On Experimentation
In which we re-publish our one-year old arguement as to why Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky is one of the most beautiful records we’ve ever heard.
The reviews have begun to trickle in, and by tomorrow they will be flooding in, so we decided it was time for us to pipe up in defense and praise of what we think with 99.9% certainty will be selected as our favorite record of the year, come late December. Pitchfork has conferred a lowly 5.2 and labeled it “Dad rock,” while no doubt The Wire and the other lot who jumped on board with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will be disappointed as well.
Yes, Sky Blue Sky has stripped away much of the surface-level sonic experimentation that defined Yankee and, to a lesser extent, Ghost and has been the band’s trademark since Misunderstood made us realize this was the best band in the world as far back as 1996. But five years removed, much of Yankee’s tinkering sounds like all too much noise, and the songs—with Wilco, it’s always about the songs—now shine brighter live with the flourishes embedded more deeply in the song structures, courtesy of guitarist Nels Cline. In truth, Yankee wasn’t quite the leap it was proclaimed to be at the time, as even a cursory listen reveals that it merely replaced Summerteeth’s Beach Boys and Elephant 6 layering with a different, post-rock layering. Don’t get us wrong, it is still a monumental album, as any record with songs as perfect as Jesus, Etc., Reservations and Ashes of American Flags must surely be, but those who focus on the experimentation are missing the point. To many ears, A Ghost Is Born traveled further down that road, but aside from the drone-rock inspired Spiders (Kidsmoke) and Less Than You Think, the experimentation was in the writing, in the inventiveness that has always defined Tweedy’s best songs. At Least That’s What You Said is in essence a Neil Young & Crazy Horse dirge, Hummingbird classic Beatles pop, The Late Greats straight-up alt-country-rock, Muzzle of Bees late-60s / early-70s British folk (there’s a reason Tweedy at the time took to covering Bill Fay), Handshake Drugs a Band-inspired groove.
Jeff Tweedy told Pitchfork in a recent interview that anyone who thinks Wilco is an experimental band probably doesn’t listen to enough records. And that’s the point. They have done more to explore music’s boundaries than any band of the past decade, but they have done it by mining sounds from the past—Neil Young’s guitar squall, the Band’s loose-tight dynamics and old Americana feel, Woody Guthrie’s minor chord folk, the Replacements’ romantic rock dream, punk’s scream—and updating it in service of Tweedy’s singular songwriting. Just as The Band did, Wilco have taken the past and pulled it into the present, following a long American tradition, the same trick Dylan, Springsteen and all the other giants have used. In the early 1990s, a common complaint was that most indie bands’ record collections didn’t seem to go back much further than Sonic Youth. Today, most indie bands’ seems to stop at Pavement, maybe Gang of Four. And that’s what is so powerful about Wilco, what has always kept them relevant, revelatory and even, at times, transcendent (there are few live music moments—or, for that matter, life moments—that can compare to Tweedy’s solo reading of The Lonely 1 or the band’s exquisite, controlled noise barrage on Reservations).
Jeff and Jay Farrar started their music careers as reactionaries, turning to the Carter Family, Guthrie, Creedence, Husker Du, the Mats and, again, Neil Young to find what they felt was missing in early 90s rock—early bootlegs reveal Uncle Tupelo to have started as the world’s best bar band—but they quickly transformed themselves, using the old to color what was thoroughly modern music. Has there ever been a braver, more current, more punk statement than March 16-20, 1992, a fierce and forceful all acoustic, all-live recording of classic and original folk and country songs? It felt like nothing else from that year, or, for that matter, anything since. A few years down the line, the Mermaid Avenue records achieved the same, but from a different angle, making most alt-country sound pointless in comparison. Why is it that those who see Tupelo now as simple revivalists seem perfectly willing to give such a long leash to the scores of indie bands doing nothing more than poor Wire and Joy Division imitations?
Which brings us to Sky Blue Sky, and why the initial view of it as some kind of retreat to AM-style alt-country and classicism is so off. Sky is, of all things, Tweedy’s soul album, and its strongest influence is clearly Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s late 60s work, especially the spacious, warm You’re So Beautiful. Hate It Here, Side With the Seeds and Shake It Off all owe a direct debt to Wright, a connection that few critics seem to have made, odd considering Tweedy has spoken of Wright frequently in recent interviews and the band covered his Comment on Kicking Television: Live in Chicago and at many shows over the past few years. Tweedy has always had a beautifully fragile voice, and here he does the best vocal work of his career, all cautiously hopeful, yet ragged nonetheless, best evidenced on Hate it Here, where a suburban husband tries desperately to fill his days with chores. Some critics have pointed to it as Example #1 of a retreat into safety and domestic concerns. Leaving aside for now the ludicrous contention that artists must exist on the edge of an abyss (as Tweedy surely did for some years) for their art to be relevant, how many seem to miss the choking, quiet fear the song paints with such simple lines is beyond us.
As always, Tweedy’s lyrics continue to tower above those of anyone else working in rock today. On A Ghost Is Born he showed us someone lost to the fear of insignificance, a narrator whose one goal was to be nothing more than an echo, leaving some tiny, lasting impression on the world and the lover who’s left him. On Sky, he’s emerged from that fear, at last opening himself up to the possibility of hope—“Maybe you still love me / maybe you don’t / I will try to understand”—and as always looking to music for a meaning and a collective embrace he can’t find elsewhere—“And our voices lift so easily / A gift given accidentally / When we’re not sure / We’re not alone.” And he continues to explore what remains his great theme: how accepting death is the only way to live life, to overcome meaninglessness, a lack of faith, a lack of purpose. In the remarkable closer On and On and On, one of the finest song he or anyone else has ever written, he sings “However short or long our lives are going to be / I will live in you or you will live in me / Until we disappear together in a dream.” It’s a simple thought, and it’s one the has occupied most great artists, but how wonderful that a rock singer is tackling it, and tackling it with such intelligence, such precision? Put simply, Sky Blue Sky is about what it means to be alive, to be human. If Tweedy sounds more content than he’s been in years past, that’s because he likely is, but he chronicles that struggle beautifully and, yes, poetically. It’s the farthest thing from “safe” possible. In an indie universe where the Arcade Fire gets praised for its lyrics about vague paranoia and few bands even bother to address the personal yet alone the political, it’s baffling that Tweedy doesn’t get more credit for his words.
But again, ulitmately this is a band that’s about the songs. There’s a reason a Tweedy solo show can be just as remarkable as the full band’s sonic assault: Strip away the noise, the screeching, the percussion, everything, and you’re left with simple, beautiful rock songs. Tweedy has always written unforgettable melodies, most with a breezy, late 70s AM feel, and in truth there is a tight thread running between the new album’s title track, Ghost’s Wishful Thinking, Yankee’s Poor Places, Summerteeth’s She’s a Jar, Mermaid Avenue’s California Stars, Being There’s Say You Miss Me, AM’s Should’ve Been in Love and even Uncle Tupelo’s No Sense in Lovin’. Jeff Tweedy writes rock songs. Great ones. And Sky Blue Sky has them in abundance, from the opening couplet of Either Way and You Are My Face, to the closing What Light and On and On and On, it offers 12 songs that sound better than just about anything else on our stereos right now. Indeed, the only (slight) misstep is what was left off. Late last year, the band began playing The Thanks I Get, including on Conan O’Brien, a joyful, simple soul number written for Solomon Burke that would have fit perfectly here, especially if it had replaced the somewhat turgid Shake It Off. But no matter. The record still offers up more memorable melodies than we’ve heard since, well, A Ghost Is Born came out.
Like all Wilco albums, Sky Blue Sky sounds like a record recorded to tape by a band sitting in the same room. It captures that organic, rich feel that defines Creedence, Beatles and other 60s bands’ records but which has mostly been in hiding since the advent of ProTools and digital home studios. It’s remarkable to be reminded of what a difference that makes. The sound of the album alone is enough to take your breath away, remind you of the power of rock n roll in a way that, say, Of Montreal just can’t. There are others out there who achieve a similar feel—most of the freak-folk records, for example, especially the recent entries by The Papercuts and Vetiver—but unlike Wilco, those bands tend to be true classicists, aping old styles that, so far, don’t feel derivative only because their chosen genre has yet to become overly obtrusive on TV and elsewhere.
On Sky, Wilco achieves a cohesive, fully formed sound that quiets its different assets in service of the collective whole—Cline and Tweedy’s complex, almost Television-esque interplay, Pat Sansone and Mikael Jorgensen’s finely integrated piano and keyboard, Glenn Kotches’ deep, rich percussion and John Stirratt’s flowing bass and background vocals. The only real comparison is The Band at the top of their power, trying out new sounds left and right, pulling in classic rock touches and beautiful phrasing, yet doing it so naturally, so subtly that it can be easy to overlook. To our ears, the result is simply wonderful, a record that washes over you with its warmth. Far from being safe, it’s almost baffling experimental, but with such a delicate balance of dense and light that those who equate experimentation with the addition of strange noises will surely miss it. Tweedy has said that Sky Blue Sky is meant to be heard on vinyl, and he’s right: The warmth of the album seems designed for a turntable, not an iPod. It demands attention, it demands that you get lost in it, but not in the obtrusive hit you over the head way begged by Radiohead’s past few albums. It’s an album to sink into, to fall in love with slowly but irreversibly.
This is rock music, perfectly written and executed. What a sad statement that most critics today can no longer appreciate what a real achievement that is.