Album Reviews

The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow (4/5). Folk duo The Civil Wars' debut album, Barton Hollow, has drawn comparisons to the folk duo of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, stars of the charming musical Once and the recent documentary The Swell Season. It's easy to see why, as the album exudes a similar warm, acoustic sound and male/female vocal harmonies. Most of the album is slower songs, climaxing with the brilliantly beautiful "Poison and Wine," although they do also let their hair down on the toe-tapping title track. Best: Poison and Wine, Barton Hollow, I've Got a Friend, 20 Years.


Wilco - The Whole Love (4/5). Wilco begins their eight album, The Whole Love, with a real knockout of an opening song: a 7-minute epic that begins like Radiohead with beats and electronic blurts that are eventually drowned out by a tuning mass of strings before the song proper begins. "Art of Almost" is quite brilliant. It concludes with a satisfying 2 minutes and 30 seconds of guitar solo. While the rest of The Whole Love lacks that level of ambition, it doesn't lack for quality. Much of it floats around them doing what they do best--alternative rock with tinges of country and '70s rock influences on songs that are alternately bouncy and upbeat or slower. "I Might" and "Standing O" exude a similar retro feel, while "Dawned on Me" rolls along over a prominent bass line with a tune that sounds an awful lot like Supergrass' "Alright." I tend to like these more than the slower songs, although I do like the somber acoustic guitar of "Black Moon." Overall, I don't think it's as consistent as Sky Blue Sky, but I do think it's better than their last album. Best: Art of Almost, I Might, Dawned on Me, Black Moon.

Album review: Wilco - Wilco (The Album) (4/5)

Back in 1987, I thought all albums were named after a song on the album (most are, after all), so I was a little surprised to find that Whitney Houston's album Whitney didn't actually contain a song called "Whitney." Of course, I since learned how foolish my thinking was, but I can't help but enjoy the fact that Wilco's seventh album, the eponymous Wilco (The Album), also actually contains a song called "Wilco." Somebody actually went and did it!

The band's last album Sky Blue Sky (2007) was my first exposure to them, and they won me over with its laid back melodies and inventive song structures. On Wilco, the melodies aren't quite as grand, and the songs follow generally very traditional forms, but it's still a pretty decent outing.

"Wilco" is a short and sweet upbeat opener about how when all else fails "Wilco will love you." Nice to know bands appreciate their fans as much as fans appreciate them. "Deeper Down" is appropriately darker and mysterious sounding. It has a lovely strings and electric guitar center, although on Sky Blue Sky, such a passage would probably have been more interesting (and four times longer). "One Wing" is a forlorn breakup song. It has a pleasing melody that, in Wilco style, takes off during the middle section.

While the opening songs are good, the songs in the middle are the strongest. "Bull Black Nova" builds its sound upon staccato guitar and piano chords, layering sounds through the song's cool instrumental sections. This was the kind of song I really appreciated on Sky Blue Sky (see "Side with the Seeds" or "Shake It Off"). "You and I," a duet with Feist, has a sweet acoustic melody, and Jeff Tweedy sounds great with her. "You Never Know," the album's first single, is the album's most upbeat moment with an assertive piano backing and harmonized vocals.

"Country Disappeared" is mellow, with a downbeat melody and lyrics about "crushed cities." "Solitaire" is mellow too, but with a lighter mood. "I'll Fight" opens with brief but nice acoustic guitar melody and then picks up with more energy than the previous couple of tracks. After the dark lyrics of several songs, "Sonny Feeling" is a refreshingly breezy song wtih Beach Boys-esque harmonizing. "Everlasting Everything," despite its dark (but true) lyrics about how "everything alive must die," professes to believe in everlasting love.

Wilco is an (almost) worthy follow-up to Sky Blue Sky, not quite as good, but still very enjoyable.

Best: You Never Know, Bull Black Nova, You and I, I'll Fight, Wilco

June New Releases

May turned out to be a pretty good month for new music, particularly with Green Day and Passion Pit. I still haven't found a 5-star album yet this year. Will any of these be the first?

Key Releases

Little Boots - Hands (June 8)
Expectations are high for the debut album from Little Boots, the British singer otherwise known as Victoria Hesketh who won the BBC Sounds of 2009 poll, making her one of the hottest new acts of the year. I've been buzzing about her for months now, ever since I discovered her early release tracks "Stuck on Repeat" and "Meddle." "New in Town" is the first official single from the upcoming album, which also includes those older tracks. Despite being a largely unknown quantity, Boots snagged Greg Kurstin for production duties, who's worked with many notable female artist of late, including producing Lily Allen's best-selling sophomore album.

La Roux - La Roux (June 29)
Speaking of hot new artists for 2009, here's another, English electro act La Roux. The group scored a massive hit with its recent single "In for the Kill," which hit #2 on the UK singles chart and stayed there for 4 weeks. This, the band's debut, also features advance single "Quicksand" and upcoming release "Bulletproof."

Wilco - Wilco (June 29/30)
I loved Wilco's last album, Sky Blue Sky. This, their seventh album, includes a duet with Canadian singer Feist, "You and I." While the title of this album is eponymous, it's also named after the first track, "Wilco (The Song)." I haven't heard anything from it yet.

Daniel Merriweather - Love & War (June 1)
Australian singer Daniel Merriweather, who first got our attention in 2007 when he appeared as featured singer on Mark Ronson's "Stop Me," releases his album Love & War. It includes the top 10 hit "Change" (feat. Wale), current single "Red," and a duet with one of last year's big breakouts, British singer Adele.

Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. (June 8/9)
"The E.N.D." stands for "The Energy Never Dies," so I guess this isn't a breakup album in the wake of Fergie and Will.I.Am's success away from the group. Far from it, as the band is hotter than ever, having scored an international smash with this album's first single "Boom Boom Pow." EW reported that "I Gotta Feeling" is even bolder.


Other releases

Paolo Nutini - Sunny Side Up. Scottish singer/songwriter releases his second album (June 1)

Patrick Wolf - The Bachelor. (June 1)

Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. Dave Matthews Band releases their seventh album, first in four years. (June 1/2)

Eels - Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire. The Eels put out their seventh album, a concept work about desire. (June 1/2)

Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum (June 8)

Just Jack - All Night Cinema. Third album from Just Jack, which features recent single "Embers." (June 8)

The Jonas Brothers - Lines, Vines and Trying Times. The Disney boys release their fourth album; first single "Paranoid" is climbing the charts fast. (June 15/16)

The Mars Volta - Octahedron. (June 23)

Third Eye Blind - Ursa Major. There was a time Third Eye Blind was massive, but not so much anymore. This is the band's fourth album. (June 23)

Moby - Wait for Me. Moby's ninth album, following last year's Last Night. (June 29)

Rob Thomas - Cradlesong. The Matchbox Twenty frontman releases his second solo album, featuring current single "Her Diamonds." (June 30)

Album Review: Wilco - Sky Blue Sky (4.5 / 5)

Once again I find myself reviewing an album by an established band of which I've listened to nothing other than the current release. This can be tricky since I can't compare this to previous works, and from what I've read, Wilco's Sky Blue Sky is somewhat of a departure into mellower more straightforward territory. Regardless of what came before, I can tell you that Sky Blue Sky is a fabulous work of soulful, plaintive rock.

Most of the songs are pretty mellow, but certainly not dull. The instrumentation is varied and many songs--even the quiet ones--have crescendos of glorious middle eight sections of dueling electric guitars and strings. "Side with the Seeds" for example hums along as an earnest folksy number underscored by piano and guitar until it hits its instrumental section and the two guitars take over, soaring higher and higher with strings underneath. There's a brief return verse and then bam, another instrumental highlight, this time with piano too.

Good as that song is, the similar "Impossible Germany" has to be the album's best. The 6-minute track begins with fairly mellow guitar, bass and drums--typical reflective kind of rock. The lyrics are a bit mysterious, "Impossible Germany, unlikely Japan," whatever that means. Then about halfway through the instrumental section begins, first quietly with electric guitar over piano, but then building into a melodic section of dueling guitars, with the more prominent one coming out only in the left speaker.

Lead singer and guitarist Jeff Tweedy doesn't have the greatest rock voice, but it does have a sort of honest quality to it that suits the material. The emphasis generally isn't on the singing anyway, as many of these songs have long instrumental sections that sometimes take up more than half the track. On opener "Either Way" his delivery and the lyrics are very matter-of-fact "maybe you still love me, maybe you don't; either you will or you won't." The searching simplicity is nice, because it allows the lovely guitar and string work underneath to shine. Second track "You Are My Face" has a very similar sound at first, although the guitar solo takes a harsher, more insistent tone, followed by a more upbeat section with piano and organ.

Wilco is generally described as landing somewhere between alt-rock and alt-country, and while I don't hear much country influence here, it does come out in the lovely title track "Sky Blue Sky." There's a bit of twang in this reflective, atmosphere number, as well as a lyrical emphasis on setting that feels very country. The country sound also comes through on "What Light," which helps lift the album's downtrodden spirit toward something more hopeful near the end.

The varied nature of many of the songs is another highlight, providing striking musical contrasts. "Shake It Off" shifts between quiet soft rock and harsher '70s classic rock sections. "Hate It Here" has a more upbeat sound with prominent piano and fuzzy guitar, but its subject is downbeat loneliness. "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)" has a depressive quality at first, but then gets a dose of hope in the more upbeat middle section and following verse. Not every song does this though, as "Please Be Patient with Me" starts mellow and just stays that way. After several woe-is-me numbers, jaunty "Walken" is a needed reprieve from the misery, even if it doesn't quite fit in musically because it's so upbeat. "On and On and On" though provides an appropriately uplifting conclusion.

Sky Blue Sky really impressed and surprised me, enough so that I'm planning on checking out some of Wilco's other works such as their 2002 album Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, their most famous work. The music is rich and interesting, and although lyrically many of the songs are about post-break up sadness, there's also a reassuring note of hope and strength.

Best: Impossible Germany, Side with the Seeds, Sky Blue Sky, Either Way, You Are my Face, Shake It Off, Hate It Here, On and On and On