OK, so I was wrong. The new Wilco album is amazing and totally addictive but for one song (that really long one near the end; the other really long one (”Spiders (Kidsmoke)) is actually pretty wonderful and sounds like a half-tempo Stereolab tune.
Which is perhaps not entirely unexpected: Jim O’Rourke did produce at least one Stereolab album.
And only one song (”theologians”; maybe two…) sound at all like Steely Dan. Not that sounding like Steely Dan is a bad thing.
On first listen, it sounded so despondent, but that’s because I wasn’t listening closely. The riffs are basic, the production generally ridiculously complex (again, no surprise there), and everything is so gently hopeful (but, I think, for that one song that I won’t listen to: “Less than you think”).
It’s worth saying that what I think of as typically O’Rourkian may not be: Tweedy did, after all, contribute to O’Rourke’s “Insignificance.” That said, “Muzzle of Bees,” a pleasant song, is basically a toned-down version of O’Rourke’s “Life Goes Off” without an electric-noise ending (though there is a punched up guitar that wails through some pretty bizarre scales to a stripped-rhythm…now that’s typically O’Rourkian, right?).
Also typically O’Rourkian: the songs are so well produced that they’re perfect headphoners (trust me on that) but also good in car stereo. E.g., from YHT, “Heavy Metal Drummer,” “Kamera” (the production of which is ridiculously complex but so smooth that the complexity fades away effortlessly behind the song itself), and “War on War” (ditto).
“Spiders” fits this most obviously, but it’s apparent from the first track, “At least that’s what you said.” The track opens with a strummed guitar and light piano doing a neat little 2-measure progression. Than Tweedy barely sings a few forlorn lines leading up to song’s title, at which point the piano, which is totally spare, has taken over. His voice just gains a little sustain, the chorus repeats, and the guitar returns solo, plugged in and louder, and it repeats the sullen riff from the beginning, before the piano and drums enter in a perfect repetitive staccato.
After that is lots of controlled feedback, rhythm sections, and a few bridges.
And then the quiet again.