Summerteeth
There is no two ways about it..this is simply the best record I've heard in a long time...from the first chords of Can't Stand It to the last notes of A Shot In The Arm's second version, this is simply 60 minutes of the best music you'll come across this year. Wilco have traded their No Depression roots for Big Star-ish power pop, Beach Boys harmonies, Wall Of Sound production, Beatles inventiveness....and it's all for the better. In fact, this is the album Big Star fans could have been hoping for all along, if the band had stuck together for a few years. Jeff Tweedy's long time fans may not acknowledge this on the first listen, the possessiveness of alt-country fans coming a close second to folk-era Dylan fans, and the cries of "Judas!" may haunt this band for years. But music fans should learn to look further, open their ears and realize this may be as good as it gets... The instrumentation is very unusual, ranging from bells, mellotrons to E-bow guitars and Moogs, and only the slightest hint of a steel-guitar here and there. Each song contains enough surprises to come back to this record every day, meaning this album will very well stand repeated listening (I'm at 14 and counting since I bought it 3 days ago)... The shear amount of instruments and studio tricks used by the band also means you are likely to discovering new sounds every single time you press the play button...
As for the songs themselves, this could be loosely described as a song cycle about failed relationship(s), with a measure of redemption coming in the end... From the opener Can't Stand It ("No loves as random as my love/I can't stand it...I can't stand it..."), up to Via Chicago, it seems to be all the way down for Jeff, despite the sheer joy of the music in the likely single Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)...Via Chicago starts with some of the bleakest lyrics Jeff has ever written "I dreamed about killing you again last night/and it felt alright to me" (which were in fact allegedly written with his wife...) but then things slowly seem to turn around, until the first hidden track, Candyfloss, that is one of the purest pop songs you'll hear this year, even if radio airplay is unlikely. That songs climaxes with operatic voices in the background, which seems almost as clever as the "handclaps in the chorus" of the aforementionned Nothing'sever... Pieholden Suite, which may be the best song here, starts quietly but adds somthing at each verse, and concludes with a melancholic trumpet solo. The lyrics also show a stunning growth from Tweedy's days as co-leader of Uncle Tupelo, and if you do not shed a tear over at least one song here, your heart is made of stone...
To put it mildly, chances are that listening to this record you'll cry, you'll laugh, you'll want to die but in the end, you'll want to fall in love all over again...and press that repeat button over and over and over....
Do yourself a favor...pick this one up...5 five stars are not enough...a clear summer night's worth of stars would still be not enough...it's just THAT good...
If, like me, you've simply fallen in love with this record...tell everyone you know about it...if anything deserves to become a hit, this is it...
As for the songs themselves, this could be loosely described as a song cycle about failed relationship(s), with a measure of redemption coming in the end... From the opener Can't Stand It ("No loves as random as my love/I can't stand it...I can't stand it..."), up to Via Chicago, it seems to be all the way down for Jeff, despite the sheer joy of the music in the likely single Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)...Via Chicago starts with some of the bleakest lyrics Jeff has ever written "I dreamed about killing you again last night/and it felt alright to me" (which were in fact allegedly written with his wife...) but then things slowly seem to turn around, until the first hidden track, Candyfloss, that is one of the purest pop songs you'll hear this year, even if radio airplay is unlikely. That songs climaxes with operatic voices in the background, which seems almost as clever as the "handclaps in the chorus" of the aforementionned Nothing'sever... Pieholden Suite, which may be the best song here, starts quietly but adds somthing at each verse, and concludes with a melancholic trumpet solo. The lyrics also show a stunning growth from Tweedy's days as co-leader of Uncle Tupelo, and if you do not shed a tear over at least one song here, your heart is made of stone...
To put it mildly, chances are that listening to this record you'll cry, you'll laugh, you'll want to die but in the end, you'll want to fall in love all over again...and press that repeat button over and over and over....
Do yourself a favor...pick this one up...5 five stars are not enough...a clear summer night's worth of stars would still be not enough...it's just THAT good...
If, like me, you've simply fallen in love with this record...tell everyone you know about it...if anything deserves to become a hit, this is it...
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