ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
December 2, 2018
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

by Whitten Sabatini

Couple weeks ago a friend solicited his social media network in search of what they felt was the best longstanding band of the 00's.  Votes were shared between Drive-by Truckers, Lucero and Wilco, the trio of acts I would've selected as well.  My fondness aside, I don't think I've published a piece about Wilco in the decade-plus that I've been writing.  For Routes & Branches, Jeff Tweedy and company serve as the patron saints of the crucial "other" that goes unstated in our tagline, the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music.

As Jeff Tweedy says in his new memoir, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, etc, it was a deliberate choice to define the band against the roots milieu from which it came (and which Uncle Tupelo helped define).  That decision was also largely driven by Tweedy's increasing fascination with sonic experimentation.  Tweedy devotes a chapter or so of Let's Go to the birth and unceremonious demise of his project with childhood friend Jay Farrar.  It's just one of the touchpoints he visits, which also include his earliest musical experiences in Belleville, Illinois, the formative days of Wilco and Jay Bennett, struggles with addiction and recovery, and his beloved family.  He is a smart, engaging writer, more self-effacing than self-important, and Tweedy is genuinely funny.  There's an endearing humility which underlies much of Tweedy's account, whether he's relating the band's very public falling out with their original Reprise label, or how his family responded to his wife's cancer battle by creating 2014's sweet Sukierae.  Let's Go is certainly my favorite music book for 2018, and will likely earn its place among the best of its generation.

One of the especially rewarding aspects of the book is Tweedy's reflection about his restless, evolving relationship to music and the creative life.  With Wilco on recent hiatus, he channeled that energy towards WARM, Tweedy's first true solo studio collection.  While he references the record in the closing pages of Let's Go, and even includes several pages of lyrics, WARM is best appreciated as a parallel creation rather than a soundtrack.

The people who seem the most like geniuses are not geniuses.  They're just more comfortable with failing ...  People who don't pick up a guitar and try every day don't write a whole lot of great songs.  

As a lyricist, Tweedy can be both brilliant and notoriously obtuse, though he tags these songs as some of the most directly personal of his career.  "Bombs Away" introduces the album:  I've lost my way, but it's hard to say / What I've been through should matter to you.  Lyrics aside, it's certainly some of the most direct music we've heard from him, joined in the studio by little more than his son Spencer, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and engineer Tom Schick.  Where Wilco has trained listeners to expect sonic detours and instrumental easter eggs, distractions are few on WARM.  Even a relatively fleshed out piece like "Some Birds" leaves an atypical amount of room for Tweedy's signature sharp guitars lines.  The tune reprises a minor theme in both projects; he sings, In my window I have a twin / I look out, he looks in.

The specter of mortality casts a shadow over some of the CD's more introspective tracks.  The recent passing of his mother and father, related with revelatory gravitas in the book, inspire some fatherly guidance on "Don't Forget":  We all think about dying / Don't let it kill you.  Without sounding like a lazy longing for sounds of the past, WARM incorporates some of Tweedy's most roots-grounded work since Wilco's Being There.  Pedal steel shines above "Don't Forget", returning for the George Harrison-esque "I Know What It's Like".  As he has on Sukierae and on last year's live acoustic Together At Last, he sounds simultaneously laid back and fully in control, an admittedly awkward artist comfortable in his skin.

There's some beautiful vulnerability on WARM, that intimacy drawing the listener closer on songs like "From Far Away" or the hushed, meandering closer, "How Will I Find You".  It's an aptly named record, exuding warmth and humanity where Wilco can sometimes project a more calculated, elusive spirit.  From the spacious title cut: I don't believe in heaven / I keep some heat inside / Like a red brick in the summer / When the warm sun has died.

On a CD that can be thoughtful and tastefully restrained, the folky and rambling "Let's Go Rain" is a welcome lark.  Take a sec to track down the video from Tweedy's recent performance on Colbert's Late Show.  Backed by his sons and a troupe of dancing animals, he seems almost goofily happy on "Let's Go Rain", a song that could've come from the Mermaid Avenue sessions.  You can't help but smile for him.

Jason Isbell, a man who has wholly embraced the sort of alt.country Jeff Tweedy eschewed years ago, recently tweeted:  "I think we can now safely say that both Son Volt and Wilco have turned out to be better than Uncle Tupelo".  So would it work to see Jay Farrar and Tweedy side-by-side again?  Did it ever really work in the first place?  Who knows.  Between you and me, who cares?  Our musical lives are far richer for what's come our way over the past twenty-five years.

- Steel Woods, "Old News" Old News  (Woods, 19)
- Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, "Devil May Care" single  (Bloodshot, 18)
- Rev Horton Heat, "Sunrise Through the Power Lines" Whole New Life  (Victory, 18)
- Greensky Bluegrass, "Do It Alone" All for Money  (Big Blue Zoo, 19)
- Nicole Atkins, "Gasoline Bride" Slow Phaser  (Oh'Mercy, 14)
^ Jeff Tweedy, "I Know What It's Like" WARM  (dBpm, 18)
- Old 97s, "Snow Angels" Love the Holidays  (ATO, 18) D
- Chuck Westmoreland, "Long Winter Rodeo" Long Winter Rodeo  (Black & Gold, 18)
- Marah, "My Heart is the Bums on the Street" Kids in Philly  (Valley Farm, 00)
- Lake Street Dive, "Young Boy" Freak Yourself Out EP  (Nonesuch, 18)  D
- Durand Jones & the Indications, "Don't You Know" American Love Call  (Dead Oceans, 19)  D
- Elvis Costello, "Burnt Sugar is So Bitter" Look Now  (Concord, 18)
- Yola, "Ride Out in the Country" Walk Through Fire  (Easy Eye, 19)  D
- JD McPherson, "All the Gifts I Need" Socks  (New West, 18)  D
- Matt Pond PA, "Fotzepolitic" Winter Lives (131 Records, 16)
- Ryan Bingham, "Wolves" American Love Song  (Axster Bingham, 19)  D
- Carson McHone, "Lucky" Carousel  (Nine Mile, 18)
- Rhett Miller, "We're in Trouble" Messenger  (ATO, 18)
- Pedro the Lion, "Yellow Bike" Phoenix  (Polyvinyl, 19)  D
- Calexico, "Glowing Heart of the World" Black Light: 20th Anniversary  (Quarterstick, 18)
- Foxwarren, "Sunset Canyon" Foxwarren  (Anti, 18)
- Traveller, "Christmas Eve at Kroger" Western Movies  (Refuge Fndtn, 18)
- Hilltops, "Dead End Street" Big Black River  (Black Dog, 91)
- Hayes Carll, "Jesus & Elvis" What It Is  (Dualtone, 19)
- Shonna Tucker, "Come and Be With Me" Dreams of Mine EP  (Tucker, 18)
- Adam Remnant, "When I Was a Boy" When I Was a Boy  (Trailer Fire, 16)
- Doug Paisley, "Drinking With a Friend" Starter Home  (No Quarter, 18)
- Daniel Romano, "Rhythmic Blood" Finally Free  (New West, 18)
- Michael Chapman, "It's Too Late" True North  (Paradise of Bachelors, 19)  D
- Songs: Ohia, "Coxcomb Red" Lioness: Deluxe Edition  (Secretly Canadian, 18)

While the pipeline for official releases has slowed to a drip, a lot of stuff continues to come our way from the first several weeks of 2019.  Our first review for January 2017 shed bright light on British guitarman Michael Chapman's release, 50.  We've got the first song from his followup as we head into the new year.  Hayes Carll is wasting no time in sharing the second single from an eagerly awaited What It Is.  And this week brought the welcome news of a new collection from Ryan Bingham.  Just released, Foxwarren has spent some time on our Close 'n Play, bringing together the talents of Canadians Andy Shauf, Dallas Bryson and Darryl & Avery Kissick.  Jeff Tweedy's book also reminded us of the early 90s band the Hilltops, which featured John and Laurie Stirratt alongside Cary Hudson.