Wilco: Album by Album

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Parachute Woman, May 11, 2020.

  1. rancher

    rancher Unmade Bed

    Location:
    Ohio
    Welp, "Bright Leaves" just does not do much for me. I am one who really enjoys the music to a song, I like the instrumentation and arrangements to carry me to a place. While there are some interesting things going on underneath here, "Bright Leaves" is just not my kind of tune in general
     
  2. Tom Campbell

    Tom Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    This is true, but I would just note that there is a narrative purpose to this approach: the through line of the album is a journey from a feeling of depressive hopelessness (about the state of the world, and specifically the U.S., in 2019, as Tweedy made specific in interviews) to one of cautious hope and redemption. So the depressive songs are front-loaded and the more upbeat, redemptive songs are back-loaded on the album.

    On "Bright Leaves," Jeff sounds like he can barely get up off the couch -- and that's exactly the way he's supposed to sound. The plodding drums underline the affect. I understand how many might be turned off, but the "story" of the album really hit home for me at the time it was released.

    I tend to do most of my music listening fairly late at night. For several months, Ode to Joy was often the last record I would play. In the late night hours, the album just really, really worked for me.
     
  3. fspringer

    fspringer Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    On the plus side, cover art is a drastic improvement over previous two solo albums.

    When I first heard the beat, I though, "The Stroke" by Billy Squier? But no, we weren't going in that direction. We were taking the road more traveled of the past few releases. The album leads off with this sprightly, optimistic toe-tapper ... where Jeff imagines him and his wife as dead leaves below the snow ... again, look on the bright side, not crackly, dried-out dead leaves, but leaves that had fallen off the tree in full-autumnal hue before the snow covered them. Maybe it's because I'm sweeping up four bags of leaves per week the last month that I get this. I always enjoy raking leaves, particularly when I find a windblown $20 bill like I did last Friday.

    The same formula applies for Ode to Joy ... I find myself returning to about half the album - including "Bright Leaves." I had been hoping "band album this time, he's bound to mix it up more this time around" ... but that seems to amount to Glenn hitting the drums a little harder. In some odd way, it works. I have to wonder how the band handles this. Aside from Glenn and John holding down the rhythm section, like The Funk Brothers on Quaaludes, the rest of the guys must be thinking, "Man, what can I add to this?" It's not like Tony Peluso cutting loose on "Goodbye to Love." It's got to be a strange vibe at The Loft when Jeff isn't around!
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  4. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    "Bright Leaves"- Count me in the camp that loves this album and believes it's perfectly sequenced. The opening song sets the tone and @Tom Campbell nailed it saying it sounds like Jeff is just waking up. This record takes you on a journey. An absolutely gorgeous record that at the time of release I thought it was the best album with this line up. I love the slow build at the beginning of the album. You know you are in for an interesting and heavy Wilco album.

    I can understand some being turned off by this album after the sleepy and stripped back solo albums. Being excited about another Wilco album and then putting on the record and hearing Jeff is still in a mumbling and sleepy mood. The percussion on this album and song are outstanding. When I first got this album I played it loud and a neighbor outside said it sounded like I was having a seance. :laugh:
    It's a very tribal record and "Bright Leaves" is a great start that only gets better. 4.5/5
     
  5. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Beautifully said!
     
    wavethatflag likes this.
  6. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    "Bright Leaves" certainly doesn't sound like an album opener to me. It seems like it should come a few songs in. It doesn't have that opening instrumental section that grabs you right off. It is very nice to hear a more lush, full, complex instrumentation after going through three solo Tweedy albums in a row, and I agree completely that Glenn is a far more accomplished musician than Spencer. I do think I would like this one a lot more if it weren't positioned at the start of the album. I also agree that this has to be the weakest album opening song in the Wilco catalog (setting aside "EKG" for this particular contest). That said, I do like it and agree that it has a very wintry, November-ish (well, it snowed here today so it feels like winter) feeling. I think this one will grow on me.
     
  7. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    Late night IS the best time for music listening, isn't it? I don't think I've ever played a Tom Waits album during daylight hours (and he's one of my favorite artists)!
     
    jalexander, Fortuleo and Tom Campbell like this.
  8. frightwigwam

    frightwigwam Talented Amateur

    Location:
    Oregon
    My impression of Ode to Joy is that it sounds like Part 3 in the Warm Project; last year, I said that they should have called it Warmest. Those of you who have admitted to burnout on Warm and Warmer, I'll be curious to see what it is about this that can light your fire again. Because I'm not getting the sparks.

    On "Bright Leaves," Glenn is playing louder than Spencer normally would (or Jeff just turned him up in the mix), but otherwise it's nothing that Spencer couldn't handle. Just a rudimentary, plodding beat. Jeff really had to wait for Glenn to return from Europe for this? And then Jeff is back to his murmuring vocal, a vague melody, the band providing some muted colorings in the background.

    The song starts out with him singing, "I don't like the way you're treating me," flashes on him arguing with his partner in a car for reasons that he never can remember, notes that "sometimes I'm just a hole for you to get in," compares his wife and himself to dead leaves uncovered by melting snow (I lived in Minnesota, I've shoveled my share of snow, I know what it looks like when the leaves are uncovered from beneath their blanket; it's really not pretty, and the Spring melt can look especially grim) and finally concludes with, "You never change/ You're never gonna change," repeated several times. This is the Love Forged by Fire? There is no heat in his vocal or the music, though. We're back to the old problem: you'd never know that he feels anything but general malaise and resignation. I'm sorry, but I honestly don't get anything from this.

    Maybe tomorrow.
     
    jalexander, Zeki, rancher and 2 others like this.
  9. frightwigwam

    frightwigwam Talented Amateur

    Location:
    Oregon
    What is on the cover, anyway? An airplane window? Some kind of lense? I really can't tell. It looks like an anti-cover to me.
     
    wavethatflag likes this.
  10. frightwigwam

    frightwigwam Talented Amateur

    Location:
    Oregon
    And this is particularly strange because Jeff has acknowledged in interviews that people will tend to characterize his albums according to their impressions of the opening track. He knows it will happen, and it clearly irks him on some level, and yet... the contrarian in him must sort of enjoy starting people off on the wrong foot or something.
     
    Fortuleo likes this.
  11. Al Gator

    Al Gator You can call me Al

    I dropped out for the Warm/Warmer stuff, but I'm back again. So far I have mixed feelings on Ode to Joy, but overall I'm positive on the album. I think it tends to be fairly dark lyrically throughout, but that could be my state of mind this year as much as the album. I gave it a focused listen a few days ago to prepare.

    The insistent drumming of Bright Leaves masks a song where a fair amount of stuff is going on, although in short bursts and fairly quietly. It sounds nothing like what was on Star Wars or Schmilco. Is Jeff talking about an old relationship which has grown stale? It’s a slow but strong start to the album.
     
  12. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    AND the previous Wilco album to this had been the low-key Schmilco. So it was a mellow pill to swallow the first time I heard this. But I got to like it. However, I had to change the sequence to vary the tempos, "waking up" narrative or not.
     
    wavethatflag and frightwigwam like this.
  13. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    I've been insanely busy lately, but wanted to come back and share some final thoughts on Warm/Warmer. Listening to them back to back, and over several weeks, I found myself humming the melodies to myself throughout the days. Yes, the songs do have melodies, and yes, they do differ! I found myself listening closely and differentiating between songs on these projects for the first time probably since they were released. And while neither would be near my favorites, and I agree that Warmer is the weaker of the two, there's a lot to like on both. I'll turn it back over the George Saunders, excerpted from the 2xLP liners:

    Jeff is, to my mind, a warrior for kindness, who has made tenderness an acceptable rock-n-roll virtue. By "tenderness" I don't mean that New Age thing, where someone drives a spike through your head and you place your hands palm-to-palm and do a cheesy deep bow while thanking them for the new coat rack. [Gabe: What?] No: Tweedy-tenderness is sophisticated and badass and funny. It proceeds from strength and good humor and does not preclude being angry or tough or peeved. It is based on the premise that you are as real as he is and as deserving of attention, and that the world is worthy of our full and fearless interest, just as it is.

    . . .

    The combined astonishment that is WARM and WARMER comprises one of the most joyful, celebratory, infectious, collection of songs I've heard in a long time: intimate and yet vast and feels lovingly made, by actual people, in some particular place, and not inside a computer. As I was listening, I kept picturing a tight little cabin in the woods somewhere (the woods of Chicago?), under a big yellow moon, and four or five Jeffs in there, all playing different instruments, and Spencer on drums, and Susie and Sammy are there too, and there's a fire going, and a feeling of love and discovery and fondness in the smoky air. [Gabe: this predates The Tweedy Show by a few years but describes it almost perfectly.]

    . . .

    "Oh, I don't believe in heaven," Jeff sings, in the title track of WARM, "I keep some heat inside. Like a red brick in the summer: warm when the sun has died." What's the red brick? That would be us, you and me. And Jeff too. Where does that warmth come from? What is that mysterious thing that is sustaining us, moment to moment (even in this moment), by infusing us with love and curiosity and a desire to go on?

    Exactly, says Jeff.​
     
  14. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    And thank you to those who shared "Life Story," which I'd never heard until yesterday. Insane that he buried a song that catchy on an audiobook.

    "Drawing from Memory (Charlie)" is a nice little finger-picked sketch, but the fake tape warble effect annoys.
     
    wavethatflag, jalexander and Fortuleo like this.
  15. John C Bradley Jr

    John C Bradley Jr Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbia, SC
    I have to admit, sadly, that I was on sort of a "Wilco drift," prior to Ode to Joy coming out. At the time, I really hadn't connected to a Wilco record since The Real Love. While I certainly appreciate both Star Wars and Schmilco now (as a result of this thread), more than I did when they were released, neither record really resonated with me or had "legs" as far as my listening rotation. Sukierae, Warm and Warmer sort of fell to that same fate. I bought them, listened to them, and then filed them away. While I would still tell anyone that Wilco was my favorite band, and listened to them a lot, most of that listening involved either records before Real Love or live shows.

    I really did not have a lot of high expectations for this record and the first time through it, it really did not resonate either. But I saw two Wilco shows last fall (two of the last shows I have been to one in October and one in November of 2019), and these songs really came to life. I listened to this record A TON the last few months of 2019 and the first few months of 2020. It really rekindled my love of the band. There is nothing Covid about this record at all, but in my mind I sort of associate it as one of the last "pre-pandemic" records - maybe because I saw these two shows and really got into this record right before everything turned on its head.

    "Bright Leaves" is an odd opener, that's for sure. It also opened the two shows I talked about above. In the live setting the drums are so much more pronounced - this is a "drums" record for me and they really shine right off the bad. Its a song that seems like it is going to fall apart at any moment but it carries through. It should not work as an album opener, but to me it totally does.
     
  16. jalexander

    jalexander Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Bright Leaves... in which Jeff comes down from the mountain of his solo work and instead of going with another Star Wars/Wilco, says let’s do amped-up Wilco style Warm(er).

    I’m good with that, but I can imagine others aren’t.

    What I tried to convince everyone of, but seemingly failed (was I the only one who really liked Warmer?), was that Warmer was an exercise in restraint. And now he does the same with the big band. And it’s good!

    In my mind, it’s a bit like going from the cabin in the woods to the city late at night. Both are quiet, but one has a constant buzz in the background.

    The highlight is definitely Glenn’s drumming... I disagree that Spencer could pull this off. The beat is simple but not easy. And if you’ve listened to Loose Fur’s first record, you’ve heard Glenn go wild, but it’s just as hard to build this kind of sustained intensity over a very simple pattern.

    Elsewhere, the whole arrangement is an exercise in subtlety. Three guitar Random Name Generator this is not!

    Good start to what will be a downtempo experience.
     
    Zeki, Fortuleo, fredyidas and 3 others like this.
  17. jalexander

    jalexander Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Before the album came out, the band got together and brushed up on some of the old stuff:
     
    frightwigwam likes this.
  18. jalexander

    jalexander Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Then in the Fall of 2019 they introduced the new album. Powerful stuff live. There’s a hilarious comment in this set from Jeff to the effect of, “now that Ode is out, maybe Schmilco wasn’t so bad!”

     
  19. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    "Bright Leaves" is great, in my opinion. My advice: put it on headphones and give it some juice. That goes for pretty much the whole of Ode to Joy, really. The group's contributions are there but it's as if they're layered below the surface. This is a really phenomenal late-night headphones record, and I think the group is rightly proud of it.

    "Bright Leaves" opened the last Wilco show I saw, the one I've mentioned probably a few times, last fall with my young son. It was freezing cold that night, and given the lyrics and overall dourness of the record, I think I'll always associate it with cold temperatures and decay. It doesn't help that the world went to pot shortly after this came out.

    [​IMG]
     
  20. fredyidas

    fredyidas Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    I've been out of pocket for a couple of days, but I'm going to try and catch up.

    Guaranteed - I've always kind of liked this song, but not sure I ever really listened to it with headphones before. I didn't remember all the dissonance, but I like it and it adds a nice flavor in my opinion. I love the main melody.

    I said before we started WARMER that I thought I had grown to like it a bit less than WARM, and I think I still feel that way. I like a lot of it, but it doesn't connect as viscerally for me as WARM.

    Ode To Joy - I love this album. I had spent a lot of time listening to WARM and WARMER, and the first time I listened to it I just remember really thinking it was good to hear the Wilco guys with Jeff again, just like PW said. I was on an airplane, so I was listening on headphones, and I remember smiling while listening.

    Bright Leaves - definitely a restrained opener, but an effective one for me. It also led off the 2 shows I saw last fall, and those drums were so cavernous live.

    P.S. I wish I had been able to see Deep Sea Diver open for Wilco at the shows I went to, but I saw them before that run. I love DSD, and have seen them live a couple of times.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  21. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    I just took a look at the songs from the album that I had flagged for my Apple Music library. Six out of the eleven, mostly from the latter half of the album. (And ‘Bright Leaves’ was included. Am still puzzled by that but it must have struck a chord back in October of 2019).
     
    jalexander likes this.
  22. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Yes, exactly. Headphones on, lights off. That's the best way to listen to Ode to Joy. I listened to it again last night like that and I continue to believe this album is an absolute masterpiece.

    Before Us


    I actually think the 'dirge' qualities of this album are over-exaggerated. 'Bright Leaves' is the slowest, ploddiest song on the album and it was placed first for a reason (as folks discussed above). We are now heading into a section of gentler songs, but they are varied in sound, arrangement, feeling, everything. 'Before Us' features a memorable, chant-style chorus in which Jeff's voice is joined by ringing harmonies singing 'Alone with the people who have come before (us).' A wonderful choice, as the song is about being alone together and you get a real sense of community and the total group from that chorus. The arrangement is built around a nice little acoustic guitar lick, but the entire song is colored with the 'voices' of the other band members, through their instruments. The tinkle of keys. The haze of a muted guitar slide. 'Before Us,' like the rest of the album, is like a warm bath when you listen to it. It sounds so beautiful and so caring on headphones, enveloping me. This song also features one of the most often quoted lyrics from the album. "I remember when wars would end / Remember when wars would end? / Now when something's dead / We try to kill it again" That hit home for me, as I have active duty military folks in my family. This is an excellent second track for the album, picking the tempo up slightly from 'Bright Leaves' and weaving in the album's themes of internal versus external woes (and joys).
     
  23. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Before Us: A catchy tune sung in a totally disinterested and dejected manner. No anger, just resignation. Lyrics are good. It needs a bridge (says the fan whose never written a song in his life!), some more fleshing out. As is, it ends too abruptly.
     
  24. Fortuleo

    Fortuleo Used to be a Forum Resident

    I agree 100%, But don't push me or I could even go as far as describing Ode to Joy as the poppiest Wilco album since Summerteeth and then lose all credibility, especially with @Zeki around! :rolleyes: Without going to such extremes, come on : Everyone Hides, Love is Everywhere, White Wooden Cross, Hold Me Anyway… this is almost Bubblegum Wilco, extremely melodic, with soaring choruses.
    And yes, for all its slow insistent beat and seemingly uncommitted delivery, Before Us gives us a first taste of that: it is a big chorus song, a quality that became more apparent live, where they emphasized it with Pat and John joining in on harmonies and the band sustaining crescendos and a kind of anthemic tension for the whole (double) chorus. A Shot in the Arm it isn't but it's still an arresting moment. You've got to note the return of the great Radio King little guitar motif which I'm sure is not coincidental, a year after being resurrected for Family Ghost.
    Below, you'll find an excellent live version from Paris a year ago (Before Us starts at 4'47''). I was just behind the guy who filmed it and I duly made him stop (believe it or not, I can't stand experiencing a concert through the iPhone screen of an unknown jerk). But now, I'm glad he filmed these images so that I can proudly post them for you all to enjoy.
     
    WaterLemon, fredyidas, adm62 and 7 others like this.
  25. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Three of the songs you referenced are on my shortlist but we haven’t reached them yet in our discussion so I can’t wax eloquent...yet!

    I will say I do not have any expectations of anything Summerteeth-ish (for obvious reasons). (And you will always have credibility as far as I’m concerned. Your knowledge and enthusiasm runs circles around me).
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine