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Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

by The Bridge
07/31/2007

Thank god I'm a procrastinator. If I weren't, I would have by now submitted an article wherein I said all sorts of nice things about Wilco's latest long-playah, Sky Blue Sky, that just aren't true.


It's always a bit weird writing about the work of an artist for whom you're a bit of a fanboy. For one thing, the temptation to turn in Beavis/butthead-esque critiques like "The Throwing Muses just fucking rule" is strong. But the real danger is in giving into the preconceived notion that you have of an act as a quality act, thereby shading any crappy platter they put out with unwarranted favor.

Now, a lot of your quality, big-time, available-in-print publications like to run reviews of new releases in a timely fashion. We here at the Ath-ex (and by we I must cop to meaning mostly me) think that's a pretty stupid thing to do. I like to spend some time with an album, you know, get past the small talk, really get personal with it (I am probably, but not neccessarily, refering to reefer here). Especially a new one by the like of Tweedy and Co., for whom I have wielded, in years past, an unabashed fondness.

When Sky Blue Sky hit, the aforementioned big-time publication reviews ran a very small gamut, from slobbering praise to mild fawning. In one interview with Tweedy, the reporter noted that Tweedy has quit smoking and suggested a link between this and his new, stronger vocals. In another rag, I read effusive praise of the album's simplistic, 70's-esque roots rock and winsome melodies. And everyone mentioned all the awesome guitar solos.

So when I first purchased Sky Blue Sky, I was all hyped up and babbled to whomever was listening about how Tweedy had stopped smoking and that's why his vocals were so good and blah blah blah. Later, though, I found that this was the first album whose ABSENCE of greatness was revealed through the aide of marijuana. I sat in my bedroom, high as bats, zoned into "Impossible Germany," and found myself wondering why the beginning of the song sort of annoyed me. After a moment it came to me: in the beginning he's singing.

Well, the guitars are top notch; let's get that out of the way right off. Tweedy's still working with the incomparable Nels Cline, who's been on board ever since the A Ghost Is Born tour, and his guitar work here is as expressive as ever. "Impossible Germany" showcases his unerringly loose, nimble noodling best - the song is both grounded and expanded by the path of its (three at once!) guitar solos.

As for the songs, it's a mixed-bag batch, with winners like the coffee-nerved "Shake it Off" and the elegiac closer "On and On and On" holding up nicely next to more spotty material, like the meandering "Either Way", which might be a pretty piece of Zen reckoning, but God, is it boring. And all of these slow, unfrilled tunes with the spotlight on Tweedy's barenaked vocals was a mistake. What made Wilco's older ballads so moving (other than deft instrumentation) was the way the vocal melodies and harmonies were structured. Imagine anything off Summerteeth without the sunny warmth of longtime bassist John Striatt's backing vocals. Or how about trying to listen to "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" without all the weird atmospheric shit going on? The point is that Tweedy - like a lot of wonderful singer-songwriters - doesn't exactly have honey-slaked pipes. And he doesn't have to - he just has to know how and when to dress it up. I'm not saying his thin, reedy voice should never venture out unadorned in a song, but he has to realize he can't carry a song like "Please Be Patient With Me" without something to sweeten his croon. His timber is so grey and scrathy on some of the songs that it overshadows whatever soul and charm the tunes have.

Here's a way to really improve this album. For some reason, I was reminded more of Stax soul than roots-rock (almost certainly because I have been listening to more of the latter lately), and I found that several songs were immensely improved once I began imagining that Al Green or Otis Redding (especially on "Hate it Here") was doing the honors. Perhaps Tweedy's voice is improving, but you can't just hop from smoking a pack a day to trying to carry an entire album's worth of lo-fi, moody songs with little to no embellishment. On Sky Blue Sky, the songs are, for the most part, ready to forgive, forget, and groove on, but Tweedy sounds like he's breaking under the weight of his own music, and that just doesn't jibe with the 'Either Way' vibe.

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