Richard Thompson Autumn Part Four: Vagabond Adventures in the 80s

The 1980s were a cruel decade for many legacy artists. Just think of the troughs of Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash, and Neil Young in that time. Richard Thompson broke from the norm of middle-aged sagginess by putting out several good albums after his breakup with Linda. The problem was that few people were listening and his labels were not loyal. All of this woodshedding would pay off because come the 1990s he would be a far more celebrated artist. While all of these albums were quite good, he would not yet create something to match Shoot Out the Lights. 

Hand of Kindness, 1983

This is only Thompson's third solo record, and his first non-instrumental one in over a decade. As an artist he had been a collaborator, first with Fairport Convention and then with Linda Thompson. Here he is on much surer ground than Henry the Human Fly. As with Shoot Out the Lights, many songs are about the dark side of relationships. Unfortunately, the accordion is back in the mix. At least on the driving album opener of "Tear Stained Letter" it gives the song a little extra demented propulsion. The cover, with Thompson looking like a lonely busker on a crappy day, adds to the feeling that this is a man on his own. The big sound with horns adds something, but I don't like this album as much as I'd like to. Thompson still feels like he is searching for the right sound to compliment his songs. Nevertheless, "Tear Stained Letter," "How I Wanted To," and "Both Ends Burning" are great songs. "How I Wanted To" is an especially good song about feeling like you've let someone down in a relationship.

Rating: Four Richards

Small Town Romance, 1984

I am not planning on covering all of Thompson's live records, but this one merits inclusion. It's the only solo acoustic document we have from this time in his career, and it's a winner. He reclaims some songs from his time with Linda Thompson and does solo renditions of Fairport songs like "Meet on the Ledge." I love hearing Thompson play and sing by himself because it really lets the power of the songs shine through. The only drawback is that the sound quality could be a little better.

Rating: Four and a half Richards

Across a Crowded Room, 1985

In the mid-1980s every legacy artist seemed to cut at least one record in the dominant, big beat with synthesizer production style of the time. These albums have tended not to age well. Bruce Springsteen may have cracked it with Tunnel of Love, but Neil Young's atrocious Landing on Water was more typical. On this record Thompson incorporated some of that sound, but managed to do it mostly on his terms. From the first bars you can hear the big beat and extra reverb, but Thompson also injects some needed toughness to his sound. "You Don't Say" sounds almost new wave, but he manages not to come across as derivative. While the 80s sound dominates too much in places, Thompson also gives his guitar a little extra jangle, too, coming across best on "Walking Through a Wasted Land." This is not a great album but definitely a good one, especially considering the challenge of not letting the 80s production style ruin everything. 

Rating: Four Richards

Daring Adventures, 1986

Now we are back to albums you can't stream (I have this one on vinyl.) On the cover RT looks like a threatening tough guy in an alleyway. It's indicative of the harder sound on this record, courtesy of Mitchell Froom. Thompson's guitar definitely hits harder, there's just not enough good songs to put this record over the top. It's also a shame that the best riff comes on the very regrettably titled "Bone Through Her Nose." Nevertheless, this is a a solid effort and a sign that Thompson was beginning to find a more effective sound for his songs. 

Rating: Four Richards 

Amnesia, 1988

I'd avoided this one for awhile because the cover looked really silly and very 80s. Turns out I was wrong because Thompson sounds more confident than he has in awhile. This is also his first record with Capitol after being dropped by Polydor. After knocking about for so long he seemed to have found a label that could appreciate what he had to offer. With Mitchell Froom he also found a producer able to update his sound and give it more depth. On "Turning on the Tide" Thompson's tone is like sugar. Thompson is one of the more atypical guitar heroes in his restraint, but on this record he gives himself more license to actually shred. There's a harder energy on songs like "Jerusalem on the Jukebox" that had been missing from much of his 80s work. Amnesia was a sign that Thompson was about the make a great leap forward after some good but not overwhelming efforts. 

Rating: Four and a half Richards

Richard Thompson Autumn Part Three: Reneging

After their glorious trilogy of mid-70s albums, Richard and Linda Thompson opted for commune living and practicing Sufism. When they came back they still made good music, but would not match their earlier material until their last, gut-wrenching album together. 

First Light, 1978

After being away for three years Richard and Linda sound decidedly less folky. It's reflected in the backing of studio musicians, rather than their old Fairport-adjacent stalwarts. While I like the sound of his record a lot, it just does not have any songs on the level of what they used to put out. Nevertheless, it's a pleasant album to listen to. This is also, yet again, an album you can't stream on Spotify. 

Rating: Four Richards (out of five) 

Sunnyvista, 1979

Speaking of not being able to stream on Spotify, you can't stream this one either! It's a modern-day reflection of the issues the Thompsons had at the time in getting their music out. They switched labels before cutting this record, then were dropped afterward, unable to get a deal anywhere. It's not that this or First Light are bad, it's just that they are not commercial albums in any way. This was also a time in the late 70s when folk-inflected singer-songwriter music, which had dominated the early 70s, was on its way out. Consequently, while the folky backing musicians are back, some of the songs have a more "now" feel in the production. The barn-burning opener "Civilisation" is pretty catchy, too. This album is also a departure in that it has a concept. The cover is made to look like a mock-up cover for a fictional summer resort, and the songs touch more explicitly on the nature of modern life. I also like the cover as kind of a joke about the Thompsons' typically morose outlook. The second side is not as strong as the first, but it's still worth a listen. 

Rating: Four Richards

Strict Tempo, 1981

This is the first new listen for me in Thompson's catalog as part of this project. While Richard and Linda searched for a major label, Richard cut this set of instrumentals for his own imprint. While your mileage may vary with instrumental records, this one is enjoyable. It's a fun little trifle that also shows off Thompson's creativity as a guitar player. By not having lyrics his instrument is in the lead and he does a lot of interesting stuff with it. This is hardly an essential album, but I bet I will be listening to it while I grade tests and papers this school year. 

Rating: Four Richards 

Shoot Out the Lights, 1982

This is the album that made me a fan, and one with a tangled story behind it. The Thompsons had recorded the songs earlier in the hopes of getting a deal, and failed. They recorded them again with Fairport producer Joe Boyd and ended up with their most critically and commercially successful album. By that time their marriage was over, leading to what was called the Tour From Hell. In what appears to be an unfortunate pattern in his life, Richard was not being faithful. The songs are some of the most powerful ever written about relationships in turmoil, and then Linda had to perform them onstage with her philandering husband. (No wonder she would kick him in the shins onstage during his solos!) Beyond the exceptional quality of the songs, the sound stands out, too. The accordion and other folky touches are absent (except for "Back Street Slide") and Richard cuts loose on guitar, especially on the stunning title track. It all sounds very au courrant for the college radio sound of the early 80s, and it's hardly a mistake that REM would play "Wall of Death" live and record their third album with Boyd. The reverby guitar does not just plant this in the early 80s, it declares that Thompson has finally escaped the gravitational field of Planet Folk. If you want to get someone into Thompson, play them this record. 

Rating: Five Richards 

Richard Thompson Autumn Part Two: Beginning of the Rainbow

After putting out five albums with Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson struck out on his own for an album before beginning his decade-long musical and romantic partnership with Linda Peters (soon to be Thompson.) This is the era where he really distinguished himself as an artist in his own right and produced some of his best music. This era would end with a religious conversion to Sufist Islam and a hiatus spent in commune living. 

Henry the Human Fly, 1972

Not only is this RT's first solo album, it's the first example of one you can't stream on Spotify, and not the last. I have it on LP and CD, but if you're less elegant you can listen to it on YouTube, too. It was an inauspicious start for Thompson, who claims at one time it was the lowest-selling album in the label's history. While it is beloved by many, I much prefer his next three records with Linda. The growing pains are in evidence here, and not all the songs cohere as they should. At times, like the opening "Roll Over Vaughn Williams," the guitar work is breathtaking. One issue on this album and on a lot of Thompson's work of this era is too much accordion. I know it's treason as a German-American to say this, but the overuse of this instrument crowds out Thompson's guitar playing, which is why most listeners pay to get in the door. While "The Poor Ditching Boy" foregrounds the violin over the guitar, it is indeed a lovely song. "Shaky Nancy" is similar, but has too much damn penny whistle. I find it all kind of perverse, like if Led Zeppelin cut an album where John Bonham only plays the drums with brushes. 

Rating: Three and a half Richards (out of five) 

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, 1974

I really cannot say too much about this record. It is one of my favorites of all time, like top twenty level favorite. Thompson found his voice as a writer of songs about the aching dread of life as a human being, and Linda gave these songs a deeper voice and feeling than he could have provided. Every single one of these dark songs is a masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. There is no more devastating song about the tragedy of being thrown into existence than "End of the Rainbow." "Withered and Died" and "Down Where the Drunkards Roll" embody hopelessness like nothing else. This record also just sounds amazing. The accordion I complained about actually sounds good here as texture on songs like "We Sing Hallelujah." There's an eerie, spare feel to the real tear-jerkers like "The Great Valerio." If I am ever feeling sad on a gray winter day this is my go-to album for transcendence via wallowing. 

Rating: Five Richards 

Hokey Pokey, 1975

After the sad sack tone of the last record, this one starts off with the playful, joyous title track. Linda rarely sounded better and the double-entendre makes for some cheeky fun. Don't worry folks, Richard and Linda don't forget to make it sad. "A Heart Needs a Home" embodies lonely longing like few other songs ever have. This album is almost as good as its predecessor, except that "Old Man Inside the Young Man" is a clunky dirge whereas the prior album was perfect in every way. Nevertheless, this is one I still spin on the regular. 

Rating: Four and a half Richards 

Pour Down Like Silver, 1975

Yet another classic RT album not available on Spotify. I have this one on a CD box called Hard Luck Stories that collects all of the albums from 1972 to 1982 (except for Strict Tempo). There is...sigh...a lot of accordion on this record. All the same, it can't overpower something as fantastic as "For the Shame of Doing Wrong," which gives us Linda at her smokiest. The way she sings "I wish I was a fool for you" is just spine-tingling. In general she is someone who deserves vastly more adulation than she gets. Hearing these records after Henry the Human Fly is proof that Richard Thompson needed her to add the feeling he was missing. At the same time, RT takes "Beat the Retreat" himself and gives it some true world-weariness. While "Night Comes In" is dark, nothing tops "Dimming of the Day" for that literal twilight feeling. It is the sound of my soul on a cold winter day watching the feeble sun dip below the horizon far too early. After this the Thompsons would go on a hiatus and despite putting out some excellent music, they never topped their mid-70s trilogy. 

Rating: Five Richards

Richard Thompson Autumn Part One: Come All You Roving Minstrels

Periodizing Thompson's career at the outset is pretty easy, since he spent significant time in Fairport Convention before rolling on into his long solo career. Fairport is the most popular and significant band to come out of Britain's folk rock scene of the 1960s. It's also no mistake that they recorded some of Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes material before it ever saw an official release. Like that project, Fairport Convention were looking for innovative ways to incorporate far older musical traditions into rock in ways that weren't just imitation or archeology. Like The Band's similar material in that era, this is essential listening. 

Fairport Convention, 1968

Rarely is a band's first album a complete outlier the way this one is. Instead of folk rock it's psychedelic music that sounds straight out of Haight-Asbury, not the wind-battered shores of Albion. It's also the only album with Judy Dyble singing. She would give way to Sandy Denny, whose presence really brought Fairport Convention into their own. This is by no means a bad album, it's just not what the principals involved do best, like if Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cut a thrash metal record. I like late 60s San Francisco psychedelic rock, and Thompson and company come at it with creativity and verve. Thankfully they managed to find something more original on their next album.

Rating: Three Richards (out of five)

What We Did On Our Holidays, 1969

Right off the top with "Fotheringay" Fairport's evolution is manifest. Sandy Denny's haunting voice and the medieval ballad feel call upon something far more mysterious than a Sixties "happening." Whereas the debut album has 1968 stamped all over it, this song sounds like it could have been written yesterday or a thousand years ago. Also striking is the incorporation of blues and slide guitar on other songs, showing that this band was not just sticking to folk orthodoxy. They also had good taste in covers, doing Dylan's "I'll Keep It With Mine," a song left on the cutting room floor during the Blonde on Blonde sessions. Not every song is a banger, but the good ones are stunning, none more so than "Meet on the Ledge." It's one on my funeral playlist, and I've recently discovered that even Thompson's own mum wanted him to play it at hers. On its face it's a song about friends growing up, but it sounds like the yearning for transcendence after death. Thompson wrote it at the age of 17, a sign of his growing ability. His talents would be even more manifest on coming Fairport records.

Rating: Four and a half Richards 

Unhalfbricking, 1969

On the second of three (!) albums released in 1969, Fairport more fully realized their folk sound. Yet again they show excellent taste in picking Dylan songs, going with multiple unreleased songs, including some of the Basement Tapes material. On "Si Tu Dois Partir" they even have a lark by translating "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" into French. The lightheartedness of this and the Basement Tapes fun of "Million Dollar Bash" is tempered by some heavier material befitting the fact that original drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn died in a crash as the band was returning from a show. Though it was written before, Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" is a haunting meditation on mortality. The long workout of "A Sailor's Life" also gives that song a melancholy air of the type that Thompson would milk in the 1970s as a solo artist. Speaking of, Thompson's "Genesis Hall" shows his continuing power as a songwriter. 

Liege and Lief, 1969

On their third album of 1969 and the last with Denny, Fairport Convention managed to craft the apotheosis of the whole British folk movement. Like The Band's self-titled album of the same year, it masterfully blended traditional forms of music with a rock sensibility with results that are spookily effective. In Fairport's case they drew on medieval English folk traditions, giving these songs a timeless quality even though Thompson shreds on electric guitar when he needs to. Dave Mattacks' rolling drums give the music a renewed drive and Dave Swarbrick's virtuoso fiddle playing (present as a session musician before) bring Fairport's music to an entirely higher level. The songs here are almost all traditional, but are played in such innovative, creative ways that I never get tired of listening to them. It's a shame that Denny would soon leave the band. 

Rating: Five Richards

Full House, 1970

This is the band's last album with Thompson as a full time member, and the first after Sandy Denny's departure. It's a real shame because the drums and guitars have never sounded better. Unfortunately, the loss of Denny's voice is apparent. For example, a BBC sessions version of "Sir Patrick Spens" with Denny on vocals is one of my favorite Fairport songs, but this studio version without her sounds kinda flat. Neverthless, it's still good, with an emphasis on longer instrumental breakdowns. Thompson's virtuosity is more apparent and songs like "Flowers of the Forest" are just gorgeous. Special shoutout to "Now Be Thankful," a non-album single I bust out every Thanksgiving. 

Rating: Four Richards 

Introducing Richard Thompson Autumn

I've really enjoyed writing my "listen throughs" of different legacy artists: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Wilco and my readers (there are TENS of you out there!) like them too, so I am going with a new one this fall. There's also the fact that the school year has started and I am at a new job, so the brainspace I would use to come up with things to write about is pretty limited. It's better in these moments to go with a series.

I tend to listen to music seasonally. There are albums and artists I listen to heavily in some parts of the year and little in others. Richard Thompson has been in my autumn heavy rotation for a long time now, and now that he's come out with a new record I figured he was the perfect choice for this particular moment. 

Beyond that, Thompson is interesting because he is one of those legacy artists with a large following and massive catalog who still records and plays yet is practically unknown to most people. I do not think I have ever heard a single song of his on Top 40, classic rock, or "oldies" radio. Freeform radio, community radio, or public radio? You betcha! There are plenty of artists beloved by the real heads and ignored by the public (Big Star, Townes Van Zandt, Captain Beefheart, etc.) but none with a catalog as extensive as Thompson's, which makes him ideal for my purposes. He's also one of those artists who has some of his stuff tied up in rights issues, but I happen to have all of those things on physical media, so I am in a unique position to complete the mission. 

The first installment will be just about his years in Fairport Convention. After that I will have some fun with periodization. 

Visiting a Diner in Trump Country (Road Trip 2024)

While I returned from my big summer road trip about a month ago, I've been doing my fair share of local rambling. Last weekend I ventured with my kids to Central Pennsylvania to visit a dear friend who normally hangs his hat in Pittsburgh but has a lake house up in the hills. My kids and I cherish these visits, which we make as often as we can. They also provide an opportunity for armchair political science, since the surrounding area is about as Trumpy as it gets.

In an election year the tension I sometimes feel is more intense. On our drive out we stopped for lunch at a McDonald's in Danville, Pennsylvania. It was a clean, efficient, and well-appointed Mickey Ds, a real top of the line franchise. My enthusiasm was tempered by seeing a guy sitting at a table with his arms crossed and anger on his face wearing a Trump cap. He didn't seem like he was there to eat. In fact, he went over to the family at the next table over and engaged them in a political conversation saying that "she" (I knew who that was) was "scary" and a "socialist." This of course was a day after Harris gave a speech noteworthy for its emphasis on law and order and that did not contain any sweeping new progressive goals like universal child care (which this guy surely thinks is socialism.) A woman talking to him replied that Harris was not really leading in the polls, but that "they" were just saying that. 

It was an interesting thing to see. This guy was acting like an evangelist, but he wasn't selling Jesus, he was selling Trump. This struck me because on my trip out to Nebraska this summer I noted how support for Trump seemed to be dimming among the base. Perhaps this was the sign of desperation, or that my earlier observation was just plain wrong. 

Apart from hearing the usual dumb Boomer joke about "global warming" when someone said the lake water was cold, I did not get much sense of the political temperature until we went out for breakfast at a diner in a nearby small town. I knew from our last visit that this diner had a giant "BACK THE BLUE" sign on the outside and lots of Christian nationalist iconography on the inside and fake money with Trump on it pinned to the wall behind the register. Last time we were there I also had to hear a table of old white guy fogies hold forth on their hatred of liberals. The thing is, there is nothing in this world that I can resist less than a breakfast at a really good greasy spoon diner. Living in cities and college towns in my 20s and early 30s these places were my favorite haunts. When I moved to Jersey, the Valhalla of diners, I was elated. I'll be damned if someone else's lousy politics are going to keep me from enjoying a "hungry man" breakfast. I also grew up in a very conservative rural place and was less intimidated than most people from a progressive New Jersey suburb would have been in these environs. 

The diner in question is really small and there was only one waitress working. We remained patient and appreciated how hard she was having to work. This time around there were no Trumpy conversations to listen to, but I did notice something strange in the air. My friend guessed that some of the patrons thought he and I were a couple, since there weren't any adult women with us and proper menfolk in that region did not take their children out to diners by themselves with another man. Maybe that was the case, maybe not. I still had myself a delicious breakfast and my kids left happy. 

Driving down the road back home I started to think, and something did not sit right with me. I may live in New Jersey now and have a PhD and taught at an independent school in New York City for 13 years, but I am still the same person who grew up in rural Nebraska who has always loved diners. The diner I went to had all kinds of stuff hanging up to let me know that I wasn't welcome because of my politics. My background and upbringing, however, were pretty much the same as the other people in there. The political candidate they love, Trump, is a billionaire's son from New York who wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this. 

Instead of making the usual accusations about this discrepancy, I want to think a little deeper. Trump has an electoral advantage in that he could do pretty much anything, including being convicted of 34 felonies and inciting an attack on the Capitol, and still keep well over 40% of the electorate in his pocket. What I have come to realize in my interactions with Trump voters is that they don't really care about anything he does. I know that sounds obvious, but the reason isn't. They don't care not because they are hypocrites (a tired accusation) but because they believe in what he SYMBOLIZES, not who he actually is. 

Trump and his MAGA slogan symbolize the maintenance of all kinds of hierarchies. His name on a sign means support for men in charge, white people in charge, LGBTQ people in the closet, Christianity assumed, and immigrants deported. While not all Trump supporters fit all of these categories, each has at least of one these hierarchies in mind when it comes to their support. Trump could indeed shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose support because what he does is literally meaningless. All of his meaning is symbolic. 

What makes me sad is that so many people prefer this symbolic ecstasy and its attendant hatreds over human relationships. This is why I sometimes never feel lonelier than when I visit the types of rural places that made me and the kinds of humble diners I love more than the fanciest restaurant. 

Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff as "Reagan Dawn" Artifact

First off, I want to acknowledge that I have not been writing in this space. I have been focusing my efforts on my Substack (where I tend to do more political stuff) and on a couple of research projects. Come autumn I am planning on doing one of my patented "listen throughs" on Richard Thompson. In the meantime, I am re-reading a book that has me thinking again about what I call the "Reagan Dawn."

This is my name for the pop cultural moment lasting roughly from 1979 to 1981 that coincided with Ronald Reagan's election. The culture in this moment both reflected and drove the conservative political turn. I first wrote about it back in 2015 (!) and if I had the time, tools, and talent I'd write a book about it. Some of these pop cultural artifacts are pretty obvious, like Disco Demolition Night. Others are not.

That hit me while re-reading Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. I'd read an interesting piece on him for The New Republic by Osita Nwanevu that made me want to revisit this book, and one of my daughters had also recently gotten obsessed with NASA. I first read it in 1999, before I had really started digging into the history and culture of the 70s in a serious way, and so did not contexualize the book as a product of the Reagan Dawn back then.

From the outset, Wolfe has embarked on a project of reclamation. In heaping praise upon military test pilots and the Mercury astronauts picked from them, he is intentionally elevating the kinds of men and qualities poo-pooed by the counterculture. In a foreword he wrote in 1983 he explicitly states that his point was to elevate military officers, who he felt had been denigrated in books about war going back to key Great War works like All Quiet on the Western Front. The men he profiles -military, white, traditionally masculine, Protestant, family patriarchs, lovers of hot rods, disdainful of NASA scientists- are exactly the kind disdained by the counterculture. In the context of post-Vietnam War America this reclamation project is freighted with deeper meanings and symbols.

Wolfe makes clear that the men he profiles love their country above all else, which is the reason why they are willing to face death and make widows and orphans of their families. These men themselves stand for a "real America," one that Reagan promised to revive. Writing in the late 70s after the big cultural and political breaks of the 1960s, Wolfe offers a tantalizing nostalgia for the Mercury program, with its origins in the Eisenhower years and the first orbits before that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. Wolfe's book came out in the era of the Iran Hostage Crisis and a general yearning for national renewal, exactly the thing Reagan promised. Nor for nothing, Reagan's campaign slogan in 1980 was "Let's Make America Great Again." Then under Reagan and now under Trump the "great" era is located before 1965. 

The thing with Wolfe is that he is such an engaging prose writer (in non-fiction, at least), that I am happy to go for the ride even if I can tell where he is slipping in his own ideological commitments. The test pilots and astronauts are indeed impressive people and their accomplishments are worthy of praise. What's funny reading the book today is just how much his side won. You can't go to a baseball game without there being a moment or two of military worship, for example. I have also been struck by how much conservatism has degenerated in the past four decades. As much as I disagree with many of Wolfe's assumptions, he's a good writer and a person that I am inclined to take seriously. I was trying to find the equivalent today of a conservative kind of writing meant not to be polemical but entertaining and all I could come up with was The Babylon Bee. That pretty much says it all. 

This got me thinking even more whether Reagan's long shadow has finally passed. While supply side tax cuts are a zombie idea that won't die, Trump's economic policies are hardly the kind of thing that would have pleased The Gipper. Democrats are also now far less likely to be cowed by charges of "socialism." I used to think of Reagan Dawn as the moment that our current political economy came into being. Now I am not so sure.

Reflection (Road Trip 2024)

I got home to New Jersey from my Midwestern road trip last Friday, and I want to conclude my travelogue with some reflection. Before I left I had pretensions of seeing what was going on in different parts of the country during a contentious election year. Little did I know my trip would coincide with one of the most tumultuous two weeks in American political history. 

The assassination attempt on Donald Trump happened two days before we left. At that time the calls for President Biden to withdraw from the race were dominating the headlines. That left the center stage of the political news for maybe two days. The Republican convention followed while we were on the road and in Chicago. Despite some rather, well, weird behavior at the convention, Democrats still dedicated themselves to a circular firing squad instead of highlighting the extremity of their opposition. Speaking of, JD Vance gave a straight up blood and soil nomination speech to began his run as a true wet fart of a candidate. By the time my trip was over the couch memes were dominating my feed.

That week ended on the Sunday when Biden announced his withdrawal from the race. The news flashed across during a family gathering, and I have to thank my cousin (who does not share most of my politics) for jumping in and cutting off any political discussion. The next day Kamala Harris had already claimed the mantle of presumptive nominee. I ran some errands with my wife and kids in the car, abuzz with the kind of political conversations we were avoiding at my parents' house. I knew things were changing when my 12-year old daughters whooped and hollered when we told them the news about Harris. I had been thinking that the Democratic Party was in an impossible situation, that either with or without Biden the election was unwinable. Suddenly progressives had their mojo back, and the needle had been threaded. Biden had stepped down, and a new nominee had been found without a destructive intra-party dispute. That nominee was already generating the kinds of enthusiasm from Democrats unseen since 2008. It was some kind of miracle. The last night of our trip my family gathered around my laptop in our roadside hotel room in Ohio, watching a Harris organizing meeting with barely contained energy. Between July 15th and July 26th it felt like the entire world had changed. 

On my trip I kept looking for clues to the national mood, but since I spent most of my time with family and old friends I would have to admit I can't say I observed much. My anecdotal observation is that I was pleasantly surprised at how little evidence of MAGA I detected. A house in my hometown not far from my parents that once flew a "Fuck Biden" sign no longer did. (I did see another house in another part of town flying one, though.) On our drive to and from Nebraska I saw a lot fewer Trump bumper stickers and fashy emblems than usual. I have long suspected that Trump is losing the juice, and that Biden's fumbling had obscured Trump's decline. With Harris's vitality dominating the news, Trump's doddering incoherence seems that much more pronounced. Nevertheless, one day when we drove through the Nebraska countryside a house on a backroad decorated to their fence to say "I am voting for the convicted felon." As the ranks of enthusiastic Trump supporters have dwindled it feels like the remaining ones have only intensified their zeal. This is a dynamic that mimics that in the churches many of these folks belong to.

It was eerily appropriate that we spent the last morning of our trip on the campus of Kent State University. We had decided to spend the night before at a random spot in Ohio because it was eight hours down the road from our previous stop. I soon realized we were right near Kent State, and I was lucky enough to have an online friend there in the history department who showed us around the site of the 1970 massacre. I learned a lot, to be sure, but I was also shook by the knowledge that when deep political divisions meet authority figures willing to wield violence, the blood will flow. As excited as I was that Democrats had come back from the dead, I also knew the reality of the situation we are in. Thinking about May 4th, 1970, I could not help but be reminded of the violence of our own political moment. I could not stop thinking that a new Trump administration would probably result in dozens of Kent States. My trip to the Midwest and back reminded me of how much I love this country, but also that the people who cheered the National Guard gunning down protestors are still alive and well. I'm more committed than ever to keeping them out of power. 

Nebraska Sojourn (Road Trip 2024)

I'd been too busy back in my hometown to write much, but now I am back on the road and staying the night at a hotel in Iowa City and able to get my thoughts down. I spent almost a week in Hastings, Nebraska, seeing family and friends alike. It's always a joy to see my loved ones again, and sad that I only get to spend this much time with them once a year. 

This time I also had the good fortune to be home during a spell of moderate weather. Three years ago we got to go tubing on the Niobrara River, but temperatures jumped up to one hundred degrees. This coincided with staying in a bargain-basement motel in Valentine, Nebraska, that never seemed to be comfortable. That year over Christmas we had to drive to the airport in Omaha in an ice storm. The next Christmas bad weather had us stuck at O'Hare. Last year it was brutally hot again in that blustery Great Plains way that make you feel like you are living inside of a hair dryer. 

This year the moderate weather reminded me of just how beautiful Nebraska can be in the summertime. The corn rises tall and the grass waves green under impossibly vast blue skies. In the evening the sunsets dazzle on the flat horizon, while the coolness of the morning air makes perfect weather for thoughtful walks. The cottonwood trees, which look like weeds with trunks and branches in winter, abound with thick green leaves.

We had some escape from last year's hotter weather via a trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I luxuriated in the cool mountain evenings. This year we stayed in and around Hastings instead of taking a long trip with my parents, and I was glad for it. This year more than any other I have witnessed how my hometown has become a more livable place. In my earlier memories (which date to about 1978-1980), the downtown was bustling, the commercial center of an agricultural region. As the 80s progressed the mall near my house grew in popularity as the downtown stores started closing. At the end of the decade the arrival of Wal-Mart put this dynamic in overdrive. Out in the surrounding countryside, farmers were getting slammed and leaving the land during the Farm Crisis. By the end of the 90s, the once mighty Imperial Mall had become an empire in decline and downtown was almost completely dead. Come this century venerable local restaurants like Bernardo's and the OK Cafe closed for good, leading to a restaurant situation so dire that people welcomed Applebee's and Dunkin as saviors. 

Miraculously, in the last few years things have completely shifted, thanks to people from the area who moved out than came back and to new arrivals from elsewhere. There is an abundance of tasty Mexican food, for example. Downtown there is a microbrewery, artisan bakery, new bookstore, multiple coffee houses, and a cheese shop and wine bar opened by a childhood friend who once plied his trade in Los Angeles. This morning at the Back Alley Bakery I had a delicious brunch I would put up against any place in Brooklyn. More importantly, these new, more interesting local businesses seem to be doing well. My friend told me to come to his place on Monday because that was his slow day, but it was still bustling. 

The foodie revolution has even penetrated rural Nebraska. More than that, people there were yearning for alternatives to the dominant corporate chains and boring traditional local food culture. The whole thing is a great example of what a little new blood can do. I guess it was appropriate to witness that first hand the same week a generational shift happened in the presidential election. 

While it might sound strange, the founding of better restaurants in my hometown gives me real hope. In so many ways we are oppressed by the dead hand of the past and by older people committed to keeping the status quo, no matter how shitty it is. A little bit of faith in the future, even in the form of a tasty breakfast, goes a long way. 

Back in Chicago (Road Trip 2024)

On our way out to Nebraska we decided to spend a couple of days in Chicago, a city I lived in for two of the richest years of my life yet haven't seen for 16 years. Growing up in the Midwest it loomed large in my imagination, especially at a time when several beloved movies of my generation from The Blues Brothers to Ferris Bueller's Day Off were set there. When I finally got to visit in high school and in college, I fell in love. Living in Chicago only deepened that love, and when I was a grad student at the University of Illinois after moving out of Chicago, I made the trek up interstate 57 as often as I could. 

After that, a strange thing happened: I spurned Chicago for New York City, the place I worked for the past thirteen years. I used to resent the condescending attitude of New Yorkers to "the second city" when I lived in the Midwest, but I slowly began to adopt it myself. Today I am reproaching myself for this, since I have had an absolutely delightful day here. My children had never been before, and they absolutely LOVE it. They have called it "New York but clean" and "New York but chill." While Chicago has a tough spikiness, it lacks the overbearing neuroses that hang in the air in the Big Apple. As I get older my tolerance for managing other people's anxieties has frayed to the breaking point. People in New York desperately need to get a dose of Midwestern reserve. 

Today has included some old stomping grounds, as well as things I never did when I lived here. On the former count, we spent the morning in Hyde Park and on the campus of the University of Chicago, where I excitedly pointed out locations of major and minor events in my young life. On the latter count, we went to the top of the Hancock Building (I know it's not called that anymore, but whatever) and took at architectural history boat tour on the river. Both let me see a city I thought I knew with new eyes and appreciation. It also didn't hurt that in between we ate Chicago-style dogs from Devil Dawgs. 

For most part I have been quietly pleased with how the city has matured since I lived here from 1998-2000. Hyde Park in particular feels safer and more economically stable, as do the surrounding neighborhoods. Driving up Stony Island I marveled at all the new buildings and flourishing businesses. The experience really shows how much all the Fox News propaganda about Chicago is lying. Yes the city has plenty of problems, but it has figured some things out that its supposedly superior cousin New York could learn from. Putting trash in alleyway bins is probably better than dumping it on the street, for example. Trees can, you know, shade the sidewalk in the summertime. These facts and the Fox propaganda bullshit are good examples of how you shouldn't always believe what you hear. 

West to South Bend (Road Trip 2024)

Today my family began our trip out to Nebraska from New Jersey by driving out to South Bend, Indiana. We are going to spend a couple of days in Chicago next, but this was as far as we thought we could get without exhausting ourselves. We also like South Bend (college towns are the best) and know a hotel here with a good hot breakfast. When you travel the same stretch of road so many times, you figure out important information like this. 

It's a much nicer hotel than what I would normally spring for, but we have credit card rewards points that get it for us for free. This is a far cry from my childhood vacations, often spent at low-slung cheap motels on the roadside with hard mattresses and sandpapery sheets. I've found classing it up helps morale among the troops after a hard day on the road. 

My kids are getting older and one dividend is that they demand fewer bathroom breaks. We made it all the way to South Bend only stopping three times: once in the morning for gas, once to eat lunch, once to gas again in the afternoon. This also meant that I had less of a chance to see what was going on in the areas we traveled through. For that reason I am not sure how much I can trust my observation that there was a real decrease in the amount of visible MAGA stuff in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. I noticed a farmer with a Trump sign, a pretty elaborate "God Family and Guns" truck decal, and that was about it. There was a Cybertruck with Texas plates and a "Legalize Recreational Plutonium" magnet, but the political valence of that one was hard to parse. My gut tells me that Trump's appeal among his former voters is waning at the edges and this confirms my suspicions. 

While I was on the road proper I marveled at the beauty of some underloved landscapes. The mountains of Central Pennsylvania are quietly gorgeous, for example. The fields and farms of northern Indiana sure look pretty in the evening light, too. 

Now that I have been living in the Northeast for thirteen years, I get a little bit of a shock when I return to my Midwestern stomping grounds. I do not mean this as a judgement, but an observation: people in the Midwest do not seem to put much care into their clothing and looks. In my short time I've seen grown men in tube socks pulled up to their knees, women in ugly "crop pants" paired with the 90s "Rachel" haircut, and scores of people wearing what look to be dirty, unwashed t-shirts. People in general also look like they are taking less care of themselves than they ought to. Now I know going too far the other way leads to narcissism, but the average Midwesterner looks like the "before" image on a makeover show. 

That might sound mean, but I'm from the Midwest and I can say it! Also, that lack of care in personal appearance is the less savory outgrowth of one of the best Midwestern qualities: an aversion to bullshit. I am looking forward to a break from the status-obsessed Northeast.

Hitting the Road

I have neglected this blog for the past few weeks by concentrating on my Substack instead. That's where I am writing more things about the political moment, and well, that's been a busy beat lately. I have shifted this blog into mostly being about music and culture, and the "listen throughs" I've been doing of legacy artists has been a fun way to focus things. I am doing another one come autumn on Richard Thompson, but in the meantime I've had to figure out what I want to write about. I am realizing that the stresses of the current politics news will burn me out if I'm not careful. I am heading off for a road trip next week, so I will turn this site into a travelogue.

My inspiration to do this came from one of my nerdiest fixations: reading 19th and 20th-century travel writing. I have my hands in two separate research projects involving travel writing as a source base and as a kind of scholarly Stockholm Syndrome I can't stop reading this stuff. One of those projects centers around travel writing in the 1970s with the theme of "finding America." After the tumult of the 60s many wondered what had happened to the country and its identity, and went to find it in the out of the way places on what William Least Heat Moon called "blue highways." My own writing over the next two weeks might hit on similar themes of evaluating the state of the nation in an uncertain time. I'll be going to big cities as well as small towns, but almost completely within the Midwest. Maybe someday I will attempt a full cross-country trek. 

As a bonus, here's some of my favorites of the travel writing genre outside of the 70s that aren't household names that I would recommend. 

Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas

Two summers ago my favorite read was Frederick Law Olmsted's account of a trip across Texas in the 1850s. It brought a different time and place to life while also being a fascinating document of Northern disdain for life in the South on the eve of the Civil War. My interest had been piqued years ago when I was living in Texas and a highly fatuous colleague who was way into being Texan said he hated it. If that kind of Texas Uber Alles blowhard disliked the book I knew it must be good. I have a love-hate relationship with my former state of residence, and this book gets and the state's heritage of oppression and Philistinism that is represented well in the hate column for me. 

Tony Horwitz, One For The Road

A friend loaned me this one back in grad school and I had a wild hair to read it again this spring. Horwitz later became famous for his American history-themed travelogues like Confederates in the Attic. His first is still my favorite, though. In the 1980s he was living in Australia as an expat journalist, and decided to hitchhike across the entire Outback. As you would imagine, this was quite a challenge. In the process, however, he meets quite an array of characters that make you think the Mad Max films are close to being documentaries. The book reminds me of one of my favorite things about travel: seeing some really weird shit you'd never be able to anticipate.

Henry David Thoreau's travel writings

I kinda liked reading Thoreau in high school, but stopped thinking about him after. A few years ago someone convinced me to read all of Walden, and I was suddenly hooked. Thoreau understood one of the key questions of modern life right at its inception: what is necessary to live? He did not put creature comforts high on the list, but he did include nature. Apart from Walden, Thoreau's other book length works were travel accounts, only one of which (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers) was published in his lifetime. Two others, Cape Cod and The Maine Woods, came after his death based on unpublished writings. All are worth a read because he chronicles the early stages of industrialization and its impact on natural landscapes and our relationship to them. 

Joan Didion, South and West

Here's another work unpublished at the time, an account of travel in the early 70s, mostly through the deep South. Didion is probably my favorite essay stylist, and her tart observations hit just as hard here as in her published works. This book is also an interesting artifact of the South in the period right after the Civil Rights movement. I also appreciate that instead of fetishing the "blue highways" like so many other writers, she touches on the small pleasures of interstate highways and Holiday Inn swimming pools. The search for authenticity is the bugbear of too many travel writers.

The Whole Wilco Part Four: Many Rivers to Cross

After Schmilco, Wilco took another recording hiatus, waiting three years to put out a new record. In the interim Jeff Tweedy was busy with his own solo work, which would inform the work that followed with Wilco. The band's last three records, in keeping with precedent, sound little like each other. From writing these retrospectives on legacy artists I've come to expect a really fallow period. Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Bob Dylan all hit some epic low points in the 80s that lasted for years. Even Bruce Springsteen spent the first half of the 1990s in the wilderness. Wilco has avoided this so far. Perhaps this is the result of record companies no longer expecting fresh product every year and thus allowing Tweedy and co to have more time to craft their work. In any case, it's rare for a group that's been around almost 30 years to keep making new music I listen to out of excitement, rather than obligation. 

Ode to Joy, 2019

This is probably the Wilco album I've listened to the least, and for reasons not entirely reflective of the quality of the record. By the time this album came out my listening habits had fully assimilated to streaming. I listen to full albums less than I used to, and am more likely to throw on a playlist Frankensteined together from the songs I am currently digging. I streamed this album when it came out, but didn't buy it (a first for for a Wilco album), listened a couple of times, and then forgot about it. In the age of streaming this is a common experience for me. It comes from not having the impetus to play full albums over and over again, but also from having so many options. Unlike other sad middle-aged dads, I listen to lots of new stuff, and I almost consider it a duty not to lean on listening to my favorite old artists all the time. 

Like Schmilco, this is an understated affair with some crankiness in the lyrics. It makes me think the album title is some kind of deadpan joke. Wilco has really scaled down the musical pyrotechnics, to the point that it sounds like are intentionally holding back. I felt that with Schmilco and I am feeling it even more with Ode to Joy. Both are definitely vibes albums with the whole worth more than the parts. Nevertheless, I really dig "Love is Everywhere (Beware)" and "Before Us." 

A friend pointed out to me that Ode to Joy came after Tweedy's Warm and Warmer albums. His creativity is getting spread out, and the jury's out to me whether this is giving Tweedy artistic inspiration for Wilco or whether it's watering down his Wilco work. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

Cruel Country, 2022

When I heard that Wilco was going to put out a double-album of more country-inflected music I have to say I was pretty excited. It wasn't because I have been yearing for a return to "Casino Queen" and "Passenger Side," but more because it would means getting to hear something radically different from them. I was not disappointed, and this album broke through my streaming-era allergy to listening to albums in full. I spun it throughout the summer of 2022. The song "Cruel Country" in particular spoke to me, as I listened to it in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision and a mass shooting at a 4th of July parade in suburban Chicago.

To get back to my rivers theory of rock music, Wilco drew more from the roots river on this album than they had since Being There. Listening to it again, however, I noticed that despite the album's title, the music is still mostly grounded in their work since Schmilco. There's the same intimacy, personal approach, and emphasis on mood over hook. There also just happen to be some steel guitars.

I listened to it for this project as I did a bunch of household chores and gardening on a Sunday, which was the perfect accompaniment. Like a lot of Tweedy's recent music, this is unabashadly the work of a middle-aged dad who gets stuck in reflection and worried about the future. Let's just say....I get it. I'm a teacher, which means the summer can be a time of paralyzing mental anguish because my brain is running overtime with less to distract it. I can get into a doom spiral, and two summers ago the gorgeous instrumental coda to "Many Worlds" would snap me out of it. 

I will fully admit that my love of this album is highly subjective. I love country music and am a worried dad so this is catnip to me. It's also a great example of how a non-country band can cut a country album without it being forced, corny, or subpar (Elvis Costello, I'm looking at you!) Like all double albums it has its peaks and valleys, but that's how I like them.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

Cousin, 2024

When I heard Wilco's newest had been produced by Cate Le Bon my ears perked up. She cut my favorite album of 2022 (Pompeii) and promised to bring something fresh to the table. Wilco had also been making all of their records themselves, and while artistic control is a good thing, sometimes big artists need someone else to step in and call them on their bullshit. Knowing her work and Wilco's I also knew it would be a good match.

I really like this album, and like Cruel Country I listened to it a lot as an album instead of just cherry-picking my favorite tracks for playlists. For awhile this year it was my morning train commute listening, so I associate it with that uncanny moment of stress and relaxation before the day truly begins. Based on the lyrical themes, that's appropriate. There is a lot of mental anguish here, including a straightforward discussion of whether to continue taking depression medication. The worry about the future of the world evident in the last two albums is pronounced here as well, especially on the harrowing "Ten Dead." 

A big difference here from the albums that preceded Cruel Country is that, like The Whole Love, pop singcraft is higher in the mix along with the experimentation. "Evicted," for example, is a shimmery song with catchy hooks that I've been listening to a lot. "A Bowl and a Pudding" has the repetitive, Jim O"Rourke repeating patterns reminiscent of Wilco's early 2000s apex. The welcome warmth (pun intended) of "Soldier Child" and punkiness of "Cousin" make them favorites on this album as well. 

It's defintely worth your time, and I can't wait to hear these songs live tonight.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

So that's it for The Whole Wilco, but I think I saw they have an EP coming. I'm sure I will listen to it the day it comes out. 

The Whole Wilco Part Three: New Beginnings

After Wilco's miracle run of albums from 1996 to 2004 they waited three years before releasing another studio recording. It came with a new lineup and new sounds, but never would Wilco scale the heights it had once occupied. That's the thing I used to focus on, at least. Nowadays I am more able to appreciate the experimentation and capacity for change here. 

Sky Blue Sky, 2007

This is the first studio album with the lineup of Tweedy, Stirrat, Kotche, Jourgenson, Sansone, and Cline, the same lineup the band has today. I had seen and enjoyed this lineup live, and probably set my expectations for this record too high. Their last two albums had become almost a part of me, and while I thought this was a good record, I didn't think it came close to pantheon status. Is that a ridiculous standard? Probably.

In the ensuing years I've mostly isolated some of my favorite tracks to throw onto playlists. In fact, "Impossible Germany" may be my favorite Wilco song ever. It certainly highlights the virtuosic flair that Nels Cline brings to the proceedings. Listening to this whole album in one go for the first time in years, I am struck by how great his playing is throughout. Sky Blue Sky sounds like the best 70s art rock album I'd never heard before. I still would not put this in the pantheon, but I'm realizing I was far too critical back then.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

Wilco, 2009

Releasing a self-titled album this far into a band's career is a real choice. It struck me kinda funny (to quote Bob Dylan) at the time, but now I think I get it. The "new" Wilco lineup is back for this album, but over the passage of time that "new" version has become the band for the majority of its life. The title seems to be saying "This is what Wilco is now, take it or leave it." The album even starts with a song called "Wilco" about the band, pledging to be a shoulder to cry on for the listener. It feels both serious and a tongue-in-cheek joke and I love it. 

When this album came out I played it a lot and it lived in my car for some time. For that reason I was shocked on this relisten to not know as many of the songs as I assumed I would. At the time I thought of this album as a return to songs over musicianship, something I thought the new lineup had unbalanced. It might be that in the interim that I have been listening to more Zappa, jazz, prog rock, and Beefheart, but I missed the musical flourishes of Sky Blue Sky listening to this one. 

When the songs hit, however, they are great. "I Will Fight" is a Wilco fave, along with the title song. When they miss, the misses are more noticeable. "You Never Know" has a slight stab at politics and reassuring the younger generation, but the last nine years make this song sound quaint, and even a wee bit insulting. Even at the time I thought it was a little clunky. 

Nevertheless, it's still a good album. Wilco's never put out a bad one, not something I can say about the other legacy artists I've covered. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

The Whole Love, 2011

This album did not grab me at all when I first heard it, and is probably tied with Ode to Joy for the least listened-to Wilco album for me. Today hearing the opening song again I wondered why my 2011 self had shit for brains. "Art of Almost" kicks things off in an experimental mode, departing from the more straight-ahead sounds of the self-titled album. The 70s art rock touches from Sky Blue Sky are evident here, as well as the new dimensions Nels Cline brings. 

When I first heard this one I definitely gravitated to "The Whole Love" as a favorite song. It has a bright boldness to it, bursting with joy in a way few songs do for a band so studied in the moods of melancholy. On my relisten I enjoyed the song even more. I also found myself connecting with songs I'd overlooked before, like "One Sunday Morning (A Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" which reminds my favorably of "Muzzle of Bees," and the brooding "Rising Red Lung." I enjoyed "Standing O" back in 2011, and find myself liking it even more now. 

All of this raises a question: why are my evaluations of this set of albums so wildly different than what they were at the time? Some of it has to do with my expectations, which were silly in their demands. Wilco's four albums before these literally changed my life, but that wasn't just about the music. It also had to do with my stage in life. Youth brings emotions to everything, especially music. Wilco was there for me in a transitional time, and it was something I shared with my close friends at the time. As I moved away from that world physically and emotionally, there was no way another Wilco record could ever mean what it once did. Once you hit 30, a part of your soul dies. You start to feel less, which is both a blessing and a curse. Now that I am pushing fifty I can hear this album and really dig it.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

A Little Mini-period

So when I was putting this series together, I had a hard time periodizing the records from Wilco's current lineup. I realized after consultation with a friend that the their records fit into three periods, but one of those periods is really short and I didn't feel like inflicting three separate posts on you. SO: I will put two albums together as a kind of middle bridge to Wilco's last period, a caesura if you will. What's a caesura? It's a really fancy word I heard a pompous British academic use at a conference once. Look it up, I know I had to.

Star Wars, 2015

When Wilco released this one digitally I got excited and confused in equal measure. What the hell is going on with that title? Why is it so short?  I was glad to be getting new music after a long four year hiatus at least. (I was unaware of Jeff Tweedy's personal challenges at the time, which would have made me understand things better.) 

When I heard the wild guitar sound at the start I got interested. Remember, in the ensuing years I had become a fan of Zappa and Beefheart and prog and I was ready for it to get weird. This album feels unmoored, a trip into space, both inner and outer. When the album hits "Random Name Generator" there's killer riffs, too. That song is the one I keep going back to the most. 

While your mileage may vary with Star Wars, it does represent an admirable quest for change and new directions. So many musical artists get stuck in a rut, but so far Wilco has refused to merely repeat its past. The Whole Love could've provided an easy template for the band's future work, but Tweedy and gang refused to stick to it, to their credit. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

Schmilco, 2016

I group this album together with Star Wars because they were recorded at the same sessions at Wilco's studio in Chicago. Both albums also feel like detours and digressions from the main road meant to explore different directions without forging a brand new path. While Star Wars is not one of my favorite albums of Wilco's, it revived the interest I had been losing. For that reason I was on top of Schmilco when it came out as if I was back in 2004 again. 

I noticed right away that things were much more personal and stripped-down. The album art implies this is Tweedy exposing his pain to make music his kids can groove to, and maybe it is. The tone is hushed and stripped down, the electric guitars here more for texture than pyrotechnics. Some of the songs don't quite take off, but I consider this one more of a vibes record. It's not exceptional, but it's still worth listening to. "Cry All Day" and "We Aren't the World (Safety Girl)" really grabbed me on this listen. 

Rating: Four Tweedys

After three albums of the new lineup they hit their mark with The Whole Love. After that, they spent some time on the backroads. As we will see in the last installment, Wilco will leave this time of experimentation by boldly shooting off into new directions. 

The Whole Wilco Part Two: The Only Band That Matters

Historically few rock bands underwent a transformation like Wilco's. Starting with Summerteeth they fully moved on from their early sound and entered a realm of daring experimentation. Their fight with their record company made them a cause celebre all while the group was torn apart by personal and creative tension. Out of this maelstrom emerged some of my favorite music ever. 

Now might be the time to explain my "rivers theory" of rock music. The fertile valley of rock music, like Mesopotamia, lies between two mighty rivers. The first river has its sources in the older forms of American music: blues, country, R&B, jazz, and folk. Lots of music floats on this river, including the whole classic rock tradition. The second river has its origins in the Velvet Underground (this is not an exaggeration) and is the river of punk, new wave, and "modern rock." When Wilco began they were very much in the first river, but in this era of the late 90s and early 2000s, they jumped over into the second river (although they had plenty of traces of it already.) Lots of bands change their sound, but they almost never jump rivers. That's part of what made this music so thrilling. 

Summerteeth, 1999

This is the only Wilco album I did not listen to at the time of release. I had really liked Being There, but at this time I was fully immersed in the second river of rock, and had little time for the first. I had no clue that Wilco had migrated over with me. I picked it up after a year of obsessively listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and was immediately struck by its uniqueness in the band's oeuvre. More than any other, this is Jay Bennett's record. It turned out that the ass-kicking guitar player also knew his way around a mellotron. (At the time I had a joke based on the SNL "more cowbell" bit where I imagined Bennett in the studio yelling "I have a fever, and the only prescription is more mellotron!) 

I also must admit, this album scared me a bit. "Via Chicago" and "She's A Jar" reference domestic violence in disturbing ways. Those songs and "How to Fight Loneliness" and others were much too accurate evocations of deep depression, something I was fighting at the time. I would save this album for my moments of depression when I could cope by wallowing deeper. I have a clear memory of a really bad day walking under a gray Midwestern sky in winter, listening to "She's a Jar" and feeling like I wasn't alone. 

Listening to it again today I was reminded that there are also plenty of upbeat songs, like "Candyfloss" and "I'm Always in Love." In a subversive mood the album begins with "I Can't Stand It," which melds gorgeously bright pop melodies and sheen with lyrics of existential despair ("No love is random as God's love," "Your prayers will never be answered again," etc.) This song and others have Beach Boys Pet Sounds touches. Wilco was now swimming in rock's second river, but also sidetracking into the tributary of pure pop music. 

Because I first heard this album after I had heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and after Jay Bennett left the band, it always makes me wonder what the band would've sounded like had he stayed. Now is maybe the time to mention that I had a chance to meet and have dinner with Jay Bennett. He was the close friend and musical collaborator of one of my friends and was living in the same area at the time. I must admit I was a bit star struck to be in the same room as him. but he was very friendly with me. Not only that, he was hilarious and a great storyteller. I still remember the tale he told me of Ian McLagen trying to get his organ back from Rod Stewart. I could see how someone with such a dominating presence might be seen as a threat if he joined a band with a different leader. In any case, I am sad that he is gone. 

This record still takes my breath away, I just wish it was a little bit shorter.

Rating: Four and a half Tweedys

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, 2002

This is less an album than a totem of my existence as a human being on this planet. That's not a florid exaggeration, it's how much this record means to me. I put it on like I would put on an old sweater. Every note is lodged in my memory and every one speaks to me. 

What's strange is that I was intimately familiar with it already before its official release. The music press kept reporting on how Warner Brothers, Wilco's label, refused to release it for not being mainstream enough. After that, the band put their album out online, quite a new thing to do in 2001. A friend burned it onto a CD (remember doing that?) and I bought the official release the minute it hit the stores out of solidarity with the band giving the corporate music biz the middle finger. Even if the music had not been as great as it was, it was still thrilling to be part of what felt like a rebellion against the overwhelming trend of cultural homogenization. 

From the first bars things are different, and special. Original drummer Ken Coomer had been pushed out for Glenn Kotche, whose innovative rhythm patterns immediately make themselves known. They let you know that this is going to be an experimential album, but "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" also lets you know that this isn't just self-indulgent noodling, there are SONGS here. The drums, droning sounds, and opening lyrics "I am an Americian aquarium drinker/ I assassin down the avenue" combine to form one of the most striking and confident albums openings ever. 

YHF's context matters, too. While the songs were written and recorded before 9/11, the vibe and lyrics spoke to me about the country's situation, especially "Jesus Etc" and "Ashes of American Flags." They got at my feelings of melancholy, confusion, and anxiety in that rotten, awful time. Much like Radiohead's early 2000s records, Wilco had already put their finger on a growing sense of dread about the modern world that the post 9/11 environment would confirm.

But it's not all sad dirges, either. "War on War" has a melancholy cast, but its up-tempo admonition that "You've got to learn how to die/ If you want to be alive" became a kind of personal mantra at this time. I emerged through a pretty dark tunnel of depression between YHF and A Ghost Is Born, and I came to the realization that I really and truly wanted to embrace life, but always with the knowledge it was going to end someday. 

Maybe this album wasn't part of your voyage of personal discovery, but it was for me. Plus, "Heavy Metal Drummer" is the best song ever written about nostalgia. 

Rating: Five Tweedys

A Ghost is Born, 2004

As much as I love Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, sometimes I wonder if I like Ghost even more. From a personnel standpoint, it's a strange record. Jay Bennett is gone, Mikael Jorgensen is in, but Pat Sansone and Nels Cline were not part of the recording. I saw that expanded lineup live the summer this album came out, and it seemed to make Ghost a kind of artifact.

The Krautrock touches via producer Jim O'Rourke are even more pronounced here. I can hear the ghosts of Can and Neu!, especially on "Spiders, Kidsmoke" and "Muzzle of Bees." Those songs, along with "Hummingbird" and "Handshake Drugs" make for a formidable core to this album. Around this solid center there are diversions, like the Neil Young guitar of "At Least That's What You Said" and the drone noise experiment that closes out "Less Than You Think." When the straightforward, anthemic "Late Greats" emerges from the tinny feedback to end the album it's a bit of a shock, albeit a pleasant one. This song, about the great musicians who never make it big, always felt like a bit of a self-commentary. Was this album Wilco's embrace of obscurity? After all, their biggest selling record was one rejected by the label for being too obscure. 

This album also came out right around the time Jeff Tweedy went to rehab. Some songs, like "Hell is Chrome" and "Company in My Back" explore what Neil Young termed a "bad fog of loneliness" in the raw way of Summerteeth. Then again, "Company in My Back" rolls into the exuberant "I'm a Wheel," and "Handshake Drugs" has always radiated a vibe of contentedness to me. Tweedy's line delivery of "If I ever was myself I wasn't that night" is still one of my favorites. 

On the eve of the album's release I wondered if Wilco could sustain its artistic high after Bennett's departure. Turns out they could, and even explore new horizons in the process. 

Rating: Five Tweedys

Kicking Television, 2005

Live its musical ancestors, Wilco was required by the law of rock to release of double live album at some point. They indulged us with some live shows in their native Chicago. It would also be the first album featuring Pat Sansone and Nels Cline and first after Leroy Bach's departure. A Ghost Is Born would be the one Wilco album since AM without a hotshot guitarist in the band. 

I had seen this lineup live in Milwaukee in the summer of 2004, so this album was not much of a revelation to me. That live show really blew me away, and I could see right away the difference Cline's playing brought to the table. I'm periodizing this album with Wilco's trinity of breakthrough records because it's a sort of victory lap, and those songs constitute the bulk of the setlist. 

It's an objectively good album, but I know in my heart I've seen Wilco put on live shows more electrifying than what's here. I had already seen the new lineup before this one came out, so that was not a selling point. Nevertheless, it's worth a listen if you haven't had to privilege to see Wilco in the flesh. 

Rating: Five Tweedys