By Amanda Rodriguez
Close your eyes. You are in a car. The sun is greeting the day warming your skin. The wind is tracing every strand of hair on your head. Your hand slices the morning air in a wave. The empty roads devoured by burnt orange, rust and yellow leaves introduce you to a new world. It’s like a perfect scene to the end of a great indie film that you are staring in, but what song would capture and paint the emotions felt? “The Whole Love,” on Wilco’s eighth album of the same name embodies every sensation experienced.
Rolling Stone says, “Wilco often specialize in uncomfortable comfort music: Seventies-style melodies submerged in dark, abstract sounds and cloudy emotions,” and if you have seen their documentary released in 2002, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, you would understand why. Jeff Tweedy, as well as Wilco as a band have undergone a great deal of pressure from past record labels.
After locking themselves in their studio for weeks on end and ultimately losing Jay Bennett to artistic differences, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was conceived. With this album they wanted to bring a different feel and emotion to their work, which resulted in their record label, Reprise, refusing to release the record. Feeling this was the best work he had created, Tweedy left Reprise and signed with Nonesuch Records, making this the best career move Wilco could have made.
Today Wilco is under their own label, dBpm, which allowed the band to rediscover an independence and freedom they once possessed. This upbeat, psychedelic-meets-folk fusion they have sprinkled throughout the whole, The Whole Love album definitely represents their new freedom. This album to some is considered to have a sense of country waltz, with twists of Dixieland as well as blend of early Beatles sounds. I’m sure you are saying to yourself, what the heck, however the strange union between all of the sounds is what makes this album so enjoyable.
It’s apparent that Tweedy had issues with his father in the past with lyrics such as “dreamt about killing you again last night, and it felt all right to me,” however it is evident that he is talking about his father in the last song on the album, One Sunday Morning. The 11 minute and 58 second song is a combination of different struggles Tweedy has experienced. This is the only song within the whole record that you will hear the sadness portrayed through the music. Although the other songs do talk about pressing issues and love, there is a sense of relaxation to them, a sort of upbeat manner that they possess.
With the hard earned freedom, Wilco has created something that most bands try to achieve but will never acquire. Wilco has gained a sense of self and independence that is all their own.
Close your eyes. You are in a field of grass. Let the music engulf your mind.
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