FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved
| CD Review by Mike Bell WILCO • Third album from kings of Americana rock, not including last year's Mermaid Avenue, a collaboration with Billy Bragg and the words of Woody Guthrie. • CD features two hidden tracks, including a remix of album track "A Shot In the Arm." A fine piece of advice: If anyone offers you anything with "value added," walk away. A better piece of advice: If Wilco offers you an album with "value added," run to them. Summerteeth is Wilco with the bells and whistles and organ and synthesizer and boisterous, rowdy pop jangle that Being There was flawlessly complete without. On their latest, the country-rock rooted quartet have travelled sideways along a more spacious and warmer pop sound that suits them equally as well. Not that their previous masterpiece wasn't warm, it's just that that was from body heat and a cigarette haze and this is from a gregarious musical sunshine. And not that there isn't darkness on Summerteeth -- vocalist Jeff Tweedy is more than happy to continually pass his lyrical clouds overhead, like the line "She begs me not to hit her," which bleakly ends the second track, or "I dreamed about killing you again last night/ And it felt alright to me," which coolly opens the ninth. But when the boys walk the beach, as they do for much of the album, the soulful smiles come regardless . Summerteeth isn't an improvement on or startling diversion of what Wilco have done before -- rather it's another brilliant means in which these seemingly infallible songwriters reach their destination of immaculately comforting and ageless rock offerings. Which I guess only goes to prove that it doesn't matter how you got there, just as long as you've been. 5/5 |
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