Wilco | The Whole Love

dBpm (2011)
By ZETH LUNDY  |  September 27, 2011
4.0 4.0 Stars

wilco-main

Wilco's evolution from Uncle Tupelo detritus to post-Americana thinking-man's jam band goes two steps back on their eighth studio album, and that's a good thing. Unlike recent comfort-zone efforts Wilco (The Album) and Sky Blue Sky, The Whole Love — the band's first album on its own label, dBpm — feels like a truly audacious studio record, jam-packed with instruments, ideas, and the sort of restless creativity that marked 2002's game-changer, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Besides the ukuleles, glockenspiels, Mellotrons, loops, and Stooges samples, this puppy's got great songs, too. "Dawned on Me" and the title track boast solid pop hooks, "Capitol City" walks with sprightly music-hall steps, and "I Might" and "Standing O" bring the reinvigorated rawk. The whole thing is bookended by the seven-minute "Art of Almost," a herky-jerky funk workout complete with thrash coda, and the 12-minute "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)," whose steady pulse, even-keeled instrumentation, and unfussy musical repetitions are very Blonde on Blonde. This final track, in particular, so opposite the band's previous forays into long-form, betrays a deep, deep trust in patience — the very thing which, some 17 years after Wilco originally formed, continues to pay dividends.
  Topics: CD Reviews , Music, Wilco, Wilco,  More more >
| More

Most Popular
Blogs
 More: Phlog  |  Music  |  Film  |  Books  |  Politics  |  Media  |  Election '08  |  Free Speech  |  All Blogs
CURRENT CONTESTS
 All Promotions . . .
ARTICLES BY ZETH LUNDY
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   BILL WITHERS | THE COMPLETE SUSSEX AND COLUMBIA ALBUMS  |  October 31, 2012
    Bill Withers has always been the down-to-earth, odd-man-out of the '70s soul brothers: he's the one who came bearing a lunch box on the cover of his relaxed 1971 debut, Just as I Am .
  •   R.E.M. | DOCUMENT [25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION]  |  September 19, 2012
    Fans of R.E.M. enjoy arguing over which album was the band's true shark-jump, but 1987's Document was inarguably the end of a groundbreaking era.
  •   RICHARD HAWLEY | STANDING AT THE SKY'S EDGE  |  September 04, 2012
    Richard Hawley's seventh studio album opens with "She Brings the Sunlight," a clouds-parting, hippy-dippy drone explosion that plays like "Tomorrow Never Knows" caught in the echo of a football stadium.
  •   BOB MOULD | SILVER AGE  |  August 28, 2012
    Now that he's getting love as a godfather figure from both sides of the indie/mainstream divide (see No Age and Foo Fighters, for starters), Bob Mould is again playing like he has something to prove — or at least an iconography to maintain.
  •   RY COODER | ELECTION SPECIAL  |  August 14, 2012
    Ry Cooder's spur-of-the-moment (or is it heat-of-the-moment?) political album opens like any good political album should, with a rollicking blues song told from the point of view of Mitt Romney's dog.

 See all articles by: ZETH LUNDY

LATEST SLIDESHOWS

All Slideshows