Perhaps not coincidentally, I decided to spin Double Image: Rare Miles from the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions immediately after the new Nels.
Not to stray from Tweedy for too long, but just wanted to ask: the songs on this are all on the 1998 Complete Bitches Brew Sessions box set, correct?
In super weird Wilco news, this video got posted to their official YouTube page a few hours ago. It's a completely random and dreadful song in German (I think) by definitely NOT Wilco. The comments section is funny. It started off as just utter bafflement but the jokes have started up now. "This is the most experimental and unconventional Wilco song since Yankee."
Well, that's been taken down. Weird and wacky stuff! I hope nobody got in trouble for making a mistake! Landscape The 'heartbeat' style guitar pattern on this song reminds me of something, but I can't figure out what. I have definitely heard a song with a similar guitar figure on it. 'Landscape' is okay but we are deep into the Warm/Warmer project now and a few songs in the back half of this particular album have always sort of slid by me. This is nice but (1) I think he has better songs in this style and (2) the lyrics are a riddle for me on this one. Lots of good individual lines, but I can't figure what they add up to in total, beyond commenting again on death and/or our relationships. I do like this as a comment on songwriting: "Pushing words on to the page / Patching where the heart is frayed" If someone can nail what the guitar part is reminding me of, that would be awesome. Otherwise, the song is fine.
Landscape: I won’t be listening to this again if I can help it. (I think that album cover has now been embedded into my brain. Not that I’m happy about it!)
Come on, @Zeki, I adore this track! The melody is heartbreakingly beautiful, so tender, so graceful and, well, so warm. You need to listen again ! On Side 2, Jeff the melodist really shines on this one and on Evergreen (the best tune on the whole LP as far as I’m concerned). I think the segue from Empty Head makes it clear that in Jeff’s mind, the two songs are connected. After the daze/confusion of Empty Head, where the singer would stop short in the middle of a sentence and lost track, Landscape is the song where he clears his mind and comes back to a normal sense of time and space. That’s why more than a heartbeat, I hear the guitar motif as the ticking of a clock. God, it reminds me of something too – and the melody as well for that matter (maybe two different things). It also makes me crazy not to pinpoint what exactly . Let’s hope others will come to our rescue ! I think the songs on WARM/WARMER are mainly divided into two main groups : songs written from his present state of mind (which I’d call “autobiographical”, like Orphan or Sick Server) and songs where he time-travels to some places in his past and writes from the perspective of that time capsule, reconnecting with emotions, feelings and perceptions he then had (let’s call them “paradoxical”). They’re not really drawn from memory (that would still be written from the present day) but more like he’s able to inhabit that time and space again and describe it from within, almost like could’ve actually written the song like that in the first place, at that specific moment. I would think Empty Head/Landscape work like that, they are written from his depression/rehab then recovery state of being. In this song, you can audibly hear him coming back to life, being acute again, and take his footings on a new focus and a new philosophical approach of life, death, love. Like he just came through a nightmarish state of confusion and is at last able to see, feel and think again.
I’m on strike. I don’t care for this type of Tweedy vocal at all. (Which may be a problem for me as a fan! )
I don't know about the guitar line, but the vocal melody is a painfully obvious lift from "A Lover's Concerto" by The Toys. Last few tracks aren't really grabbing me. I like this one, but getting that overall sense of musical and lyrical murkiness that doesn't work for me.
Yes, the melody is, if not generic, recycled for sure. It also has some "Groovy Kind of Love" in it. In general, this track (and the next one) are too forgettable for me to even get worked up over. On a double album (which Warm/Warmer essentially is), Jeff Tweedy always seems to put some dull/blah toss offs in the second half of disc 2. It's just the way he operates. Wake me up when we get to "Evergreen" and "Guaranteed"!
Yep - I’ve always heard Groovy Kind of Love here! Side 2 is now moving into a very downtempo mode and Landscape leads the way. For a late night record, this is a great track.
I was surprised to find that "A Lover's Concerto" and "Groovy Kind of Love" were both written and recorded in 1965 - hard to tell who got there first! Apparently, "Groovy" was co-written by Carole Bayer Sager, who went on to huge fame with numerous 70s big ballads. A little research shows that the songwriters went back to classical music for their "inspiration":
I like this song OK, but it's not a standout for me. The lyrics seem like a call for unity in these problematic times? Maybe? Not 100% sure. I can't identify what the heartbeat guitar sounds like. I do kind of like the minimalist vibe that it brings. It makes me think of a Philip Glass composition slowed way down.
Just got struck by one of those crazy coincidences that hit from time to time. I'm listening to my local NPR station and they are doing a story about a local dance group staging a performance that will be turned into an online music video. The music that they are dancing to? A Lover's Concerto! Mind blown! And it says that Lover's Concerto is adapted from Bach's Minuet in G Major. What are the odds that I would hear about this song from 1965 twice in one day?
"Landscape"- " A Lover's Concerto" is such a great song. For some reason I'm not getting the same exuberant vibe on "Landscape". I like this spooky sounding song. There is something intriguing about it. I'm really digging its mellow "Hollow yellow sun" this morning. I'm not sure what he is trying to say in the lyrics, but it's some nice Tweedy poetry. I can't place the guitar part and I can hear a little bit of "A Lover's Concerto" in the melody, but feel like there is another song I am reminded of, but also can't place it. Listening to this album in advance I didn't think much of this song or the next one, but today it's sticking with me. This isn't the song I am thinking of, but anyone else pick up on a "Jesus" by the Velvet Underground type of approach on some of these songs? Maybe because he also says "Jesus" in this song, but it also has a mellow acoustic rhythm with some atmospheric guitar behind it. 4/5
I like the municipal-religious opening to "Landscape," with its mention of public space and Jesus set to a melody, the beginning of which sounds like it belongs in a much better, more successful song. Shout out to @Zeki who made me listen to this one by complaining about it.
"Groovy Kind Of Love" is the first thing that came to mind for me when hearing "Landscape". I kind of like this one - sure, it's a bit droopy and mumbly, but it has a certain grey-sky gloominess that I find appealing. I like some of the lines even if the whole lyric doesn't connect with me.
That may be it. Every time I hear "Landscape" I think, "Where is this melody sort of from?" I don't think Landscape is bad. I find it interesting, but that said I don't like when I sense incompleteness in a Tweedy song. This one to me is a sketch of a song.
"Landscape" might be my favorite on the album, even if I do keep expecting him to go into "Groovy Kind of Love" at any time. Like the man said in his book, Melody is King, and that's a good one. "What would Jesus say?/ Go home!" makes me smile. There's a lot of nice poetic imagery, like, "A rising tower of smoke/ Miles of charcoal rope" and "Pushing words on to the page/ Patching where the heart is frayed." And this is a hopeful ideal, beautifully put: "Some day/ Some day we'll walk as one/ All of us in love/ A chorus any voice can sing/ A choir pouring silver rain/ On whatever pain the world can bring." What does he mean by, "Erased as one"? What is being erased, and who is doing the erasing? I'm not sure. This is one of a few songs here that just abruptly ends. Perhaps he picked up the idea from Joan Shelley, who likes to do that kind of thing, or maybe he just didn't really finish the song. Maybe he thought that it transitioned into the next track better that way; "Ultra Orange Room" could be read as a pessimistic, self-doubting answer to this one.
Ultra Orange Room This might sound insane, but this song feels like Jeff's version of a grunge song to me. The guitar on this sounds like STP to me (like 'Big Empty' specifically) and the somewhat melodramatic downer lyrics fit in with that era of music as well. "Ultra Orange Room" never explodes into a heavy, loud chorus--I kind of wish it did--but I can still see this coming out on an American rock record released between 1991 and 1995. Another random, bizarre song title aside, this is a pretty good song that really wallows in the misery. Parts of it feel like Jeff reflecting on the relationship of the artist to their art, or him to his art. "Every thought I'd come across / Never would belong to me" seems like a comment on being unable to do anything new under the sun in the world of rock music. It's a pretty good song. It's nowhere near as good as 'Big Empty' though.
Ultra Orange Room: I don’t know if I’ll be chasing @wavethatflag away by giving this song my seal of approval (I hope not! ) but this is a good ‘un. Just too short. The opening reminds me of something and then the initial vocal reminds me of something else...but my brain is too jumbled to identify it (other than vaguely thinking ‘early 70s). This isn’t a track to be flogged as an album centerpiece but is very nice tucked into the middle of the lp. In this case, I believe this is only the second song I’ve liked so all I need to do is find 8 misplaced Tweedy gems to flesh things out! (And then see if he has a photo of an orange that can be used as an alternate album cover).
Ultra Orange Room… For me, this is Jeff indulging his Pink Floyd self (the languid beat, the drums, the vocal harmonies in the second chorus done in the early 70's "floating" or "watery" Floyd manner, even the chords have something floydian about them, with traces of Breathe, especially the intro). Ahah, could this mean grunge and Pink Floyd have more in common than we thought ? Anyway, it made me understand that some of that WARM(ER) "faux steel" guitar we've discussed a lot this past two weeks has a lot to do with Gilmour's pedal steel of the Meddle/Dark Side years. I never thought of it until, well… right now! A lot of that sleepy dreamy atmospheric acoustic style Jeff's going for on both records can be traced back to A Pillow of Winds, from Meddle.
