Over at WaPo's Click Track yesterday, pop critic Chris Richards asked his readers to explain to him the allure of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, who played a solo show at the Lincoln Theatre last night with The Autumn Defense. I'm betting that had he attended last night's show, the experience of Tweedy's emotive voice singing songs stripped [...]
In which Steve Kolowich, a Wilco devotee, and Ted Scheinman, a recent convert, discuss last night's show at the Strathmore.
Steve: Ted, you're a concert-going man. NPR has called Wilco "the best live band in America"; I've been talking your ear off about their chops for months; and your girlfriend has been burning CDs like it's [...]
Two things about Son Volt’s new album, American Central Dust, to start: First, there’s little here Son Volt hasn't shown us before. Second, it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard this year.
The record finds Jay Farrar back on the road, searching for meaning beneath America’s fingernails. He gives us grainy portraits of Rust-Belt Americans, [...]
Here's what our dear, dear Jule Banville–just gimme a sec to dry my eyes–had to say about tonight's musical offering at the Rock & Roll Hotel:
If Elizabeth and the Catapult hit its debut a touch sooner—and landed an iPod commercial, of course—it’d be Elizabeth Ziman, and not Leslie Fiest, singing with Tweedy on the new [...]
The critical buzz around Wilco’s latest, self-titled album has centered on the notion of identity. Some have heralded Wilco (the album) as a reclamation of the insouciance of the band’s early albums, while others—particularly City Paper’s own Aaron Leitko—have described it as a tour of the band’s sonic arc over the last decade. But aside [...]
John Stirratt joined legendary alternative country pioneers Uncle Tupelo as a bass player in 1993 for their final release, Anondyne. After Uncle Tupelo's ugly divorce, Jeff Tweedy was awarded custody of Stirratt and they went on to form the much-lauded Wilco.
In a band that used to have a reputation for shedding members, Stirratt has remained [...]
Wilco's new album leaked yesterday, a month and a half ahead of its release date–which actually isn't bad, considering the band's last two albums leaked two months prematurely, and the one before that slipped out nine months earlier than planned. But album leaks don't seem to piss off frontman Jeff Tweedy nearly as much as [...]
For some reason, everybody wants to make a movie about Wilco. The Chicago based band has been the subject of, or at played a significant role in, two full-length documentaries already. And during most of that screen time, the band is grumpy. Remember the scene in The Man In The Sand where singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy [...]
