With the roar of critical applause for Wilco’s latest studio effort still echoing, a simple yet profound reality seems to have fallen by the wayside: Wilco (The Album) isn’t as white-hot as the hype surrounding it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad album, but listening with an honest ear, it isn’t even in the same league as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born, and is an easy step or two down from Sky Blue Sky. And yet the response from the press has been almost positive, as critics now used to heaping praise on Wilco go through the motions once more. But why are they doing this? And to what end? Is the album really the shining success it’s been painted to be? Or is it possible that the band’s past triumphs have generated a nefarious inertia that silences those who would voice anything but unmitigated praise? This year’s economic doom and the judging of certain economic institutions as too big to fail got me thinking about whether Wilco has attained a level of cachet where it is now too hip to fail.
Let’s take a moment to examine the trajectory of the band and how it got to its seemingly unassailable position. While Wilco released two notable albums in the late nineties—Summerteeth and A.M.—it wasn’t until the 2001 release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that the band exploded onto the national consciousness. Bolstered by filmmaker Sam Jones’ excellent biopic I am Trying to Break Your Heart, which chronicled the making of the album, and ultimate firing of co-producer and band-member Jay Bennett, the album was lauded as the sonic and lyrical masterpiece that it is, and achieved a surprising degree of commercial success. The band’s next studio production A Ghost is Born followed in 2004, and was also celebrated for catchy and compelling songs like Theologians, Handshake Drugs and Hummingbird, and a slew of other great tunes. 2007’s Sky Blue Sky was a departure, showcasing songs that were alternately sing-songy (What Light) and challenging to the listener’s ear (Side with the Seeds). The album seems to reflect Tweedy’s uneasy past (Sky Blue Sky/Hate it Here) as he strives to find contentedness in the present (Either Way / What Light). While the album definitely takes some time to grow on the listener, it is a fine work and an interesting evolution of the band’s sound. Sky Blue Sky greatly benefits from veteran guitarist Nels Cline, who positively soars on tracks like Impossible Germany.
Wilco {The Album}, seems to reflect Jeff Tweedy’s attaining the sort of solace he has been seeking all along, and inviting all of his fans to come and join him. At its best, this dynamic produces songs like Wilco. The album’s eponymous track—itself eponymous—is a rock-solid tune with a driving beat and great lyrics. Tweedy asks the listener, “Do you dabble in depression?” as he offers Wilco up as a “Sonic shoulder for you to cry on,” repeating the refrain “Wilco’ll love ya, baby.”
Contentedness has its price, however. “You and I,” which makes an appearance about halfway in, is the sonic equivalent of air-popped popcorn—no butter, no salt, but instead a sickening slurry of syrup and cheese. Defying the heft of these heart-stopping ingredients, the song is a breezy number, featuring the unsteady vocal accompaniment of Canadian singer-songwriter Feist, of Broken Social Scene fame. I find my head bouncing easily from side to side, almost automatically. Nels’ guitar sounds like the synth from an old video game, and the meandering backwards guitar-outro serves no other purpose than to be a meandering backwards guitar-outro. It’s easy listening, pure and simple, and it scares the shit out of me.
The antidote comes a few songs later in the form of I’ll Fight. An unapologetic and driving testament to love, the song features a forward-leaning beat and Dylanesque organ. The lyrics are darkly sweet, featuring lines that grab you by the shirt-neck: “You’ll wake with a start from a dream and you will know that I am gone.” The song’s pedal-steel guitar flourishes root the song in Wilco’s Alt-country past, and the number comes off as both emphatic and laid-back at the same time.
Unfortunately, that is the last notable song on the album. And while the tune Bull Black Nova (which comes earlier) is actually a very interesting and elegant song about post homicide paranoia, it's pulsing one-note piano tap is a shameless re-hash of an already released Wilco song, Spiders.
At the end of the day, there are three good songs on Wilco {The Album), a few not worthy of mention, and one or two real stinkers. And yet all I've heard in the press is exuberant praise and adulation for the band and it's album.
I empathize with Tweedy and the band in having to endure this over-emphatic praise. It’s not unlike getting a haircut that you know isn’t great and having everyone you run into tell you how “super” it is, as you turn your chin down into your chest and mutter “Thanks…” just wishing they’d change the subject.
But I don’t get the sense that Tweedy is too reluctant in accepting this praise. For one, he’s a master observer and might get something by gauging the fawner’s sincerity. Or perhaps he feels that for so long he and his bands did not receive their due, and so what if they get a little extra right now---a balancing out of sorts of the cosmic scale. But what the hell do I know? This is all sheer speculation…latrine psychology, one might say.
So to return to my original question, is Wilco to hip to fail, and can they even be said to have failed here? The answer on both counts is no. While this album does not stretch the boundaries of the musical terrain they have already covered, it does have a few good songs on it, which is more than most albums these days. And you cannot say a great band has failed simply because they have not produced an album that is as jaw-droppingly good as the last few. My point is this: Wilco (the album) is NOT a bad album. It’s just not as good as everyone says it is. Furthermore,it is thiscozy critical unanimity and group-think is exactly the sort of bullshit that Tweedy & Co seem to disdain.
So it is fair to say that by ignoring the album's shortcomings and over-emphasizing its successes, the tenured music critics with their cool shoes and quaffed hair have failed us...which is a very nice and easy place to end this article. After all, how does that saying go about the critics? No, not "Duck the critics," but something similar. I'll think of it in a second......ah, well, it doesn't really matter, anyway.
