New Wilco album: Sky Blue Sky *

Well you really wouldn't be an idiot if you ordered that copy off of ebay - as the price is a BUY IT NOW for what appears to be a very reasonable price.

 

I got my vinyl copy yesterday and my first reaction was to feel underwhelmed. I don't think it's a bad record, but it doesn't strike me as anywhere near as interesting as either Yankee or Ghost. I'll give it time before I draw any conclusions, of course, but right now the songwriting makes me think of a return to Being There territory (without the hooky, anthemic songs like "I Got You" or "Monday"). Production-wise, it sounds a lot like the quieter songs on A Ghost Is Born.

Dare I suggest that Wilco isn't as good without Jay Bennett? Yes, Nels Cline is an amazing guitarist, but his sound and approach are pretty consistent and predictable from song to song, and I don't know that he contributes much to either writing or production.

And I'm also underwhelmed by the sound. For a band who wears their analog devotion on their sleeve, the sound of the record is surprisingly dry and airless. Even the LP sounds so-so, not appreciably better than the CD, at least upon first listen.

I'll keep playing it. I also didn't care for Yankee when it first came out, and that turned out to be a very wrong initial impression.

 

The title song contains the lyric "I survived / that's good enough for now." And that's pretty much how I see this record - good enough for now.

I agree. As with so many other lead guitar whizzes, Cline seems incapable of composing a four- or five-chord pop/rock song, something that Bennett clearly excelled at.

This is perhaps my biggest complaint with the album. I'll reserve final judgment on the sound quality until I hear the official CD and lp, but the "pre-release" copy I have does, indeed, sound surprisingly dry and, well, poorly recorded overall. As noted above, Cline's tone, in particular, is the the exact same on every song. On a purely sound quality basis, his guest appearance on the recent Autumn Defense album sounds better than he does on this album. The guitars on "Shake It Off," in particular, are audibly clipping or doing something nasty when the band approaches "rocking out" on that track. Tweedy has never had a five-octave range a la Mariah Carey, but he talk/sings his way through more than half the tracks on this record, and is shockingly off-key in many places. I know that's part of the charm of his style of singing, but his voice sounds shot.

This record has been the opposite of a "grower" for me. I wanted to like the low-key, "Get Back"-recorded-by-happy-people vibe of the album the first time I heard it, but the more I listen to it, the less I like it.

 

I didn't say this was going out of print, just commenting that the vinyl LP is a hot commodity and will undoubtedly go up in price.

 

I still see Yankee and Ghost Is Born sealed vinyl for sale in the $25-$30 range. I wouldn't count on Sky Blue Sky becoming a hot commodity for many a year.

 

I don't know that they're not as good, but they are definitely changed. Tweedy's songs are good enough to stand on their own, but I will always believe that Bennett was his best collaborator and secret weapon in the studio. Also, the live shows with Bennett were a lot more fun

 

Got the CD and gave it a spin yesterday- was my first listen. I enjoyed it very much. While the buzz on is that it's a "mellow" album, there are some subtle and not-so-subtle dynamic changes that make it a great listen. There are instrumental breaks that are reminiscent of Ghost, just without a lot of the noise.

 

The live shows with the current line-up are pretty incredible. But, as much as the feuding geniuses/Let It Be-revisited aspect of that Wilco movie was run into the ground, there was some truth to it.

 

I picked it up today and concur-I enjoyed it a lot on the first listen. It is definitely more straight-forward than the previous couple of albums, but there is a lot of nice playing going on and Tweedy is a fine songwriter. I would chime in along with others that the version with the DVD is worth getting-the loft performances are uniformly excellent and the interview stuff with Tweedy sheds some light on his creative process...it seems like he is in a good place these days.

 

Jeff should probably have stuck another ten minutes of wind tunnel sounds on to the end of "Please Be Patient With Me" to preserve his avant-garde credentials.

As I said at the top of the thread, I appreciate the way Tweedy is able to be "rootsy" without being rootsy's usual companion, "predictable."

 

I was underwhelmed at first. Now I think it's neck-and-neck with YHF as their best work.

John, I totally don't hear this at all, and I'm a musician who is pretty anal about pitch. Can you give me an example of where he's "shockingly off-key"? I hear that description and I think Liz Phair.

I think it's the best he's ever sung, no question. Lots of reviews are saying the same thing.

 

I picked up the CD/DVD today. My first listen was here at work on my computer. The first 3 or 4 songs sounded great, then it seemed like the last half of the album kind of blurred together (possibly because I was busy?)

Can't really give an honest opinion until I watch the DVD and then sit down with some headphones and really listen.

 

Again, I'll have to hear the official CD and LP before I make any definitive pronouncements on it. But there are passages in the song "Sky Blue Sky" where he talks more than he sings, in my opinion. And his voice cracks pretty badly on that track when he does try to sing, iirc.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree there. He does sing the song quite softly and leaves some "creak" in there, but there's nothing jarring about the notes he's hitting.

I also have to take issue with you about Nels' tone being exactly the same. His first two solos on the disk -- the ones on "Either Way" and "Impossible Germany" sound nothing like each other tone-wise or otherwise.

The songs and the sound and the mood are as beautiful as any recording I've heard in the last couple years. The record gives me chills every time I hear it (probably up to about two-dozen listens now). I'm just really sorry that it's not working for you for whatever reason.

 

Yesterday, I purchased the CD/DVD edition (with the free bonus indie CD) and today I returned for the double vinyl version with the free full CD enclosed. I'd go back tomorrow and buy it again if it were on Edison Cylinder!

 

Anybody receive their preorder LP from musictoday.com?

 

It's not a bad record. I'm just disappointed that they gave up experimenting. After Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, I wanted them to keep pushing forward - not necessarily by putting ten minutes of wind tunnel noise on one of the songs, but not retreating to the sound of A.M. with better musicians, either. Like someone noted earlier, I bet a lot of people expecting Blonde on Blonde, Part 2 were turned off by John Wesley Harding. What Wilco have done here is no different than what Dylan did with that album, or the Beatles were trying to do with Get Back. This album is certainly a far more fully realized attempt to get back than Get Back itself was. Unlike the Beatles, Wilco seem to have put all of the internal politics and feuding between members behind them. And, having cleaned up my own life to a large degree over the past few years, I'm really glad that Jeff Tweedy, by all accounts, has done the same in his own life. I just wish that more of the songs were better. Or even that the good ones showed more effort. Six months ago, I posted here on this forum about the incredible new song called "Impossible Germany" that I heard Wilco play in concert. The version of that song on the album is a pale shadow of the one I heard them play live that night. It's like they are playing with one hand tied behind their back, particularly on the guitar-duel coda of the song. Why did they cripple their own album? Two reviews that I have read of this album (one in Stereophile) suggest that they are becoming like the Grateful Dead, where the studio records are incidental to the live show. The Stereophile review even says something like "Look out for 'Impossible Germany' in concert." Well, as I just said, I've heard it in concert, and it was incredible, and now I've heard it on the album, and it is a pale facsimile of what it was in concert.

 

I don't know that A Ghost is Born was really that much more experimental than this album is. There was "Kidsmoke," and of course the 13 minutes of static, but otherwise it was mostly fairly straight performances by the band too... wasn't it?

 

not yet

 

The guitar solo on the first song on that record was more exciting than the entirety of this record. I know that Tweedy's playing on Ghost supposedly reflected whatever drug withdrawal/migraine headache turmoil he was supposedly going through at the time - they certainly played up that angle enough in the press at the time - and now he's happy and o.k. and all that, so he's no longer going to play like that anymore. It's the classic Double Fantasy conundrum - if an artist whose entire career has been built on confessional songwriting about his emotional turmoil suddenly achieves domestic peace and tranquility, does he have anything left to say? This album isn't as bland as Double Fantasy, but it's not that far from that record, either.

 

Not yet -and I really hope Musictoday.com knows how to pack an LP???? I once got an LP shipped (from places other than Acoustic Sounds, Elusive Disc, Red Trumpet (RIP), Music Direct) where it was amazing the darn thing made it in one piece. If they don't pack the LP correctly I will be a bit put off.

 

I can't agree with this either. At all.

Logically, to continue down the same path they were on would be to give up experimenting. I can point out a half-dozen or more spots on the record where they do some whacked out stuff, they're just doing it musically, with chord and rhythm changes instead of with staticky noises and drones.

I think Tweedy realized that what passes for "avant-garde" in pop music as it's been described within the context of Wilco's music over the last two records is just another artistic dead end. And he's right.

And next time he'll do something else, and odds are that'll be cool too because he's a creatively restless individual.

 

I'm not musically illiterate, and I don't really hear any far-out chord changes or interesting playing on this album. Something like "Shake It Off" is childishly simple. The title track is like "Far, Far Away, Part 2." "What Light" is the same kind of Laurel Canyon rock that Tweedy can write in his sleep. The little bass string guitar breaks on "Walken" sound almost like a musical joke - "listen to how 'dumb' we can play." "On and On and On" is pretty interesting, but hardly a "wow" track, musically. Cline is clearly an immensely talented guitarist, and all of the other musicians are very good, but even Kotchke sounds reined in on this record. I'm not saying he has to play a five-minute drum solo like I saw him play in concert the last time I saw them, but his playing is not as interesting as it has been on the previous records.

 

I'll bet you $10 that next time he won't do something else. This is what we're stuck with from here on out. The Beatles didn't keep pushing beyond Sgt. Pepper, Radiohead didn't keep pushing beyond Kid A, and Wilco didn't really keep pushing beyond Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to which Ghost Is Born stood in the same relation as the White Album stands to Pepper. I'd love to lose this bet, but I don't think I will.

 

Wha, really? Maybe I need to relisten.

I picked up SBS yesterday, but haven't had time to listen to it yet.

By the way, yesterday iTunes was letting you buy the iTunes bonus track (Let's Not Get Carried Away) by itself. Usually you have to buy the whole album. If you want this track, I'd grab it now before they fix the glitch.