https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VamTQr4kcKA

It's a notch above the boring, sleepy Schmilco and recent solo Tweedy stuff, but not a big notch. It sounds like it could have fit on Wilco (The Album). I feel like I'm giving them one last chance to make something that's not boring strumming and mumbling even though I know in my heart we're never getting more Being There/Summerteeth/Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Went to Tweedy’s show at Canal Shores golf course last night in Evanston. Not one Wilco song. His kid was on drums the entire show. I know he is promoting his solo stuff, but looking at his other set lists, I see some Wilco songs peppered in. His solo stuff all sounded like one big depressing mess about his dead dad (as he reminded us multiple times). And his covers were mostly obscure crap. California Stars closed the show, but we were halfway to the car by that point.

I had been to two solo shows prior to last weekend. Both were very enjoyable. Benefits show at the Vic. But all solo songs? Never again. Nearly slit my wrists in the port-o-John.

Does he have some sort of leash on his crotch?

Does he have some sort of leash on his crotch?

the trick with most of this album is to intersperse the tracks with later stuff so that I don't get the alt-country-glaze-over effect I get with Son Volt.

Apt.

I could not get on with Sun Volt. At all.

Uncle Tupelo was Farrar's band. What's the best Tweedy song from Uncle Tupelo? "Gun"? "Screen Door"? Maybe "The Long Cut"? Every other great Tupelo song is Jay's.

Well, I think that last Tupelo album, Anodyne, is kind of a coming out party for Tweedy. He begins to assert himself as Farrar's songwriting equal (or better); Farrar realizes that Tweedy has taken a significant leap forward in his artistry; and Farrar breaks up the band as a result.

The interesting thing is that Tweedy regresses with AM, listens to Trace (obsessively, I would guess), and interprets that album as a challenge to elevate (once again) his artistic production. I have always taken Wilco's next album, Being There, to be a musical and thematic response to Trace. Whereas the latter album fetishizes authenticity, place, presence, narrative certainty, etc--the foundation of the early alt-country aesthetic--Tweedy writes an album that is consumed with absence, displacement, longing, and unfulfilled desires and ambitions. It is here that he begins to venture "far, far away" from the established--or perhaps reified is the more apt word--alt-country genre (an aesthetic locus where 1963 could, indeed, "sound like heaven"), implodes it, and lays the foundation for the dissonance and radical uncertainty that fully arrives two albums later with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Well, I think that last Tupelo album, Anodyne, is kind of a coming out party for Tweedy, who has several great songs on it ("Acuff-Rose", "We've Been Had", "New Madrid", and the aforementioned "Long Cut"). He begins to assert himself as Farrar's songwriting equal (or better); Farrar realizes that Tweedy has taken a significant leap forward in his artistry; and Farrar breaks up the band as a result (Please also note: "Watch Me Fall" from Still Feel Gone is also an amazing song.

The interesting thing is that Tweedy regresses with AM, listens to Trace (obsessively, I would guess), and interprets that album as a challenge to elevate (once again) his artistic production. I have always taken Wilco's next album, Being There, to be a musical and thematic response to Trace. Whereas the latter album fetishizes authenticity, place, presence, narrative certainty, etc--the foundation of the early alt-country aesthetic--Tweedy writes an album that is consumed with absence, displacement, longing, and unfulfilled desires and ambitions. It is here that he begins to venture "far, far away" from the established--or perhaps reified is the more apt word--alt-country genre (an aesthetic locus where 1963--or at least a canonical rendering of it--could, indeed, "sound like heaven"), implodes it, and lays the foundation for the dissonance and radical uncertainty that fully arrives two albums later with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.