Album review: The Whole Love
Wilco’s The Whole Love draws on the old by mixing in the new
By Brendan Tyndall
[contributor]
4/5 records
Wilco has rarely done the expected.
Over the course of seven studio albums, several collaborations and side-projects and multiple lineup changes, singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy and company have gone out of their way to abandon expectations and continue to explore new sounds and textures with each album.
The band has tried their hand at a number of genres and sounds, from the hook-laden country rock of their debut A.M. and its more experimental follow-up Being There, to the harmony and keyboard-driven power-pop of Summerteeth.
The band’s break-through album, 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot saw the band infusing their Americana-influenced sound with washes of feedback, samples and tape loops, much to the chagrin of their record label, who famously dropped the band after deeming the album unfit for production.
After a major personnel change – which saw longtime multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Jay Bennett quit the band – and a change from a major label to a minor label, the group followed up with the abrasive and often disjointed sounding A Ghost is Born, an album recorded in the midst of Tweedy’s addiction to painkillers.
Now, The Whole Love, released on Sept. 27 is on the band’s own record label, dBpm.
The Whole Love draws upon each and every era of Wilco’s sound, and at the same time exploring new territory. “Sunloathe” recalls Summerteeth-era Wilco, with its lilting organs, flourishes of electric piano, layers of backing vocals and melancholy melody. “Capitol City” is a jaunty Beatlesque tune, recalls the elaborate orchestrations of Pieholden: Suite from the same album. The Whole Love also mines the earlier sounds of Wilco’s catalogue; the sparse twang of “Open Your Mind” recalls the band’s strummy, folk-rock past, while “Standing O” is an uptempo straight-ahead rocker full of big guitars and and driving 4/4 drums that would not sound out of place on one of Wilco’s earlier albums.
The highlights of the album are the more sonically diverse numbers. Lead single “I Might” barrels along with fuzzed out bass, a driving Farfisa organ line, glockenspiel and sunny backing vocals.
Opening track “Art of Almost” begins with a choppy drum bit, throbbing synths, a pulsing bass part and swelling loops and evolves into a frantic guitar solo that sounds like Television jamming on a Crazy Horse song. The seemingly simple pop song “Dawned on Me” melds a chugging acoustic guitar, melodic bass, layers of fuzzy guitar and synth accents, a wash of backing vocals, chiming 12-string guitar, and even some whistling for good measure.
“Born Alone” melds straight-ahead pop with some more avant guitar flourishes from Nels Cline, ending on a massive crescendo of dirty guitar and frantic drum rolls. “This is how I’ll tell it / Oh, but its long,” Tweedy croons at the beginning of “One Sunday Morning”, a hypnotic 12-minute folk song about the difficult relationship between a father and son.
The Whole Love is both ambitious and comforting. It finds Wilco falling back on familiar sounds but adding new subtleties and layers and continuing to explore new depths. The album, while running the gamut of styles and genres (sometimes within the same song), feels cohesive, and is the best album Wilco has released in years.
