Wilco – Star Wars
The Scene
Hey, say what ya like about Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, but they’re still one of America’s finest. And all of a sudden they’re back, unexpectedly, with a completely free album. A real album, no joke, and it’s free. Like, zero dollars. Just pop your email in the thang and they’ll send you a DL link.
It’s a proper gimmick and one that certainly affects how people are gonna listen to the record, but you know what? It’s a pretty decent collection all the same. Free and at ease, the sort of thing that feels the product of some fun times in the studio, rather than those late nights spent agonising over lyrics and arrangements on certain other albums. Neither is a bad way to go about it, it’s just that ‘Star Wars’ is a welcome change at a stage in a band’s career when many waste their time trying to recreate the glories of the past. There aren’t many better albums that ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ that have come out in the last 15 years. There’s no reason to try better it.
So coming as such a surprise and in the fashion that it arrived, ‘Star Wars’ already has plenty of goodwill to spend. Some of that is used on the opening track (more on that later) while the rest is happily dosed out over the next half hour. It’s a short record and a fun one. Unexpected and yet worthwhile.
The Songs
- EKG – Captain Beefheart is that you? 75 jarring seconds of… something.
- More… – Easy grooving, feels under-produced and that’s the charm. Sweet chorus.
- Random Name Generator – Crunchy rocker. Nice riff and plenty catchy. You’ll definitely ramp the volume up a few pegs.
- The Joke Explained – Treading the alt. country line, as they do so well. Whatever that even means.
- You Satellite – Slowly building into something of power. Slightly menacing hushed vocals. Lou Reed would be proud. Let’s loose some at the back end, cool song.
- Taste The Ceiling – Acoustic guitars and a shuffling beat. Very pretty in its own ragged way.
- Pickled Ginger – Ooh, hear that distant distorted guitar. Borderline incomprehensible lyrics. Now the marching beat. Let the punk side out to party.
- Where Do I Begin – Saying sorry in a song. The back-looped drums at the end are awesome.
- Cold Slope – Purposeful with flourishes of weariness. So much fun hearing them switch tempos at will.
- King of You – Chugging guitar moan that lets a little frustration out on record.
- Magnetized – Sounds like the title suggests with all that reverb. Slow and poetic. Stops and starts before a steady beat kicks in and David Bowie approves of it all.
The Vibe
The fact that this thing is free is the major vibe here. It’s the kind of generosity that made Radiohead a lot of new fans when ‘In Rainbows’ came out (deservedly), but it’s something that you still very rarely see from the album-oriented rockers of the world. Hip-hop mixtapes are one thing. Indie/alt demo collections too. But fully-fledged album giveaways were born an endangered species. Musicians are so terrified of the invisible threat of internet piracy that most would never consider it. Which is not unfair, they have every bloody right in the world to expect compensation for creating something that people enjoy. Of course they do. It’s just nice to see some successful people embracing the changing landscape.
Look, recorded music is the backbone of the industry. Maybe not financially anymore but still in terms of reputation. Most bands (read: 99.9% of them) would be broke in days if they started giving away all their stuff for free. Wilco have said as much themselves, even producing a recommended listening/buying list to explore. This is a luxury move by them as a band, perhaps that’s why it feels like such a luxury album to us as fans.
It also makes this record a little edgy. It was a risk to dump this thing out there with no price tag and very little promotion. Thankfully the risks don’t stop there either, with the band doing more than enough across these 11 songs to steer well clear of the dreaded ‘generic’ label. In fact, I’d label it as fresh and interesting, more than you can say for most band’s ninth albums. ‘Star Wars’ feels loose. Not in a jam band way, but in a Nothing To Prove way. And while it appears to be a real shot in the arm, the truth is that it’s more like a reminder that this is, after all, a band that has never let us down before.
Oh, and something has to be said before it’s too late about the friggin’ cover art and the title. ‘Star Wars’? That’s lawsuit bait right there. And the cover art is a picture of a cat. Plus it’s free to download. It’s like they summed up the entire surface-feeding dimension that is The Internet in one foul yet cheeky swoop. Fair play to ya’s.
The Music
Right, let’s get past the gimmick now. Because while it earns ‘Star Wars’ more publicity and goodwill than it would have gotten otherwise, it’s not like this is a garage sale reject of sloppy tapes. It’s a pretty fine album. We can’t say “the best since…” because ‘The Whole Love’ (2011) was brilliant but this one has many charms of its own.
Okay, the first song isn’t what you’d call charming. It’s a clash of guitars and rhythms that could turn more than a few people off (those unfamiliar with the late-60s idiosyncrasies of Don Van Vliet). Me, however, I like a daring gamble more than a conservative fall-back. EKG lets you know immediately that Wilco aren’t out to make a critical statement. They’re just messing around and its endearing to hear.
They get right into the fuzzy rock and rollers straight after. This is definitely a guitar album. Pedals and distortion and riffs. Solos are kept slight and in check, all in the interests of the record. This ain’t The Grateful Dead, and even the Dead were usually refined in the studio (at their best, anyway). There’s only one song over four minutes long and the whole thing is only 33 rotations of the minute hand. While ‘Star Wars’ feels like a jam record, that’s only in the joyous nature of it. The songs themselves are tight.
Tweedy’s vocals are mostly hushed or slightly buried. Only slightly, but in a way that never sounds quite as immediate as they could have. That adds to the lo-fi nature of the thing, produced by Tweedy and Tom Schick for the band’s own label. They know that they’re not trying to serve these songs on a platter. There’s no gloss or shine and that’s the way it oughta be. Let the people lean in a little rather than catering to what they think they want (which never lasts anyway).
The interplay between the musicians is first class. It may feel like they’re cutting tracks like a college band, getting it all on record, trying things and taking chances, but only a bunch of road-fit veterans can pull it off with this apparent ease. I say apparent, because it obviously wasn’t easy, though they say that’s a great mark of genius: making the difficult appear readily achievable.
Revelations
A Random Name Generator is how Tweedy comes up with the titles of his songs, right?
“I’m not missing what I’m giving away”
"Why do our disasters always creep so slowly into view?"
“From where we are, to where do I begin?”
“I realise we’re magnetised.”
Finale
And then it’s over before you know it. A short album, an album that’ll leave you feeling reinvigorated. You still don’t quite know what Tweedy’s on about half the time and the band can rock and roll with equal capability. After 20 years, Wilco still isn’t running out of ideas. They still find ways to reinvent (or at least realign) their sound. And you know what else? ‘Star Wars’ has gotten better with each subsequent listen.
The album’s coming out in physical form in August, you should buy it if you so desire it.