Entries associated with the tag "Wilco":

Though I admit this may be mostly psychological, I think the old equipment helps give some value to the notes.

Andrew Bird has been recording at the Wilco Loft, which sounds like grandma's attic for post-rockers, and reflects on the range of gadgets (old and new) he's employing and why he does so. Also proof, if proof were needed, that The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction will never, ever not be relevant, at least until well after we hit peak oil and future Andrew Birds have to travel the country on mule, playing acoustic instruments to tiny camps of raiders. Come to think of it, a multi-instrumentalist and pitch-perfect whistler like Andrew Bird would have a big advantage over his contemporaries in that scenario.

For a lot of that record I was just trying not to be too drugged out and as a result I was suffering from enormous migraine type throbbing pain. Quite a bit of that came out on “A Ghost Is Born.” There is a lot of material that mirrored my condition. In particular there’s a piece of music — “Less Than You Think” — that ends with a 12-minute drone that was an attempt to express the slow painful rise and dissipation of migraine in music. I don’t know why anyone would need to have that expressed to them musically. But it was all I had.

Jeff Tweedy discusses his lifelong problem with migraines, their similarity to panic attacks, and their influence on A Ghost Is Born on the NYT's Migraine blog. Via Jonah Lehrer's wonderful The Frontal Cortex.

In a fine bit of midwestern synergy, Wilco is playing A Prairie Home Companion tomorrow night in Minneapolis. The new album, Sky Blue Sky, isn't due until 5/15, but you can listen to the whole thing at Wilco's web site. The player is buggy on my computer (Flash embedded in QuickTime, a recipe for disaster) but the stream is very high quality (thumbs up).

The Trib's Greg Kot, who literally wrote the book on Wilco, has a very positive review as well as a brief interview with Jeff Tweedy, and he's got some info on the (entirely analog) recording of the album. Kot compares the recording process to Dylan and the Band's The Basement Tapes, but the result is smooth, often jazzy, and sounds immaculate. Lots of crisp dueling guitars. I agree with my friend and occasional commenter Morcy, who describes it as Big Star + Steely Dan.