[Review/Listen] – Wilco – “The Whole Love”

They’re back.

Is that fair to say? Wilco’s early discography is so strong that no matter how good their most current release is, it’s bound to come off feeling like ‘the best thing they’ve done since 2002′ [or 1999, depending on who you ask] rather than a great album all on its own. Perhaps that’s the cumulative effect that lineup changes, the release of a back-to-the-roots sort of album in ’07, and an eponymous one in ’09 have had. They never left, but Wilco are always coming back.

Something different is up on “The Whole Love” though. The band aren’t settling on an old sound. Wilco are back in a much more important sense: they’re restless again. A country twang here, a poppy jangle there, a pinch of dissonance, a sprinkle of uncomplicated rock ‘n’ roll: any sound is fair game on “The Whole Love”. There’s no sense of any great cohesive vision, rather the impression of a band that is simply doing whatever it wants to do.

So the sound’s all over the place, and that’s great. And while variety alone does not a great album make, the songwriting on “The Whole Love” more than keeps its side of the bargain. The album’s bookends are, put simply, breathtaking. Opener “The Art Of Almost” is an absolute belter, real song of the year material. It leads things off with the sort of glitchy, sprawling sound that was almost entirely missing on Wilco’s last two records. Jeff Tweedy’s vocals sound uncharacteristically self-assured, even cool, and he’s backed by a bassline that just begs for a  “Lotus Flower”-esque dance freakout.

The final track, “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)”, provides the ultimate contrast: the song is simple, Tweedy is hushed, and the impulse is not to dance, but to find and hug all your nearest friends. To call this track warming or reassuring is to completely undersell it. Its lyrics are just ambiguous enough, and its tone is so obviously comforting, that I suspect this song will come to resonate with a lot of people in a lot of different ways, that many people will make it part of the emotional soundtracks to their lives.

Those two tracks alone, 7:17 and 12:04 in length respectively, make up over a third of the album’s play time. The intervening material, regardless of style, is always supremely and sweetly melodic, never more so than on the semi-title track “Whole Love”. Tracks like “Black Moon” and “Red Rising Lung”, despite being among the album’s most simple acoustic numbers, seem to develop thick folds, enveloping you as you listen.

The effortlessness with which these tracks mingle amongst more bustling numbers like the overwhelmingly cheery “Standing O” and “I Might” is worth noting. Wilco’s rediscovered restlessness doesn’t sound like a strain. While the “The Whole Love” does have its fair share of whispy Tweedy-isms, like “Capitol City’s” “I wish you were here, and yet I wish I were there with you”, the overriding impression is that Tweedy and his bandmates are happy, with life, with each other, and with their music.

They have good reason to be. “Summerteeth” and “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” may continue to peer down on the rest of Wilco’s back catalogue, “The Whole Love” may indeed be another Wilco album that’s just ‘the best thing they’ve done since 2002′, but this time it is a great album all on its own. I know they never left, but they really are back.

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