Album Review

So has the world got you down? Can’t read the morning paper without wanting to stick your head face down in your Cheerios and not come up for air? Well, who else can you turn to for cheering up if not Jeff Tweedy?

OK, so Tweedy might not be your usual first choice to be the ray of sunshine through the clouds. But yet here he is, on the opening song of Wilco (The Album), offering up his band’s service to those who “dabble in depression.” The song, a straightforward rocker imaginatively titled “Wilco (The Song),” can provide a “sonic shoulder for you to cry on.” When all else fails, “Wilco will love you baby.”

It’s a striking opening for a band known more for their stoic demeanor and restless experimentation than most anything else. Don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s all rainbows and lemonade for Tweedy and the boys. But that opening song does hold a clue for the rest of the album in terms of the ease with which they seem to be gliding. They may be attacking their usual dark subject matter at times, but they do so with a fervor and gusto that makes this one of the few Wilco albums one could call uplifting.

There might be a tendency for some to shorthand this album by calling it Wilco at their most accessible. That might be true, but don’t confuse that with simplicity. The band still has a knack for incorporating disparate elements and complex arrangements at the moment you expect it least, but they do it here without sounding fussy, as on, say, A Ghost Is Born. The seamlessness of these effects on this album might be the most striking part of it.

Take, for example, the thrilling “Bull Black Nova.” With an angular bass line by John Stirratt and staccato keyboards, it comes on like vintage Talking Heads. All of the frantic tension continues to build as Tweedy sings, “This can’t be undone, it can’t be outrun.” Finally some dueling guitar solos worthy of Crazy Horse rip the air. This kind of tightrope act is something that few bands can pull off without stumbling badly. Wilco make it look easy.

The genre shifts may seem seismic on paper. Any album that contains the baroque character sketch “Deeper Down” and the power-pop juice of “Sunny Feeling” could be accused of schizophrenia. But the band’s skill level is such that they deliver their own imprint on these styles so that the transitions are hardly noticeable.

The group also shows the ability to dial down the flourishes and still find beauty and truth. “One Wing” is a dark and lovely mid-tempo number marked by heartrending lyrics. “You And I” finds Tweedy doing a duet with Feist to great effect. The unabashedly romantic lyrics are delivered without a hint of irony, and that makes lines like “All the good and the bad/Makes something that no one else has” hit home. A little backwards guitar at song’s end is just the right quirk to elevate the song above the humdrum.

Not everything is a knockout. “Solitaire” is a little trite, musically and lyrically, and the forlorn “Country Disappeared” just wanders vaguely around the edges without ever finding the center. But those are just small problems. By the time Tweedy and the boys go out with the open-hearted “Everlasting,” all horns and strings ripped right from The Beatles biggest ballads, you’re willing to believe that this band can accomplish just about everything.

Tweedy sings in that song about the power of love to endure everything, unlike the transitory things that will be “gone like a circus, like a troubadour.” He might be a bit modest about the power of music in that line, because the stuff on Wilco (The Album) is undeniably enduring.

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