(Nonesuch/Warner Music)

Tweedy and the boys summarise a fascinating career on superb new album

Like the name suggests, this new album is Wilco combining the various elements that have defined their sound since those heady days in 1995 when they drawled onto the scene with the post-Uncle Tupelo country rock of AM. A relaxed, jovial rock tune opens the new record in the form of Wilco (The Song), a tongue-in-cheek affirmation that Wilco will love you when times are tough. Awwww, bless. The biggest tip towards “the experimental years” (i.e. the avant-rock of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born) comes in the sinister Bull Black Nova, a murder ballad disguised as hypnotic art rock. The group’s vice-tight grip on radio-friendly drivetime pop is revealed in the luminous Sonny Feeling. There’s also plain simple loveliness in Deeper Down, dreamy folk with the otherworldly sigh of (apparently) “slide cimbalom”. Feist pipes up for the gorgeous acoustic duet You And I, her and Tweedy portraying a couple, cautiously optimistic about their troubled relationship (“However close we get sometimes, it’s like we never met/But you and I, I think we can take it”). There’s a tip of the hat to George Harrison in the cruisy You Never Know (slide guitars straight outta My Sweet Lord) and although the album artfully blends the many faces of Wilco, it shouldn’t be mistaken for their “definitive” album. It’s neither the roots rock tour-de-force that was the astonishing double album Being There or the record company-confusing mindfuck of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (in reality: an unconventional, but great, pop album). But there’s a relaxed haziness that makes it a distinctive record in its own right. If this is the sound of a man mellowing with age, let the years and music keep piling on.

****

MATT THROWER

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