I really like One Wing - such a sad, thoughtful song with a lovely, melancholy melody. I don't hear it as a follow-up to anything, I think it stands fine on its own.
One Wing - inoffensive and safe, I agree. I wouldn't kick it off The Album. Not a bad song but nothing dynamic or captivating about it
"One Wing" is the best song on the album up to this point (and might be the best overall but I'll have to wait until tomorrow's song is heard as it's the only other real contender). The lyrics are filled with beautiful imagery and they work perfectly against the musical bed. The jangly guitars make a welcome return. My only complaint is that the song is too short - this seems to be a bit of a recurring theme on Wilco (The Album) - after a series of albums with running times between 76 and 55 minutes, Wilco turned in a 42-minute album that features several songs that I'd like more if they were longer. That complaint aside, "One Wing" is definitely in the upper echelon of Wilco songs.
I agree with all those comments above. “One Wing” is outstanding. I haven’t yet heard the back half of the album, but I’ve listened to the first six songs + “Dark Neon” which was a pre-purchase bonus track apparently (according to the AMF liner notes) and they are all keepers as far as I’m concerned.
There were a few years after the Roadcase series became available for sale that Wilco would barely perform songs from The Album, if at all. The rights hadn't reverted back to them, and they didn't want to pay Nonesuch/Warners for the privilege of performing their own material. Despite this, "One Wing" has been a live staple more or less since its debut in the summer of 2008. Notwithstanding that they've continued to play it, I've only seen Wilco do it once. It's a powerful song in a live setting, as others have attested. I've also seen Jeff do it solo once, in December 2010 at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville. I took an old friend who lived in town, the Autumn Defense opened and then supported Jeff during the encore, which included a cover of John Lennon's "God." This song, and for the rest of the album, more or less marks the beginning of the end of my paying much attention to Jeff's lyrics. I never even bothered to read them until today. This song seems to be about wishing a separation to end. The most notable lyric to me is that the narrator knows he's untrustworthy, even in his own telling of the story: "You were a blessing / And I was a curse / I did my best not to make things worse / For you / That isn't true / I always knew this would be our fate." Even in his self-loathing, he wants to say he did his best under the circumstances, but then he immediately corrects himself. There's an interesting idea there, that I think the lyrics overall kind of let down. "One wing / Will never, ever fly, dear / Neither you nor I / I fear we can only say goodbye." It just strikes me as a little trite, or too pat, perhaps. That said, the music here, and the musicianship, are such that I can overlook what I perceive as weaknesses in the lyric writing. This band could play a Cuisinart manual and make it sound interesting. At one point near the end, I swear I can just about make out a "Cortez the Killer" reference for about one bar, but then it goes into something a bit jazzier. And then the reverse guitar solo sounds like something straight off Revolver.
Interesting that you mention this, as it is a thought I've had and I wanted to express it in this thread. I like Wilco (the Album), certainly more than most. But one of my complaints is that it does feel rushed and/or edited down at times. It's something I never really associated with "Deeper Down" and "One Wing," but I can see it a bit there now. For the record, I love both songs. There is one song on the album that I think really suffers from this, to the point I think it tarnishes the song. Should I wait to reveal it? ... Nah, there's no one hanging on my thoughts for suspense. It's "Everlasting Everything." We'll get to that one later. "Deeper Down" and "One Wing" are both beautiful sounding, beautifully crafted and perfectly produced tracks to me. I really like Pat's contributions in those departments on this album (even getting a co-wrote on "Deeper Down") and the one that follows, and I've been a bit miffed at his lack of involvement in those regards with everything since. Also, "One Wing" is one they don't play live often enough.
I really like the cover too; it's great fun and I agree that it matches the vibe of the album. Here's what Uncut's Wilco - Ultimate Music Guide had to say on it: I assume this is the photo that Jeff refers to:
But like the woman on the right, with The Who, nobody at the Wilco party seems to be having a good time! Deadpan humor, I suppose.
I've never really thought about this record as being pretty "front-loaded." But it may well be to me. "Deeper Down" is a song I like, but don't love. As we move through the later albums, there will be more and more songs on albums that are sort of "pleasant place-holders" for me between the songs I really like or don't like, this song is one of those. Looking at playlist stats, I see that I have seen this song performed one time, at the Johnny Mercer Theater in Savannah, Georgia in 2010. I was really venturing out solo to some pretty distant shows around this time, getting back to Columbia super late at night/early in the morning. "One Wing" is a really great song. Definitely one of my favorite songs off of the album. Its incredibly catchy - definitely an "ear worm."
Happy Labor Day to all you fellow Americans out there. Hope ya'll got the day off like I did! Bull Black Nova And now for something completely different. 'Bull Black Nova' is an obvious highlight of the album for me and the band obviously agrees. This is the song from (The Album) that has been played live the most times. Jeff has never been a songwriter who does a lot of straight-up storytelling in his songs (he definitely leans towards the autobiographical side of things). This is something else--a song written from the point of a guy who has just murdered his girlfriend and drives frantically away, high and bloody. Jeff said, "However desperate to flee something that you wish you hadn't done, you're not going to be able to outrun it--so I guess that's the moral of the story in that song." But 'Bull Black Nova' is definitely more about the dark mood and disturbing story than trying to really crystallize that moral. Lyrically, this reminds me of the similarly murder-obsessed Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen. This feels almost like a heavy 2009 update of 'State Trooper'--similarly hypnotic and circular in construction. The music is the closest Wilco has ever gotten to scary. I have to wonder how this sounded before Nels got onto it because he brings a lot to the table here, his guitar being a perfect stand-in for the chaotic and disturbed mind of the man, having a breakdown as he drives. Jeff play-acts in his singing as well, getting rawer and more crazed as the song continues, culminating with, "I can't calm down / I freak out / I black out." The lyrics are extremely vivid without giving any real details. I'm a fan of this track as a piece of really compelling art. I don't actually think it's the darkest song in Wilco's catalog (there is much darker stuff on the 'drug' albums, made all the more dark by the fact that they were an actual reflection of Jeff's mental state and not a story) but this intense, discordant song is extremely powerful.
I listened to SBS recently, again thanks to this thread and I have to agree with some of my esteemed colleagues that the first half is very strong and then it kind of tails off. Not that the last half is weak, it just isn't as memorable to me.
Bull Black Nova: Another first for me as I come to the first New Wilco song that I dislike because of the music. (I disliked the title track because of the lyrics). It starts off okay but then devolves into a headache inducing mess. Back to drawing from the Television well with a splash of Wishbone Ash, this song drives me crazy in a bad way. During my initial run-through I couldn’t quite finish it. I skipped after suffering though what I assume (hope?) was most of it. Later, I tried again, and managed to get through it all but, while patting myself on the back for toughing it out, it didn’t change my view of the song.
Lyrically and sonically, I was thinking more "Disco Strangler" by The Eagles crossed with Television's "Marquee Moon." A vibe all its own in their vast catalog!
This isn’t a song that where I found myself being drawn in by the lyrics at all so I’ll have to read the lyrics. Without your description, I’d have had no idea.
Bull Black Nova is probably the darkest song in the Wilco catalog, dark to the point of being very disturbing. It's certainly powerful, and strong musically as it devolves into full psychoticness. Nevertheless it's not a song I look forward to hearing, and maybe that's its point.
Bull Black Nova... is this the dream he had in Via Chicago? Regardless, if One Wing is a short song in the vein of Impossible Germany, this one feels like a short song in the vein of Spiders. And in a similar way, everything from a more sprawling song is tightly compressed. With Spiders, there’s a bit of openness that allows it to carry on. Once BBN gets intense it gets really intense, though, and I can’t imagine it going on much longer. Also, I’m starting to see how the recording influenced this one. With Mikael not there in New Zealand, we’re missing out on some of the piano driven arrangements we heard on Ghost and SBS. What I don’t understand is how is this just a Nels overdub? His manic noise is so integral to the song. Is it another case of “insert Nels insanity here when we get home”? Overall I think this one deserves its place in the frequently revisited live pantheon. It’s a bit weird to cheer for this one at the end though... “yeah! Psychopathic murder!!”?
Never knew this about playing the back catalogue. I just assumed they kind of moved on from the material. The acoustic version of One Wing from Solid Sound popped up on shuffle last night and it sounded great! (I always have a lot of Wilco on my iPhone at all times).
I saw Wilco at the beautiful Palace Theater in Louisville last October. I had to go to northern Indiana for work and coincidentally Wilco was playing in Louisville, so I flew in and out of there to catch the show. The Palace is a "mini" Fox theater from Atlanta (which always seems to me to be straight out of "The Arabian Nights.") They played "Bull Black Nova" with a "red" lighting scheme which got darker and darker as the song progressed. By the time it was over, the band was bathed in dark red lighting. It was a strange effect (I have also seen this song performed where there were sort of red "splotches" for lack of a better word, twirling on a screen behind the band). Very strange. I think I mentioned in my initial comments about this album is that I feel, more than any other Wilco record, that this albums seems very disjointed. Like a bunch of songs just sort of thrown together to fill up space on a record. It jumps around to me. A lot of the songs are good to great, but there does not seem to be a flow to the record. That's one of my biggest gripes about it. To me this song just sort of jumps out of stands out. Very jarring - which may be the intent. I like "Bull Black Nova," though, like many of you, I find it a little disturbing. It is certainly not a "go to" song for me. It is definitely an "outlier" in the Wilco catalogue. I've seen it performed by the band and maybe by Jeff solo - I need to look that up. Weirdly, I had a good friend in law school who drove an ancient Chevy Nova, although his was blue. It was a late 60's/early 70's model I think - definitely on its last legs when he had it in 1985 or so. I remember that the roll up window on the passengers side did not work and if the car had AC, it was long gone (which was not fun in the Columbia summers). Every time I hear this song I definitely think of that car.
I’ve heard about the band not having rights to use W(TA) songs in their Roadhouse releases but I don’t understand it. It seems odd that they could play stuff from the other Nonesuch albums but not W(TA). Weren’t they all part of the same deal? Or was Nonesuch playing hardball with that record after the band dropped the label?
This is the second track in a row where Wilco confidently plays Wilco. And of course, it’s good, they’re tight, the guitars are fantastic, bass and drums are relentless, the sense of urgency and paranoia is palpable, the song works like a mini movie that could be directed by the young William Friedkin or the Korean guy behind the Chaser, with tension building, evocative images and a very dramatic atmosphere. Man, these guys know what they’re doing. But… Don't they know it a little bit too well ? Up until this record, this band had no choice but to (re)define itself at every juncture, because of its ever-evolving line up. It was a curse but it was also a blessing, giving a make-or-break edge to every album, almost every single song. Here, they don’t discover anything musically, they apply themselves to do something they’re incredibly good at (the Spiders vibe). What’s wrong with that, one might ask ? There’s nothing wrong with that at all. It makes for good songs, good tracks, good records. But in a way, it lacks a spark, the spark of first times and sheer inspiration. Whenever they play by their strength with their incredible proficiency, like on most Wilco (the album) songs, they’re still one of the best bands around. It’s just they are even better when they surprise themselves, push the buttons, get excited by a new sound, a new method, a new (to them) musical route. It’s not a case of being good or bad, it’s a case of being good or better.
Me too. I like all their prickly guitar songs I’ve heard from the 2000’s so far. I also think they should’ve also included “Dark Neon” on the album to give Bull Black Nova a bit of balance so it didn’t seem so different from the rest of the album.
I need to listen to "Dark Neon." As I suspected, it's on Alpha Mike, which I rarely listen to. Listening now, I can hear what you're saying.
