Review: Wilco, “The Whole Love”

The alt-country movement sometimes gets a free pass when it comes to the criteria by which it’s judged. After all, music genres aren’t exactly empty bottles waiting to be filled with creative juices. Genre equals style—musicians are playing instruments, but they’re also playing roles. When it comes to alt-country, many groups don a one-size-fits-all world-weariness, and blur the line between art and existence. In many cases the music is played by guys in their 20s, often from the suburbs, who sing in a gravelly manner that implies it’s for their supper. And though they may travel in a nice tour van, they play their instruments like tooth-missing buskers down to their last dime. When it comes to what the critics have to say, alt-country gets respect right out of the gate, and tends to be rated exclusively on the plaintiveness of the lyrics. Bonus points, of course, for fiddles and harmonica. Primed to ferret out themes such as redemption, the hard existence of being on the road, family life—essentially a whittled down set of predetermined topics— music critics can be even guiltier of relying on clichés than the bands they’re writing about. The wild goose chase for “meaning” in rock & roll lyrics dates back to Bob Dylan and his first nasal cocktail of blues, folk and LSD.

For now, you can forget the lyrics. Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy shifts alt-country away from the burden of truth—or the lyrical pretension of such—and back to its great untapped facet: musical invention. As such, Wilco is the perennial (crop) circle that has never fit the square (dance) of traditional country. Using a hammer three times as strong as Peter, Paul & Mary’s, Wilco single-handedly—if unintentionally—shattered the No Depression movement. Named for a seminal album by Uncle Tupelo, the band that led Tweedy straight from Belleville to Wilco, No Depression launched both a namesake publication and a stubbornly purist mindset. It was a steadfast belief in sticking to the tried-and-true roots of folk, blues and country—with the most radical influence permitted being the iconic Gram Parsons. On Being There, only its second album, Wilco used a wider palette of musical colors, alienating those who felt country-rock should stick to homely hues of blue, green and yellow – or worse yet, a chiaroscuro simple-mindedness redolent of founding fathers like Hank Williams and the Weavers.

On the brand new The Whole Love, Wilco’s eighth album, the musical rebels (but never traitors to their genre) tear out the brittle last pages of the country-rock rulebook. On “Art of Almost,” the over-seven-minute track that opens the album, buzzy, beepy lo-fi elements brilliantly decorate (wreck-orate?) an otherwise polished track with a widescreen sweep not worlds away from Crowded House or ELO. The band’s trademark twang gets nearly defanged in a Pink Floydian haze, and in the process Tweedy coins a genre you might call prog-cabin. “I Might” has a “96 Tears” feel, and its risky lyrics veer from impressionistic to unclear—even on a simple imagistic level (“Do all lies/Have a taste”). As witnessed on that track, the same good instincts that pull Tweedy away from alt-country tropes occasionally land him in say-anything land. “Sunloathe” is a beautiful piece of what might be called chamber pop. Equal parts bright and chilling—hence its title—the track lightly recalls the obscure ‘60s soft-rock of Sagittarius. “Black Moon” hints at the sweet, eerie side of the Velvet Underground. And as close to a hit as anything on the album, “Born Alone” confronts its true topic—dying alone—by reversing the equation.

 Although Tweedy doesn’t exactly qualify as a musical genius, his talent is restless, edgy and, unlike bands that rely on a gimmick or past successes, he seems limitless—never in danger of imitating himself. These days, particularly with R.E.M. having gone the way of the Edison light bulb, we can sure use more of Wilco’s genre-bending ideas. Here they come fast and hard, somewhere between Pavement and a beautiful pasture.  It’s actually tempting to call The Whole Love Wilco’s Ghost in the Machine—but in this case, the machine is Tweedy’s brain, and the ghost is the restless spirit having fun at the expense of his sanity. Even the album art evokes a weird blend of Rube Goldberg complexity and pseudo-neural circuitry. If that’s country rock, I’ll eat my apron.

For more with Jeff Tweedy, including an interview with Jarrett Medlin and a video at Peabody Opera House during our September photo shoot (featuring Tweedy’s acoustic performance of “Dawned on Me,”) click here.