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55 of 61 people found the following review helpful: By This review is from: Wilco (The Album) (Audio CD) Since its debut album "A.M.", Wilco has gone through a lot of ups and downs commercially, even though the band has enjoyed ever-climbing critical success, perhaps none more so than with the long-delayed (because of label problems) 2002 "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album, in my book stil the finest album of the band. Yet always throughout you got the sense that Jeff Tweedy, the band's singer-song writer, was trying to prove something. With the band's reputation clearly established, now comes the 7th studio album, 2 years after the slightly disappointing (if ambitious) "Sky Blue Sky" album.
"Wilco (the album)" (11 tracks; 43 min.) kicks off with perhaps the band's most irreverent/accessible and tongue-in-cheek song ever, "Wilco (the song)", with great lyrics like "Do you dabble in depression/Is someone twisting a knife in your back/Are you being attacked/Wilco will love you baby". This should find plenty of airplay on mainstream commercial radio if it was still any good, which...Read more 12 of 12 people found the following review helpful: By This review is from: Wilco (The Album) (Audio CD) Wilco is a tough band to deal with. They take chances. They cannot be pigeonholed. They do not cowtow towards fans, critics or anybody else. And, unfortunately, they can be a victim of their own success. This is a good cd, with some terrific songs. The musicianship is spellbinding and the song writing top rate.
I fell in love with this band on "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". That cd is meant to be listened to, from start to finish...like "Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". Their follow up, "A Ghost is Born", really in the same vein, was also a wonderfully adventerous work. The problem is that you cannot always create only masterpieces, it's an unrealistic expectation. Wilco (the album) is good, classic Wilco. It's a more quiet work, with virtuostic yet very subdued playing. Yet, there is still real good stuff on it with not a lame track, and some great tunes like "Bull Black Nova" (classic avante garde/experimental Wilco), "You Never Know", "Everlasting,...Read more 18 of 20 people found the following review helpful: By This review is from: Wilco (The Album) (Audio CD) Wilco has always been a band more than willing to change things up to fit whatever wild musical direction they felt like pursuing. From the sunny pop harmonies of Summerteeth, to their oscillating experimentalist rock on A Ghost is Born, to the big middle finger to the music industry that was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jeff Tweedy and company have not been content to sit on their laurels. That's why it was a little disheartening to hear their 2007 work Sky Blue Sky, a record rightly criticized for its fairly tame material and, dare I say it, a boring Wilco record.
That isn't to say Wilco is at their best when they're experimenting or throwing all songwriting conventions to the wind; indeed, Summerteeth more than proved this band had the chops to make bright `70s pop their own, and opener "Wilco (The Song)" only supports them further. As Tweedy asks "are times getting tough / are the roads you travel rough" over a crunching backbeat and guitarist Nels Cline's distorted shrill,...Read more |