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.

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Shrug rock.

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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.

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-- source

Yet you talk shit about TOOL.

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This sounds miserable. Solo Tweedy is not good. Without a countervailing creative force, he's so dull.

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I've seen Jeff Tweedy do a few solo shows, including a living room concert. He was amazing--hilarious, gregarious, and charming--each time. Thankfully, he only played a couple of Tweedy songs at one of the shows.

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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.

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-- source

Yeah, I couldn't sit through that.

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I've been revisiting A.M. lately and realizing I've given short shrift to the whole back end for years now. "Should've Been in Love" and "Too Far Apart" are really good, 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. "It's a good album when you don't listen to it as an album" is a dubious endorsement, but here we are.

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I'd say he's about 62.5% of the way to full Jerry Garcia.

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Does he have some sort of leash on his crotch?

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

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No, there's only one addict in that shot

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didn't notice that first glance, was trying to sort out whether or not Michael Moore has an infringement claim for Tweedy gakking his look.

Apt.

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

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

I just had this argument with a friend on Saturday night. I'm not the world's biggest Wilco fan, but I can acknowledge the genius of Tweedy. Sun Volt can rock a little but it's a pedestrian band compared to the best of Wilco.

This guy was trying to tell me that Uncle Tupelo was superior to Wilco. It's fine if you prefer Uncle Tupelo but there's no objective standard by which it is a better band than Wilco.

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.

We both agreed that for Tweedy's best to come out he needs another creative force pushing against him. For me, the guy who served the best in that role was Jay Bennett.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Trace is a masterpiece and still holds up today.

Wide Swing Tremolo is also a very good album, although it feels a lot like a sequel to Trace.

The rest of the Son Volt catalog is very uneven.

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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.

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I consider Being There a giant leap forward for Tweedy. But I would argue that his peak is Summerteeth and that Bennett is the best foil he has ever had. I've heard it said that Summerteeth is really a Bennett record, but I think The Whole Love puts lie to that. It's in a similar vein but obviously a lesser work. Summerteeth is like Pet Sounds.

This might be more of a commentary on my own lack of sophistication than it is a criticism of Jeff Tweedy, but I'm not ashamed to say I just don't get Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Here I thought it was a simple matter of Tweedy/Bennett being able to afford a better class of drugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Gbbd6 ... e=youtu.be

New song.

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Chicago postcard. Looked like superfan Sam @Laurie's.

Aww, that was neat.

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Everyone hides somewhere north of Lake street.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

Everyone hides when they hear another crappy Wilco song.

Neat video, though, in a gentrification is awesome kind of way.

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Wilco doing a mini-residency in December.

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@audioidkid

First time through the new album and it's painfully frustrating. There are good ideas both lyrically and musically, but they just can't seem to kick it out of first gear anymore. I keep waiting for big moments like in "Sunken Treasure" or "Poor Places" or "Jesus, Etc.," but they never come. It's just a constant mezzo-forte. Droning drums, murmured vocals, nothing happens like it should.

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Really felt like "Quiet Amplifier" could've ascended like you said--- it's still pretty good.
Haven't listened to the whole thing yet, because DIIV.....

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

I think it's better than Schmilco, which is easily their worst album, but still not at the level of Sky Blue Sky or The Whole Love, the latter of which probably could have been their final album and that would have been just fine.

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I haven't heard Schmilco, Star Wars, the Tweedy solo records, basically anything since a ghost is born.....Wilco are one of those bands that I was obsessed with until I just....wasn't. There was a time when I was the only guy in our band that had any money so I bought tix for 4 people to see them at The Vic during one of their Thanksgiving week shows during the Being There tour, and I bought all the beers that night too. Wilco are basically a nostalgia band for me, and I think the drummer is (while cashing huge checks) kinda wasting his talents. I'm old, and I'm a dad, but I wish they'd bring back some of the rock n' roll.

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.