilco (The Song),’ pledging unconditional love to listeners in their hard times (“Wilco will love you baby”). He moves on to talk murder from the murderer’s mouth (the thumping, discordant ”˜Bull Black Nova’), about dealing with cynicism (Tom Petty-like ”˜Solitaire’) and enduring love (dark-then-sunny closing masterpiece ”˜Everlasting’). Every step of the way his wavering, evocative timbre is supported by a band that has rarely sounded better. Every piece of instrumentation is simultaneously considered and spontaneous, a strange balance heard best on the country-grunge rocker ”˜Sunny Feeling’ and ”˜Deeper Down,’ where bottomless textures are offset by a spry baroque trade-off between lead guitar and what sounds like a harpsichord.

Of course Tweedy does also bring out his favoured alt-country chord book, touching upon subjects old and new with forceful honesty. There’re singalongs about failing relationships (”˜You and I’), childhood lost (”˜You Never Know’), the future (”˜Country Disappeared’) and the war (”˜I’ll Fight’). Brought in on the Ghost is Born tour to fill in the sound, avant romantic lead guitarist Nels Kline is the other star of this record. His unexpectedly incisive use of guitar proficiency within what is essentially a laidback rhythm-mix has made him an integral part of the Wilco sound of the past five years.

In the end, Wilco works because it succeeds in making both the simple and the experimental as heartbreakingly effective and succinct as the other. The band breezes through a wealth of narrative, emotion, technique and technology without succumbing to the usual excesses of either. Well, except that practiced melancholy perhaps. A true original.