A little over a year ago, Wilco shocked us with Cruel Country, a quiet album with a folky acoustic touch and political lyrics that punctuated the band’s evolution from christened alt-country label to studio sonic adventures. It seems the pandemic prompted Jeff Tweedy to make this kind of quiet parenthesis. The album, which has been on the table since 2019, points in the opposite direction to Cousin, which has now come to light: songs wrapped in fog, electronic surgery and double-bottom dynamics.
The texture of the album may remind you of the albums Yankee hotel foxtrot (2001) and A Ghost is born (2004), which marked Wilco’s journey of discovery. If then Jim O’Rourke played the role of speleologist accomplice, now the group is left in the hands of another outside figure, Welshwoman Cate Le Bon, who signed the production on her own. A creator belonging to a younger generation (40 years old), close to Kurt Vile and Devendra Banhart, had already shown his taste for Wilco in the movement that Company in my back underwent (a song from A Ghost is born to be exact) Uncut Magazine on CD.
Wilco, however, returns to the path of defying the rules of songcraft by distorting structures, playing with timbres, and tensioning the majestic melodic lines outlined by Mr. Tweedy. While Cruel Country opens with the homey strum of an acoustic guitar, Cousin looks set to take you into the heart of darkness with those electronic storms and the tick-tock of the metronome. Infinite surprise actually seems to argue for constant surprise against the electrical spiral that surrounds it until the cacophony melts away.
Let’s not panic: This is still a perfectly recognizable Wilco album; Tweedy delivers a solid set of songs that can capture us on their own when presented naked, and together with Le Bon create more disturbing effects. There’s plenty of floating melancholy and midlife musings on tracks like Ten Dead or Levee, set on the piano: “I like to take the pills just like the doctor asked me to.” And perhaps he outlines a universal ideal of familiarity in the fat title track (angry singing, synthesizers), which suggests embracing to leave old accusations behind.
Not only does Cousin return the band to their old style (there’s the taut march of a bowl and a pudding and the visionary crescendo of Pittsburgh), but he delivers songs whose hard core features moving, beyond the pulse of the sound. The last two cases, Soldier Boy and Want to Be, are the simplest and most straightforward, revealing that Tweedy has not run out of ideas.
Source: Informacion
Brandon Hall is an author at “Social Bites”. He is a cultural aficionado who writes about the latest news and developments in the world of art, literature, music, and more. With a passion for the arts and a deep understanding of cultural trends, Brandon provides engaging and thought-provoking articles that keep his readers informed and up-to-date on the latest happenings in the cultural world.