I'll Never Know Wilco has 'You Never Know' (a track I love) and now Tweedy has 'I'll Never Know.' The lyrics of this song are about Jeff's mother and his memories of watching Judy Garland movies with her while she smoked when he was a child. He talked about those times quite extensively in his book and how crucial they were in his bond with his mom. They are nice lyrics and heartfelt, but the song is another one that passes me by. No Spencer. Just Jeff and a fairly middling melody that does little for me. I feel bad saying that because it's clearly a song close to Jeff, but there just isn't a lot for me to hang my hat on here and it concludes the album in a slightly lackluster way. Final Thoughts on Sukierae Going through this album track by track may have taken awhile (my apologies) but I am glad we did it. I don't play this album that often because it's a time commitment and I'd honestly just rather listen to something else Jeff Tweedy related if I'm in that mood, but it's a pretty good album and there are some very strong songs on it. I do agree that doing a double was really pushing it and the album suffers from the length. I am a double album lover in general and many of my all-time favorite albums are doubles (Exile on Main St., Tusk, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road...) but the artist has to have the material to pull it off and it requires a lot of variety to keep me interested. Sukierae just doesn't have a lot of variety and some of the tracks are mediocre. But it was a nice project for Jeff to undertake with his family and another important step in his story as a songwriter. Here's my own single album version of Sukierae. I invite anyone else who wants to create one to do so! PW's Sukierae Single 01. World Away 02. Diamond Light, Pt. 1 03. Wait for Love 04. Low Key 05. Slow Love 06. Nobody Dies Anymore 07. Flowering 08. Summer Noon 09. New Moon 10. Where My Love That's a really solid little album that I would play much more frequently. Tomorrow we will move on to Wilco's surprise 2015 album Star Wars!
I have unfortunately been AWOL from most of this record's discussion due to getting slammed at work the past week or so. Hopefully things are going to settle down a bit moving forward. I've kept up with it though and there are some great comments/observations about it. @Parachute Woman pretty much sums up my thoughts on this record. I own it on CD and vinyl, but its never been a "go to" record for me when I am thinking about playing some Wilco/Tweedy music. I am not sure why this has been the case. As I mentioned above, I don't think I ever gave this record the time it deserved when it came out. Fortunately this thread has allowed me to rectify that error. I have not really participated in the "song by song" discussion of this record, but songs like "Worlds Away," "Wait for Love," "Low Key," "Nobody Dies," "I'll Sing It," and "Fake Fur Coat," are all really top shelf songs for me. After listening to this a number of times this week, I totally agree that this could have been a very strong single album. But, growing up in the 70's I am a huge fan of double albums, and the "bloat" of this record is definitely part of its charm.
Waltz #4 on the LP ! I don’t really know what to make of it, as the lyrics seem so different from all that is going on on Sukierae. Not sure if Jeff ever commented on this, but the waltz time seems to be the only real thing connecting Hazel to the rest of the album. Well, the waltz time and the Jeff/Spencer instrumental backing, of course. The bass line is nice, but Jeff is not really working with the drums here, they both play to the song but they don’t really gel as a rhythm section on the track. The song is ok, I suppose, but I’m not sure the Fake Fur Coat / Hazel sequence has a clear purpose here. That is not to say every track on any album has to, but on Sukierae, all the others do… … and especially the beautiful closer I’ll Never Know, where the family and death theme of the whole album comes back full force. The two different melodies are very pretty, and the lyrics are sensational. Not only Jeff conjures memories from his childhood, watching TV with his mom, but in the last stanza I think he ultimately connects them with his wife sleeping next to him, with the sublimely moving last words “And I love us being alone in the TV glow / When I think you don’t know but you do”. Spencer is not on the track, but the Lucius girls come back (only for the second time on LP2, after Where My Love) to impersonate Jeff’s mother’s ghost, hanging like cigarette smoke in the background of a late late night ballad. All the while we, the listener, are invited in the stark intimacy of two scenes in the life of Jeff Tweedy, from childhood to adulthood, by the side of the most important women in his life.
For yesterday's tracks: "Where My Love" is beautiful. The back-to-back punch of "Down From Above" into "Where My Love" provides a dreamy atmosphere that I think suits the project perfectly. @Gabe Walters, that's wild that you saw the Tweedy band open with "Down From Above." It seems like an odd choice to open a show with, so I'm sure that's exactly why Jeff chose it! I've seen the Tweedy band twice but sadly neither "Down From Above" nor "Where My Love" was played either time. "Fake Fur Coat" was one of my favorites when the album first came out, but it has fallen back to the pack since then. It does have that unmistakable Jeff Tweedy acoustic guitar figure of melodic hammer ons, which I think is great. The lyrics, as many have mentioned, are a little opaque though. Still a good one. "Hazel" is a complete throwaway to me. The definition of filler, and it ruins the vibe of the end of the album. "I'll Never Know" on the other hand, is one of my favorites. I can't get enough of this song. In an album nearly entirely dedicated to his wife, he chooses to end with nostalgia about his mom. This song makes me nostalgic myself, and it is a perfectly wistful note to wrap things up with. It again features some trademark Jeff Tweedy rhythm acoustic guitar with an interesting progression. The lyrics just get me every time, and the very subtle instrumental flourishes (aside from the main acoustic guitar) just complement the words and the mood perfectly. A+ song construction. Random note: Do you notice where Jeff false starts every so briefly in singing the final verse? ("S-S-Sometimes I don't...") This song had never been played live ever until last week, when Jeff played it solo on the couch for the "Tweedy Show," which I was excited to see.
Overall, Sukierae is a good album that creates a distinct wistful vibe/atmosphere that has always stuck with me. It will always feel like fall 2014 to me, partially of course because of personal reasons, as it just seems to fit the transitions going on in my own life at the time. But this is an album I still come back to often, only in edited form. It was hurt by the inclusion of some filler, same-y songs that, in addition to being mediocre quality, just ruin the atmosphere in their spots in the sequence. @Parachute Woman, I think you retain most of the essential tracks in your edited version. I happen to extend a little further in mine. This is how I play it: RT's Sukierae 1. High As Hello 2. World Away 3. Wait For Love 4. Low Key 5. Pigeons 6. Slow Love 7. Nobody Dies Anymore 8. Flowering 9. Summer Noon 10. Honey Combed 11. New Moon 12. Down From Above 13. Where My Love 14. Fake Fur Coat 15. I'll Never Know (Cuts: Please Don't Let Me Be So Understood, Diamond Light, I'll Sing It, Desert Bell, Hazel) This 15-song version comes in at 54 minutes. That may still seem a little long to some, but it hits the spot for me.
Hazel sounds like something from Dylan’s Planet Waves. A nice ballad. I’ll never know is quite beautiful and is a more accessible approach to some of the acoustic material he did for the Chelsea Walls soundtrack. Not sure it works for me as a closer, though. It just lets the album drift off without revisiting some of the key sonics of the first disc... some of the noisier elements, the girl group vocals, the rockier aspects. The backend of this album is very low key and like @Parachute Woman I’ve got Sukierae burnout at this stage.
Sukierae extras: Diamond Light Pt II - an extended outro on the Diamond Light 10” Do the Minimum - in true Wilco fashion, the weird rocker was left off as a b-side (this time to Summer Noon). It’s a good song and would have broken up the second disc a bit Everyone Hides - yes, this was a Tweedy song first, released on the St Vincent soundtrack. And a great version it is, sung in a lower register Why, Why, Why - another St Vincent track. An upbeat number with acoustic and fuzz guitar that also would have brightened up disc two The Wolf is on the Hill - a great song in 6/8 written by Beck for his Song Reader project (he released sheet music for an unreleased album so that fans could record the album themselves, then later released an album of other artists playing the songs). Having someone else write the material actually helps. It sounds like Tweedy, but the vocals are pushed in different directions than usual.
I like every single original Uncle Tupleo present on the upcoming release far better than every Wilco track released post-YHF. The only exception is Sandusky which was never a favorite. The covers I could leave behind too (except for Give Back The Key To My Heart which is awesome). I'm not a huge later day Wilco fan but I do love a handful of their later songs just not as much as Chickamauga, Watch Me Fall, Fifteen Keys, The Long Cut, Anodyne, New Madrid, Looking For A Way Out, Slate, Acuff-Rose, We've Been Had, Postcard, Gun and Whiskey Bottle
Hazel & I'll Never Know - I definitely need a few more listens to appreciate these, they do sound good though. Sukierae - Listening to this album recently and a lot of these tracks have really clicked with me. There are a lot of great songs here, and I love double albums, even if some of the tracks are less than stellar. I have no problem with lengthy albums, especially ones of this quality, the more the better! I'd have to say that Jeff's first solo album is a very, very good album, and I feel like i've gained a new appreciation of his solo work. I'll be giving warm/warmer another listen soon and I am really excited about "Love is the King". Everyone Hides, Why, Why, Why, & The Wolf is on the Hill - My first time hearing these (didn't even know they existed) but I like them all. I'd love to hear "Do The Minimum" also, but it's not available digitally. (why, why, why?)
Check out this superb country-ish pop ballad hazel by Andrew Combs, if you don't already know it ! There you go. You pretty much summed up my sentiment about the b-sides and stray tracks around this record. Do the Minimum is indeed the usual edgier leftover from the sessions that Jeff ultimately rejects. He seems to do it every time and I almost always agree with his decision to leave it off the record… The two songs from the St Vincent movie are poppier than most things on Sukierae. Either one could’ve stand in as the catchy counterpart to Low Key on the second record. Why Why Why may be too light to be included. I like the lower voice and T-rex overall feel Tweedy's Everyone Hides version. Both songs also sound a bit like Beck, which may not be that coincidental, given Jeff’s involvement in Beck’s Record club project, and The Wolf is on the Hill tune, a fantastic highlight in the short-lived Tweedy adventure. In my opinion, it's better than almost anything Beck did in the last decade, highly melodic, soaring and beautiful. Superb singing by our guy Jeff, too. Just prior to the album's sessions, another rare track was already “Tweedy”, except Jeff forgot to leave off his first name : a pretty nice country rock cover of Slim Dunlap’s Ballad of the Opening Band, which is nice, since Uncle Tupelo did open for the Replacements in the early 90's… Another superb vocals on that one by Jeff, coming back to his 90’s self. Now, would Sukierae be best as a single LP ? Would it be best as two separate records ? Is it Jeff’s White Album ? Triple no : for one, I will always prefer a bona fide double album than an overlong single CD. And anyway, I’d be hard pressed to cut more than 5/6 songs from it (I would probably end up with @Rainy Taxi 's tracklist). The two discs go hand in hand for me, they complement each other, with rhymes between songs, interesting counterparts and variations, and a clever structure (no iPhone tracks on the second LP and no Lucius, except on two songs where they act like “ghosts” or reminiscences from the first). That being said, I agree with @Parachute Woman there’s not enough variety on display on the album to compete in the “greatest double LP’s” category. Still I see Sukierae as one of the all-time great first solo forays by any member of a major band, just because the “solo” aspect of it is so incredibly personal, powerful, in one word necessary. It was not meant as a “pause” in Wilcoworld, it was a completely separate artistic and personal endeavor and breakthrough. Jeff could’ve easily kept those recordings private, and they’d be the holy grails for us fans. I mean, if this was a bootleg of demos, it would be the most sought after and revered item in the Wilco universe ! We’d all be asking for MORE ! As it is, it stands as a beautiful moving achievement, the opening of a new artistic phase and method, and the second (third ?) coming of Jeff Tweedy, reinvented as a grown, responsible man.
Pretty great new interview with Jeff Tweedy, from Esquire. Wilco's Jeff Tweedy Talks 'Love is The King' and 'How to Write One Song', His New Solo Album and Book
"Hazel"- The bass and the drums are the best parts of this song. I wasn't sure how I felt about this song, but the more I listened to it on headphones, the more I liked it. I can also hear a bit of Dylan Planet Waves in this, but maybe that's also because that album has a song called "Hazel"? 4/5 "I'll Never Know"- I was thinking I'm surprised by the comments about being burned out on this record, but by this last song I sort of have the same feeling. I have to echo @Parachute Woman and say that it's a lackluster way to end a marvelous album. Maybe the last song should have been one of the more upbeat tunes to send the album off with a bang? This is also not a bad song, but it suffers from being one of the weakest on the album and by being the last song. As with several song on this album, it does reveal itself after multiple listens, and I'm already changing my mind! Maybe it is a fitting album closer? I'm mixed on it. 3.5/5 I love this album and except for the first and last song, I rated every song 4/5 or higher, which makes for one of the most consistent records in the Tweedy cannon. That's impressive to keep the quality so high throughout a 20 song album. I also believe that this album improves the more time you spend with it. It may not be an instant hit with many people, but if you give it a few spins I'm sure it will start to make more sense. The songwriting is really strong, and personally I love what Spencer added. He made it unique and you can hear the bond that they share in these tunes. So far I have heard 3 songs from the new Jeff Tweedy album and all of them are good, but it will be extremely hard to top this album, and so far I'm not yet convinced that it will. I think this album works extremely well as a double album, even more so since we started this discussion. I could have easily paired it down at the beginning of this, but now I don't know what I would cut. If anything, the songs I would cut would be the tunes I think he could have saved for Wilco. I never heard the extra songs before. "Do the Minimum" would have been a nice addition to add a little dose of energy. Another great Tweedy song. The Beck song is cool, and the recording and style would fit right in on Sukierae. "Why Why Why" is also pretty sweet, and now I'm thinking maybe this should have been a triple album! Actually, I think he should have just taken a handful of these songs for Wilco. He certainly has no shortage of material!
What's next for Wilco? We've recorded maybe one third or one fourth of a record. Everybody in the band has their own recording studio, or at least the ability to do overdubs at home. We’ll probably keep working on that remotely through the winter. Ideally, we’ll have a record come out next year.
This has been a nice education on Sukierae. It's nice to know the background and I've enjoyed a handful of songs quite a bit. The sound is different from Wilco and that's a nice change - a busman's holiday. I really like Spencer's drumming that lends to the lo-fi effect. I would go for @Parachute Woman's single album version!
"Hazel" does have a Dylan vibe, starting with the song title. I like it, but it's not the most memorable tune. The drumming is a little distracting with the heavy reverb. "I'll Never Know" is a touching song about childhood memories. I like the sound of Tweedy's guitar here. Again, not the most memorable melody but it closes the album on a suitably late-night, contemplative note.
Since it's not a Wilco album, I'm going to skip doing a ranking of the songs on Sukierae and I won't include it on my ranked list of Wilco albums. This is my first time hearing the album and, based on the things I had read about it over the last few years, I wasn't surprised that I liked it....but I have to say that I didn't love it. Perhaps that will change as I listen to it more (I have the CD). The first disc is definitely the more accessible one, but I do like a few of the songs on the second disc even more than most of what is on the first half of the album. As others have said, it's hard to separate this music from the real issues that Tweedy's family was facing at the time it was written and recorded. It's obvious that this is music that was something Tweedy and his family needed to make for their own emotional sanity. That Tweedy's wife (and Spencer Tweedy's mother) pulled through is what makes this album easier to hear today; if circumstances had been different, Sukierae might be a more difficult listen now - six years on. After hearing this deeply personal side project, it will be interesting to me to hear if or how Wilco's music changes on the band's next album.
"Hazel" seems like a throwaway from another project, but I think "I'll Never Know" is a beautiful and touching elegy for his mother. As @Fortuleo noted, the last verse may also indicate that he's bonded with his wife in a similar way, at the end of the day (unless he's just addressing his mother's ghost, there). "I loved the time we spent alone that you never knew" and "I love us being alone in the TV glow/ When I think you don't know but you do" are really evocative images, and the lilting guitar part that mirrors his vocal is just lovely. I think it's just right for the album closer. If I were cutting Sukierae down to 14 tracks, these are probably the ones that I'd keep. High as Hello Diamond Light Wait for Love Low Key Slow Love Nobody Dies Anymore I'll Sing It Flowering Summer Noon New Moon Down from Above Where My Love Fake Fur Coat I'll Never Know Maybe on another day, I'd put "Pigeons" or something in there, but that's a pretty solid song cycle, less forbidding than the full double-album.
Star Wars Released: July 16, 2015 (download); August 21, 2015 (CD) After a four year gap, Wilco finally returned with a new studio album in the summer of 2015. Its release was announced the same day that it came out, July 16, 2015, with this tweet: "Star Wars: a new Wilco album featuring 11 original songs is available now. Free to download at wilcoworld.net." This was very exciting for Wilco fans (I remember the day well) and saw Wilco joining a host of other musicians who have done surprise album releases. I actually like it as a marketing scheme because it skips over the long and sometimes unnecessarily dragged out ramp up process and just delivers the goods and lets you engage with it immediately. Taylor Swift's brilliant new album Folklore from this year was released as a surprise and I still like that strategy. Paired with the launch, Star Wars also boasted a weird album title and a weird album cover. This was the second Wilco album to feature a kitty on the front cover (woot!). It was a painting that was hanging in the kitchen at the Loft, which drew Jeff's eye and made him think it should be the cover. A memorable image and one that represented the band's home base and recording studio. Pairing the image of the cat with the title 'Star Wars' was done as a lark. Jeff said, "Then I started thinking about the phrase Star Wars re-contextualized against that painting--it was beautiful and jarring." They assumed they would be sued for using the title and could change the album name to Cease and Desist, but that never happened. Apparently the Star Wars people just didn't care enough about Wilco to mind! Wilco played the album in its entirety live at the Pitchfork Music Festival the day after release and would go on to play the whole thing live more than thirty more times. Star Wars was met with pretty generous praise. Rolling Stone said, "Wilco’s first album in four years recalls their early “hey, what the hell” freedom, in spirit if not in sound. It’s their most concise, catchy, naturally songful album in at least a decade — the sound of a band reconnecting with the fun of rocking out together in a room." Spin praised the album for how concise it was and how well it fused noise-rock (and Nels Cline's playing) with strong melodies. Even Pitchfork liked it, calling it "loose, low-stakes and fun." Star Wars is a fascinating little album to me. It really seems to get lost in the shuffle of the band's discography and even I have often simply paired it in my mind with Schmilco as being "those albums they made quickly after basically becoming more of a live band." But I've seen some people online group everything the band has done since 2015 together as one big lump, seeming to imply that Star Wars, Schmilco, Ode to Joy (and Jeff's solo albums) all sound the same and are just a bunch of hushed acoustic ballady type stuff. To that I say: have these people even listened to Star Wars? More than once? Because this album is bonkers. It is about 33 minutes, for starters, and it slices through these tracks with wild abandon. One song is over five minutes but all the rest of them are these tight, brief weirdo little pieces full of noise, pulsing stops and starts, humor, energy, rhythm and--yeah--hooks! I think critics responded so positively to the album in real time (even if it has been forgotten in intervening years) because it was so nice to just hear the band cut loose and enjoy themselves. This isn't an album designed to be a big statement. In fact, it is the very opposite of that--designed almost to be an afterthought, a simple little rock 'n roll album. It explores and experiments, but it does so with the energy of punk rock and a fascination with noise that would make Steve Albini proud. I think this album is basically misunderstood. Maybe a different title or cover would get more people to give it a chance (is it cutting itself at the knees with those things?) but at the same time I think those choices really suit the 'anything goes' aesthetic of the album. It's easily Wilco's wackiest project in my mind. Sure, why not call it Star Wars and slap a kitty on the cover? There aren't individual song credits included and the list of instruments used is really different from the long lists of dozens of instruments we've seen on past albums. This is pretty basic stuff: Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, vocals John Stirratt: bass, acoustic guitar, vocals Glenn Kotche: drums, percussion Mikael Jorgensen: keyboards Nels Cline: electric guitar, loops Pat Sansone: electric guitar, keyboards, vocals Spencer Tweedy: additional percussion Scott McCaughey: Mellotron and piano on 'Taste the Ceiling' This doesn't feel like Jeff Tweedy solo to me at all. Listening to the album this morning after spending all that time with Sukierae over the past few weeks did really make me appreciate what the other band members bring to this project--especially Glenn and Nels, who both light it up on Star Wars. In keeping with its mad cap spirit, Star Wars opens with an instrumental track that is just over a minute long. EKG I can't actually find EKG all by itself on YouTube. It doesn't appear to be uploaded. Here it is paired with Where Do I Begin from later in the album. Just listen to the first minute and fifteen seconds of this video and that's 'EKG.' The band didn't actually play this song live when they did the album in whole. They played it on tape and then the band would come on stage and start in on the next song. In a Reddit AMA Jeff said the reason for that was, "A minute and a half into a show seems like too soon to switch guitars, which would be necessary." EKG is a kooky way to open things up--pretty heavy in Wilco terms and highly propulsive, it really grabs you by the throat. I like the intensity and build of the thing and the way the guitars lock in with those pounding drums. I like the brevity as well and how it breaks open at the end, splitting into silence just when the intensity is at a peak. This was exciting to hear when I put on the album for the first time and that was the point. The fact that the last Wilco song on a proper album before this was 'One Sunday Morning' is interesting. There's a contrast!
Ah, Star Wars... I kinda wish I had given this album more spins when it first came out. Even though I later bought the CD, downloading it for free kinda "devalued" it for me, making it seem not so special. But now in hindsight, it was their last "electric/alternative" album, and I didn't get to appreciate it as much as I could have at the time, assuming there was more electric stuff, but more fleshed out, around the corner. I had no idea they'd go into their acoustic phase after that, and sorta stay there.
On the plus side, they didn't call it Last Tango in Paris. I thought "EKG" was a terrible way to start the album, much as I thought "You Started For" kicking off Elton John's album Blue Moves was a sign that things were going sour in the EJ camp. First song should always be a statement of intent, and while I guess this is that in some small way, it's too throwaway. This album helped me realize the ongoing problem I had with Jeff, and then Wilco, starting with Sukierae: his vocals, the lowered tone and reverb. This just feels so wrong to me - to this day. It flattens the emotion, on songs where the emotion shouldn't be flattened. If it was a matter of him losing his voice, I'd understand. But I don't think that's the case? It seems like a conscious choice, and in my mind, a radically wrong choice. Compare and contrast to even a fun, goofy song like "Walken" a few years later - you can hear and feel the emotion in his voice. I can't hear or feel very much of anything in this new affectation. It's a deliberate decision that detracts from the emotional range of his and their music. That said, I do like a lot of the songs on Star Wars, as you'll see. A conscious effort for the band to let loose a bit more and have some fun. Generally, when you have fun, you raise your voice. Come on, Jeff. Six years down the road with this inexplicable production choice, come on, man!
EKG ? Does it mean electrocardiogram ? If so, I wonder who they are monitoring : themselves or their audience ? Are they alive, are we alive ? Do they, do we want "more", as the next song will enquire ? This sounds like a typically self conscious Tweedy joke, a typically self conscious Jeff Tweedy address to us all. Will we go along for the ride, four years later ? And, oh, for anyone expecting the likes of Misunderstood, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, At Least That's What You Said or Art of Almost, here's 70 seconds of noisy Pixies by way of Sonic Youth guitar heavy chaotic instrumental. So, this time, no, we won't be able to compare to anything they'd done in the past. Maybe it's even a joke on us fans doing acronyms with the song titles (IATTBYA, ALTWYS). Why not ? Whatever the intention(s), this is a clear reminder that Wilco may mean "will comply" in military radio procedures, but they most definitely won't… Except "Wontco" doesn't sound as good !
