The Whole Album

I was recently talking to my brother about new music, and he happened to mention Wilco. Or maybe I did. At any rate, he said he hadn’t picked up their latest album (The Whole Love). He admitted that after a few spins of their prior effort Wilco (the album), he simply did not listen to it. I concurred. It’s a weak album. Even the band seemed to concede the record’s dullness by giving it such an unimaginative title and lead single (“Wilco (the song)”). So why – Chris rightly wondered – should he bother with another Wilco album after that dry offering? Without providing a compelling argument or any evidence, I told him that The Whole Love is an effort worth hearing. I’ll elaborate on why below.

     Marching in like an uncaged Krautrock lion and stepping out like a folksy prodigal son, The Whole Love derives its integrity from a seemingly disparate jumble of songs and sounds that touch on the many phases of Wilco’s two-decade tenure. I don’t mean to imply that we’re on a trip down memory lane. Rather, the record’s breadth serves as a testament to the band’s versatility; they manage to conjure such incongruent influences as Pere Ubu and Gram Parsons without stretching credibility or sacrificing their own tuneful identity.

Thankfully dropping the self-parody shtick that sunk Wilco (the album), Jeff Tweedy returns to what he does best: delivering crypto-poetic meditations on failed relationships in a voice that both sneers and soothes. Lead track “The Art of Almost” evokes the abstract, multi-colored contraption on the record cover. Over nearly eight minutes, the music’s fits and starts and eventual tumble into chaos echo the “Misunderstood” formula that Wilco so often revisits. This compositional return-to-form is followed by “I Might’s” lyrical one. There are lines hearkening back to those on Summerteeth that made my dad think maybe he didn’t like these guys after all (e.g., the hints of domestic violence on “She’s a Jar” or the murderous dreams of “Via Chicago”). Despite "piss and blood" sno-cones, setting "the kids on fire," and other ominous nonsense, Tweedy insists throughout the rumblingly groovy “I Might” that “it’s alright.” The glockenspiel and roller-rink organ agree.  

The album then slows down and smoothes out with Tweedy’s comfort food vocalizing on tracks like “Sunloathe” and “Open Mind.” The former is ultimately more positive than its downer title suggests. That song title evokes the Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun?” but the guitars and synths sound more like the Beatles’s “Here Comes the Sun.” Obliquely about battling depression, the lyrics ultimately promise, “I don’t want to lose this fight / I don’t want to end this fight.” “Standing O,” a welcome return to the joyous rock of Being There’s “Monday” and “I Got You,” abruptly interrupts all of the mellowness.

Epic closer “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)” provides the hypnotic yin to the motorik yang of “The Art of Almost.” The song somehow manages to seem shorter than its twelve minutes. Its “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” narration traces a defiant son who grows contrite as the song progresses and who ponders, “how much more I owe than I can give.” It’s a meditatively great ending to a meanderingly great album that embraces the whole of Wilco’s love for music that both challenges and consoles.