Wilco – Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Though nobody ever has a bad word to say about Wilco, I’d wager the amount of people who think they should get in to them is far higher than the number who actually own and love their records. Something about them, and the way they’re talked about, makes Wilco seem an imposing prospect. It’s like I felt with The Fall and The Cure for a long time – you’re told there’s so much good stuff there that to find the correct masterpiece to start with place feels like a hassle you don’t really have time for. Then you plump for one (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in my case) and find that, great though it is, the thing’s bloody long. Like raising a kid who grows up to genuinely adore the work of The Wombats, loving Wilco does require a bit of effort.
Yet this latest, surprisingly breezy, honky tonk filled seventh record sees Wilco having some brilliantly self referential giggles. Over forty minutes that race by, you get the sound of the band with the wind in its hair and the sun on its back. It’s not just in the titles (Wilco (The Album) opens with ‘Wilco (The Song)’ and its brilliant chorus of “Wilco, Wilco, Wilco... I love you baby”) that they reference themselves, poking fun at their own status as supposedly the ‘best band in the world right now’, but also in the sonic delivery – it’s vintage Wilco, nodding back to their highest previous artistic peaks, but stripped of any of the pretence that might have made them seem a little too highbrow to bother with.
This doesn’t, however, lead to any of this collection being at all frivolous or slapdash. Wilco (The Album) contains some of Wilco (The Band)’s most heartbreaking songs – the cyclical refrain of ‘One Wing’ sounds like Bright Eyes if Conor Oberst was at all capable of emoting without over-emoting, whilst ‘You and I’ (a duet with Feist) restores one’s faith in love even after the ugly and untimely demise of that once shared by Peter Andre and Katie Price. It’s also got their most sunshine soaked moment since ‘Heavy Metal Drummer’ in the jubilant single ‘You Never Know’.
Whilst it isn’t their masterpiece, it’s certainly one of their more instantly loveable works. As such, it could actually be a perfect place to start for the uninitiated. As this record proves, the sound of Wilco existing without any of the hushed reverence that usually accompanies their name being mentioned is in fact its own liberating, vibrant and wondrous thing.
Artists in this article: Wilco
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