Wilco

After an evening of fine dining, post cheeseboard but pre brandy and cigars the talk often turns to things Alt Country and Americana.The name of Wilco will come up. They formed from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo who pretty much invented the whole Alt Country genre by taking as much from the Minutemen as they did from Hank Williams.

Over the course of six very different albums frontman Jeff Tweedy has navigated a course through Country Rock and electronics, shed band members with the regularity (if not the sheer numbers) of The Fall and after a classic David and Goliath tussle with their record company become one of the first established bands to actively embrace the internet.

They've recorded 2 albums of Woody Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg released as Mermaid Avenue" Vols 1 and 2.

The current line up have come closer than anyone else I can think of to capturing that searing, unflashy virtuoso guitar style of Tom Verlaine and Television. It's mixed in with Beatles and Country moves though, and some really unflustered, confident playing.

The definitive Wilco album was always Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" from 2002.

The first few seconds of opening track I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" gives a clue to what they're trying to do.

It actually sounds like a roomful of electronics has just been switched on.The hums and bleeps circle round each other as the drums and keyboards shuffle in before snapping into focus with the opening line "I'm an American aquarium drinker. I assassin down the avenue."I'm still baffled after 7 minutes of it, but the ghost of Eels is definitely present.

It's in the half spoken /sung delivery and the dislocation in Tweedy's voice.

No confusion with next track Kamera" though.It's just a terrific, melodic pop song that could work in any style. You could speed it up and fuzzify it for Weezer/Blink 182 powerpop, play it Country style or like Simon and Garfunkel.How clever is that!

And the reason that's possible is that it started off as really good song.Which is also a clever thing to be able to do.

I like the lyric "Phone my family.Tell them I'm lost on the sidewalk. No it's not Ok."Now you can look for genius in different places (personally I find it easier to do my research in pop music than quantum physics) but I do really like the way Tweedy squeezes the line "No it's not Ok" into the melody and makes the phrase itself sound like pop genius.

What Wilco did with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was to really play with the sounds.One minute the drums sound natural and untreated, the next there's a fuzzy edge to them, guitar lines merge into keyboards.

It's tricksy but for the most part it's not getting in the way of the songs themselves.

Heavy Metal Drummer" has the great opening line "I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands we used to see on the landing in the sun....I miss the innocence I've known, playing Kiss covers beautiful and stoned."

It's another great mixture of carefully crafted pop, warm and woody, mixed with the artificial.Shuffling drums and the Georgio Moroder chug. The opening line "I sincerely wish" is either going to entrance or infuriate you. Like Morrissey or Marmite.

Radio Cure" has the desolate feel of the 3rd big Star album, while War On War" is ghostly synth pop.

Pot Kettle Black" is the Country Pop relative of The Cure's Inbetween Days", with electric piano, turning into acoustic guitar strummer time before the cheap cheese synthesiser ending that sounds a bit like Telstar. Which sells it to me!

The killer track though is I'm The Man Who Loves You".

They manage to squeeze so many different influences and changes into the song, without actually detracting from the song itself. From a sliding, guitar intro, it takes in Beatles/Scritti Politti melody, a fuzzy Mr Soul guitar mutates into brass, throws in a funk chord sequence, some "Whoo Whoo" backing vocals and then ends it with a Tom Verlaine guitar pile up.

And of course the song title itself sounds like Pop songs should.Broken hearted and braggadocios.There's a live version at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHnEMdXN_FU&mode=related&search =

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" may be revered now, but at the time their label Reprise had no confidence in it.As part of the shake out when Time and Warners merged, Wilco left the label and instead started streaming the album from their own website until they signed to Nonesuch.....which is ironically a Warners subsidiary.

The process of making the album was legendarily fraught and saw the departure of multi instrumentalist Jay Bennett. The albums follow up A Ghost Is Born" saw the departure of Leroy Bach and Tweedy going into rehab for painkiller addiction.

With Sky Blue Sky" released earlier this year (but streamed though the band's site before it's official release) the emphasis is squarely on the songs rather than the production values.

You Are My Face" has hints of Leonard Cohen or Paul Simon type phrasing.The vocals on Side With Seeds" have some of that Steely Dan smooth yelp quality, while What Light" is Dylanesque.

The key track though is "Impossible Germany".

Even though Tweedy has spoken in recent interviews about feeling that this time round he wanted to make the lyrics more direct, he has still managed to use the phrase "Impossible Germany Unlikely Japan".

It's a beautiful song though, full of longing and very long.The band stretch out quite literally, utilising lots of Television moves and then moving onto the Thin Lizzy trick of both guitars playing the same line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97IT0-EDTtw

Wilco mix the usual musical influences with the experimental, abstract lyrics with the traditional Country concerns of drinking and gambling, but it's the incendiary guitar playing that's really got my interest at the moment. Live, I think it'll be a treat.