I am completely in love with the new Wilco,
Sky Blue Sky. Have been since the first spin, and haven't tired in over four-dozen plays. By now, the record has become an old friend. I realize there is a good bit of negative opinion over it, but those people are just flat-out wrong. It's probably their best album. No, I'll say it... it
IS their best album. And it isn't too far removed from
Being There while also being a natural progression from
A Ghost Is Born. It brings the entire Tweedy/Wilco canon full circle.
It all begins with the sweet and beautiful "Either Way" which opens with the hopeful statement "Maybe the sun will shine today" and grows into a promise of support, devotion and understanding. "You Are My Face" gives us the first brilliant Tweedy line of the record, "Why is there no breeze? No currency of leaves?". It seems at first to continue track 1's pensive mood, but then we hit the first curve-ball of the album. Tweedy sings "I must have let you down too many times in the dirt and the dust", which is followed by a simple melodic guitar line quickly enveloped in the dark energy of a shuffle-groove replete with downtrodden sentiment. On the whole, probably one of the most viscerally impressionistic lyrical works I've heard from Tweedy.
"Impossible Germany" could have been pulled right out of
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot... with its choppy, playful lyrical structure and "Jesus, Etc." feel. Now, I'm seldom one for guitar solos. They rarely serve any purpose other than a placeholder or song extension. And it seems many fans are sorta getting down Nels Cline's work on
Sky Blue Sky for this very reason. If he were at fault anywhere on the album, it would be on "Impossible Germany". That said, I actually love what he does to the song. The title track is as beautiful a song as Tweedy has recorded. Later in the album, songs like "Please Be Patient With Me" and "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)" are equally lovely ballads, and of the ballads, the latter is probably the most moving. "Leave Me" may even be ranking close to "Rhythm", my personal favorite Wilco ballad, which sadly never made it to a proper album.
Without question, "Side With The Seeds" is the best song on the album and probably my new all-time favorite Wilco song. Niles Cline is just brilliant here. Where Tweedy's guitar solos on
A Ghost Is Born were a conglomeration of noise (which I grew to appreciate), Cline now introduces a nearly prog-rock Robert Fripp intensity. His playing reminds me a lot of Fripp's playing on the
Peter Gabriel and
Daryl Hall releases of his MOR trilogy. Every stroke has great purpose and propulsion akin to
Live at Leeds Pete Townsend. Cline is joined by a John Paul Jones style keyboard line and Tweedy and Cline unite into Allman Brothers double guitar. I don't think I've ever heard so many different loving rock tributes so seamlessly melded together in a single song.
As on
A Ghost Is Born, the piano plays a vastly important role on almost every track of the record. It's hard not to hear the influence of late period Beatles in the ivories, while the organ work seems to draw more from early Steely Dan. "Shake It Off" is a perfect example of Wilco doing Dan. Even Cline sounds a hell of a lot like Skunk Baxter. This track is a bit of a silly throw-away from a lyrical standpoint, but it's still a lot of fun. I imagine it to be a real highlight of the next tour.
On the subject of keyboards, I'm a sucker for slightly distorted Wurlitzer electric piano. I think Whirlies are largely to blame for both my
early-period Hall and Oates obsession and my need to listen to 10CC's "I'm Not In Love" on a nearly daily basis. "Hate It Here" satisfies my Whirly cravings and also unfairly preys upon my late-period Beatles fanaticism. Drummer Glenn Kotche is able to get his rocks off a bit with the very Abbey Road sounding blues riffs on "Hate It Here". Overall the material on
Sky Blue Sky doesn't allow Glenn to shine as bright as he did on the recent
Loose Fur record, but he still provides a wonderfully crucial loose framework to the songs.
"Walken" made my jaw drop when they played it live on the last tour. Not only was it the exact kind of song I longed to hear the band devise for the new record, it was also eerily similar to the material I'm working on with
The Ether Family Presents... for our third album in the
How To Get Lost series. Take this song, replace Tweedy's vocals with the
O'Jays and you have largely what I'm after on that record. But I digress. I just adore this song and have to listen to it over and over. So awesome. "What Light" could have easily been on one of the Mermaid Avenue records. It's a nice Woody Guthrie influenced song that does a good job of winding the record down after the peak of "Walken". It also again brings the
Being There sound full circle.
Tweedy's vocals throughout the album have a present intimacy. They sound just beautiful. The final track of the album, "On and on and on" just makes me ache. It contains the most poignant line of the album "Please don't cry/We're designed to die". It's one of those final album tracks that forces you to start the album over again, because it's just not enough to satisfy. Brilliant.
A nearly perfect record.
Pre-order or purchase the retail version on the 15th! --
Jimmy Ether is a record producer/engineer and runs Atlanta's indie pop/indie rock label Headphone Treats.
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