Wilco
The Whole Love
(dBpm/Anti-)
Now eight albums in, Wilco are defined by slippery experimentation anchored in straightforward Americana. Well, that and Jeff Tweedy’s sad sandpaper voice and incidental poetry. This first showing on the stalwart Chicago band’s own dBpm label, The Whole Love isn’t a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-style freakout or mad gasp of creative freedom. Rather, it’s genial and assured, sweet and self-aware. Fusing MOR ballads and space-case jams with breezy cool, even its breakout moments are calm and composed. So much so that Wilco seems to be coasting along more than forging ahead.
That’s especially disappointing because the seven-minute opener ‘Art of Almost’ revels in possibilities, matching synths and strings with noise and loops before evolving into a funky Kraut-psych jam. But that turns out to be the weirdest this album gets. Much straighter are the ’60s garage flirtations of lead single ‘I Might’ and the Summerteeth-worthy ‘Dawned on Me’, the Beatles-via-Crowded House ‘Sunloathe’, the Chuck Berry-riffing dad rock of ‘Standing O’, the melancholic twinkle of ‘Rising Red Lung’ and the nostalgic-soaked, world-fair-summoning ‘Capitol City’.
To be fair, these are mostly love songs. (Hence the album title.) And these aren’t bad songs, either. It’s just that, taken together, the cosmic serenity and crystalline guitar interplay of ‘Black Moon’, ‘Born Alone’, ‘Whole Love’ and others can feel a lot like Tweedy and company are simply basking in laidback middle age. Not that that’s inherently a flaw, but we’ve come to expect more from Wilco – even in mellower recent years. On the country-tilted ballad ‘Open Mind’, Tweedy sings: “I still say we’re too old for clichés.” But for all of their potent imagery, roots-y romance and easy-going verve, his lyrics there and elsewhere often seem to say otherwise.
Closing The Whole Love is the 12-minute ‘One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)’, a sort of endless ballad that never wears out its welcome. Ever so soft of step, it meditates beautifully on god and religion before drifting pleasantly into the ether. It’s one of several stretches of greatness here that will warm the heart of longtime Wilco fans, and yet it puts into focus how unsatisfying this album can be. Yes, it’s relaxed and quietly exploratory. But it’s also safe, and somehow distant.
Doug Wallen