Album Review 9 Wilco: Sky Blue Sky

Wilco: “Sky Blue Sky”



So...what do you do about Jeff Tweedy. An uninspiring, Belleville High, hanger onner to the dark and brilliant Jay Farrar in the seminal alt-country band Uncle Tupelo? Tweedy and farrar, the Lennon and Mc Cartney of Alt-Country with Tweedy being a dead ringer for Sir Paul in the story. Uncle Tupelo breaks up and Farar with his new group Son Volt delivers the beautiful and laconic “Trace”. Tweedy just kind of shows up and apparently mails it in with the easy to like, sometime infectious but ultimately quickly forgotten by the critics A.M. Tweedy moves to Chicago (even worse to be with his girl friend) and Farar goes to New Orleans (pre flood). The critics are proved right, Tweedy is a bass playing lightweaight hanger on and Farrar is going to deliver the Alt-Country grail...maybe even crossing over...

“Oh The Humanity”. What happens over the next ten years? Tweedy grows up. Becomes a drug addict, marries and has children in a very public way. Delivers halting beauty in his next two releases with the help of fat know it all Jay Bennett. Then...in the process of losing Bennett and finding his own voice he hooks up with some geniuses who have passion, keeps the heart of his own band (bassist Will Stiratt) and releases the album the record company did not want, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” and becomes critics icon and morphs from alt-country hanger on to indie rock prince and “genius”. Farrar in the meantime...keeps releasing “Trace” with each CD darker, more brooding and textured and self indulgent...until becoming totally unlistenable. After Yankeee Tweedy then gives us the equally (if not more) brilliant “Ghost.” So...expectations high on the new CD? Yes they were and as near as I can tell...the critics hate it.

This...despite all that it is a great album...a grown up album. I do think that might be why a lot of people hate it. Tweedy has grown up. I don’t even like saying the words “grown up” but in the Peter Pan, brown haired bangs in their eyes, world of male indie rockers there cannot be growing up. Because real angst over relationships, the world, light and darkness, whales eating mariners... all these things kind of fade away for grown ups into the wonder of every day life...and the fear of what in the hell is going tohappen with the world and these...children. So Tweedy is grown up and thre results are not that bad.

The Riverfront Times reviewer was all about complaining that it did not start out with the samer brilliant chunky guitars of the last two CD’s. Ghost starts with “At Least Thats What You Said.” Yankee starts with “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.” All Sky Blue Sky gives us is “Either Way” and to be fair...it is just a pretty song. But from there it picks up and picks up quickly with “You Are My Face” and then into “Impossible Germany”. The CD builds and that is an art in itself hearkening back to the old days when bands crafted albums on a side by side basis with the songs fitting together and this one is the same. The title cut “Sky Blue Sky” where he gets down to business:

"With a sky blue sky
This Rotten time
Wouldn’t seem so bad to me now
Oh, if I didn’t die, I should be satisfied
I survived
That’s good enough for now"

Amen. “Side With The Seeds” is a little weaker but “Shake It Off” should be a nice concert sing along this next year. “Be Patient With Me” is a peann to every one who runs into a middle aged man as we flounder around. In “Hate It Here” he starts whining a little bit about household chorse while mooning about whether “she” is going to return and alas...the answer would seem to be no. According to Wikipedia Tweedy has stayed married to his wife Sue Miller but you would not know it from these songs because he follows with “Leave Me (like you found me). He also has akid Spencer who is an early teen who has his own band “The Blisters” which I saw play a fun cover set last year at Lollapalooza. “Walken” seems like another fill until “What Light” which once again will give another great concert moment. Nels Cline shows versatilty on guitar again and again playing lead and then picking up on lap steel. Glenn Kotsche continues to prove that as a percussionist he can play...anything and Stiratt never misses a beat.

You get a feel for the reality...and a little of the beauty of the marriage during the song “On And On And On” where he figres...that is what they will do.

It is an excellent CD. It is a switch from the last two but it is a far cry from going back to their cherished twangy past (which I would embrace). Tweedy is grown up...life aint so bad. He lost a little white boy angst...get over it.