Yep this is where the album really goes country. This is indeed a genre piece, twangy as hell, it has that mid 90’s alt. country sound I love so much, getting us back to the A.M / Down by the Old Mainstream days, with a guitar hook on the chord change that rally makes the song. I can also easily picture Cash singing it on Unchained, with the Heartbreakers backing him. Or it could be the Sadies covering a Merle Haggard tune… This is my favorite melody on the record (which says a lot because there’s no shortage of melody on display here). I’ve had it in my mind for the last 24 hours without even having to play it… I played Love is the King (the song) yesterday morning and as soon as it was over, blam, Opaline popped into my head and never went away… Ever noticed how Jeff likes to position some of his catchiest tunes as track 2 on his albums? Good, faster live take here:
Opaline: Pure Johnny Cash country for the first half of the song before segueing into the latter alt portion. I like it. Two for two.
I really like this live version a lot. The backing vocals from Sammy and Sima Cunningham really elevate all these songs. But the other guy I'd like to compliment is guitarist James Elkington. He does such a nice job not just faithfully replicating Jeff's lead guitar parts, but adding his own flair. I love his style and his tone. Such a talented and tasteful musician. "Opaline" is definitely a throwback, made for a band to flesh out. I'd love to hear what early Wilco or late Uncle Tupelo would have done with this overtly country song.
One of the best in the album; great melody, catchy as hell, and superb work on the pedal steel - who plays that? The one thing that bothers me a little - not only in this song, but the album as a whole - is that Jeff sings in too low a key. This is one of the tracks that could have improved in a higher key for his voice.
Opaline - Boy howdy, I like this! It's country without cloying. Nice to hear his take on the genre after all these years. He has managed to distill it into his own sound. I could definitely hear Cash doing this number with the Heartbreakers ( like Rowboat ) and a nice nod to the Sadies as well, compliments of @Fortuleo. I have just rolled Favourite Colours back into my rotation.
Great tune, Opaline. Very glad I decided to have a listen this morning. Going to listen again in a minute! I don't need soul barfing in every tune, some wryness hits the spot for me nice country-ish feel as well, as others have noted
"Opaline"- I never thought of it, but I like the idea of Johnny Cash singing this song. I also really like how the second half of the song tones down the country and becomes more of a straight up Tweedy song. Not far off from sounding like it could have been on Warm. Clearly Jeff was trying to write a country song with the title "Opaline". He plays it up like he is standing in the spotlight on the Grande Ole Opry stage. I can hear the introduction now. "The Grande Ole Opry is proud to present the newest country crooner from the west side of The Cumberland River. Please welcome Jeffrey Scot Tweedy and The Bellville Boys with their brand new barn burner "Opaline"!" 4/5
Opaline is a mixed bag for me. It’s a really catchy - I’ve caught myself singing it to myself many times over the last month or so. And I love the country vibe. The lead guitar - both some of the bending techniques early in the song and the solo later on - sound like Buffalo Springfield era Neil Young to me. But then there’s the lyric. “There’s nothing worse than a hearse driving slow...” rolls off the tongue. But every time I think about it I cringe. Feels like something I just wrote out cause it sounded good, and never revisited. I don’t mind a frivolous Tweedy tune (hello Pecan Pie), but not this one. And then the drums... they’re going to get worse, but Spencer does a few little skips on the snare that just hit me the wrong way. I want to be more positive, but when it hits that quieter breakdown later in the song and the drums drop out, I enjoy the song so much more.
I'm not as big a fan of "Opaline". The lyrics are a little too jokey for me and the first part of the song seems almost like a put-on of a late 1960s country tune you'd hear coming out of a transistor radio on the kitchen window sill, with that loping rhythm and swoony guitar. I think the song improves in the second half, once the overt genre call-outs are dispensed with and Tweedy stops singing. Enjoyable but not essential for me.
I like Opaline. It's nice to hear a straightforward country tune after all of the introspection of the previous records. It has a great melody, and I love the guitar work. And if you all think Opaline is Johnny Cash, just wait til we get to one of the other songs on this album! I second the appreciation of James Elkington and Sima Cunningham. I could listen to him play that Telecaster all day. I wish Spencer had done some backing vocals on the record too, because he has a great voice and when he, Sammy, and Jeff harmonize it will raise the hair on your arms. If you missed the full band performances of Love Is The King, they are worth checking out:
Country tune, made to order. Maybe Jeff should set up a little side-business: send him a good old-fashioned name and a phrase, he'll write you a song. It is a sticky melody that sounds like it could be an old song, although one thing that I've been surprised to find through this exercise is that I don't particularly like it when Jeff tries to sing straight Country. Maybe it's because he affects that mannered vocal, like he thinks he has to imitate his idea of an old hillbilly singer. I prefer when he mixes his Country influence with Rock and/or Folk. The lyrics apparently are just a mish-mash. In the first verse, the narrator is hiding from the police outside his window, praying that they'll leave him alone. Has he done something to draw suspicion to himself? Do the police have a reason to come arrest him? Has he actually killed Opaline? Probably not. I'd guess that Jeff is just making an oblique comment on what he saw in the news this year, like the Louisville police killing Breonna Taylor in March. Maybe the hearse driving slow in the second verse is a related metaphor, maybe it's just Jeff's random thought about the day he actually saw a hearse at a toll. Maybe the narrator actually did kill Opaline, after all? In that case, then, he's delusional (he does say, "it's hard to see reality!"), still waiting for her to come back. But, I gather that it is nothing but Jeff's random thought. Probably the chorus and third verse are the essential fragment of the song, and he just tacked on a couple of unrelated, stray verses at the start to finish his work for the day.
He confirmed to Malcolm Gladwell in a recent interview that he literally saw a hearse at a tollbooth, and added it to this song because the phrase fit the melody. When asked why he knew it was right for this song and not another, Jeff answered that he doesn’t overanalyze it.
Jeff is no virtuoso, or even a technician on guitar, but he's got a lot of feel in his playing, and on the solo on this song, I ... uh ... , I just like it. But you're right! And I was going to say there's a lot of emotion that seems to come through. I'm not sure, but probably. When I was just listening to it, before I read your comment, I had a similar thought. Does this mean I'm hearing more notes, or parts or whatever, than he was actually playing at the time?
A Robin or a Wren I love these lyrics, which were co-written with George Saunders, Jeff's friend and also a Booker Prize winning author (for Lincoln in the Bardo; he's really famous as a short story writer and was Cheryl Strayed's mentor). I'm not sure how much he contributed, but these lyrics are incredibly powerful to me and read like a poem rather than song lyrics. Here they are in full, which is how I think they should be read. At the last, last call When it's time for us all To say goodbye I know I'm gonna cry Because all in all, I'm just having a ball Being alive And I don't want to die I don't wanna die At the end of the end Of this beautiful dream we're in, I'll wake up again A robin or a wren And then I'll sit Outside your window I'll sing a song you'll recognize And you won't know why You won't know why And then a teardrop will fall Into the corner of the smile On your face And I'll be alive Those final lines honestly bring a lump to my throat. This idea of reincarnation as a metaphor for living on in the memories of those who love us. It's really touching. I like this comment on the YouTube video: "I love that Jeff Tweedy knows when he's gonna cry." Nice to see someone responding positively to male sensitivity. I actually read the lyrics before I listened to the music (for this whole album) and I expected something less jaunty to go with these lyrics. But 'A Robin or a Wren' is another soft-shoe shuffler with a strong country influence. Sammy's backing vocals are great. It's very pleasant, and at first I was disappointed with this music and wished for something more serious to go with the words. But I got over that and now I like the calm sweetness of this music and I like how it makes the words sound wistful and charming rather than maudlin. I think it was the right call by Jeff.
Here's the live version, which is somehow even more country-flavored than the album version. Great guitar! I'm torn on whether I prefer this more strident vocal delivery from Jeff or the more quivering, high-pitched voice he used on the album. I like both for different reasons.
A Robin or a Wren: Tweedy’s vocals are bordering on Roy Orbison territory on this tune, another very ‘not-alt-country’ country number. My father was a huge Sons of the Pioneers fan and that’s what I hear in the backing, harmony vocals. I’m happy with this. 3/3 in my book (and so far I don’t hear this as any continuation of Warm/Warmer. This, three songs in, is standalone Jeff. Maybe it changes later?)
This is so warm and tender, so heartfelt and tuneful and sad, and just… perfect. It’s one of those deceptively slight songs, that can just pass you by like a warm breeze when you listen to the album. It doesn’t call attention to itself, sometimes you’ll just whistle or hum along, not realizing what’s really going on, but once it clicks, you understand it’s a deeply moving song, full of grace and wonder. The co-writer George Saunders also wrote the liner notes for WARM, and I think the lyrics are fantastic. I agree with Miss Mitchell, you’ve got to admire how the music elegantly captures their sentiment. I think it’s only the second bird song in Jeff's canon (the other being the almighty Hummingbird), and it's enough to position him as one of the great bird-pop songwriters, at a fair distance from the official masters of the genre (McCartney and Shearwater’s Johnathan Meiburg) but mainly for quantity reasons. With its tunefulness and easy flowing country vibe, it could almost pass for an Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers early song (the homespun amateurish family project lead by the Jayhawks’ Mark Olson in the late 90’s who, coincidently, also had a superb Hummingbird tune), or another outtake of Wildflowers (the “at the end of the end of this beautiful dream” melodic descent has a little bit of that balladeer Petty flair). But I also like the Sons of the Pioneers reference! Anyway, Jeff sings it in his most tender voice and delivery, but the real bird here is Sammy, whose soaring harmonies elevate the song to the clouds. In the following clip, Spencer handles them quite beautifully as well…
Yep, you’re hearing more than one recording of a guitar at a time. Here’s a quick overview of some common techniques and where you might hear them in the Wilco catalogue: Overdubbing is simply recording two parts separately that playback together. Simple example - singer songwriter records the acoustic guitar and vocals separately so they can focus on the performance of each and so the recordings don’t bleed into each other and can be treated separately. Jazz guitarist Les Paul innovated the multi-track tape recorder so he could record two guitar parts. This leads to 70s rawk “guitarmonies” - think More Than a Feeling, The Boys Are Back In Town, etc. Jeff does this at the end of Magnetized. Sounds huge. Then there are “double stops”, a guitar technique used a lot in country. No overdubs, just playing two notes at once. Jeff does this on the Robin or a Wren solo, but also think about something like the Beatles’ Twist & Shout played by rockabilly disciple George Harrison Then there’s double tracking, which is playing (or singing) the same part twice to thicken up the sound. The slight variations in each take make it sound bigger without having to add new notes. Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) which was a studio trick developed in the mid-60s to do this in one take. John Lennon loved this - check out I’m Only Sleeping So where does this fit with the solo on Love is the King? Definitely in the third camp - he’s double (or triple?) tracking the same part to thicken it up. However, this is combined with his random, atonal style. We saw this emerge on I’m the Man Who Loves You (with fuzz) and the early version of Handshake Drugs (no fuzz). Then compare that to the final version of Handshake Drugs where the end solo is double tracked (and now has fuzz). But compared to a scripted part that gets double tracked, it’s two recordings doing the same kind of thing but never the exact same thing. So instead of tiny variances between takes (a note being hit slightly out of time or tune between takes), you have larger variance. That’s why I describe it as buzzing bees - instead of two parts playing something that’s there, it’s two parts twisting around each other implying a real part that’s not actually there. As a final comparison, consider the effect of different versions of Handshake Drugs: Early version - one guitar part so it has a clear solo Album version - two guitar parts by Jeff, so he’s playing similar overlapping things, but never the same thing, so it has a very thick, swirling effect Live versions - two guitar parts by Jeff and Nels, so if you know their voices, they overlap but sound more distinct, giving a more dynamic “playing off of each other” vibe But to recap, that multi-tracked atonal soloing is definitely a Tweedy go-to. It’s also a reason why despite Elkington’s obvious talent, live Tweedy never quite sounds right to me.
Robin or a Wren is a beautiful, but (rare for Tweedy) lighthearted number. I love everything about it. Sammy’s harmonies sound great. In the first livecast of the album, Suzie asked Jeff what George wrote and he said... George: At the end of the end Of this beautiful dream we're in I'll wake up again Jeff: A robin or a wren
I also love the words to this song, and consider them a poem. I heard them in tandem with the music the first time, so I never considered how well the two meshed until you brought it up now. Now that you mention it, I could totally see a completely different style of music accompanying these lyrics and fitting really well. Like the way the "Hummingbird (Soma version)" has a completely different feel than the AGIB version. But the album version here is indeed charming, so I think it's a keeper. What about "Some Birds"? Or "Pigeons"? Or "One Wing"? Or the bird chirping sounds in "Summer Teeth"!
