Over the last decade or so, American alt-country band Wilco have released albums called Wilco (The Album), Schmilco, and Star Wars. To casual fans those titles may imply the band have run out of ideas - and reviews would seem to back that up.
Photo: Bandcamp
Their latest is called Cousin, and its sole producing credit is a somewhat unlikely name: Welsh musician Cate Le Bon. The resulting collaboration is the most experimental thing the band has done in a long time, harking back to the boundary-pushing work they were doing around 20 years ago.
Wilco formed from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo in 1994. Since then, singer Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt have stayed the course, while the band members around them changed. The current lineup has been fixed since 2004.
For some fans the group’s high point came in its first three albums, but for some, the three that followed are their best. That run, beginning with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is when a degree of experimentation entered the picture. The band worked with musician Jim O’Rourke on that album, whose slightly avant-garde mixes won them some of their best reviews, but cost them their label.
Enlisting Cate Le Bon to produce this one seems like an attempt to create a similar artistic friction, and while the results don’t hit the same highs, they’re always engaging.
Related: Jeff Tweedy talks to Kim Hill about writing, anxiety and addiction
Related: Nick Bollinger revisits Wilco's Being There on its 21st anniversary
‘Infinite Surprise’ opens the album with guitar squawks, brass, and a clattering noise I can’t identify, with Le Bon cycling through these elements before letting them all hit at once. It rolls into ‘Ten Dead’, which is by contrast pointedly dry and upfront.
The band began working on the album back in 2019, hitting pause when the pandemic hit, then completing and releasing another, more straightforward entry: 2022’s Cruel Country.
At the time Tweedy described it as ‘sculpted art pop’, saying the songs had ‘alien shapes’, and I can hear what he means. Tracks like ‘A Bowl and a Pudding’ don’t hit flourishes in their choruses, but shift from pensive to romantic through a series of interesting chord changes.
Cousin is a pretty laid back collection, at its most energetic on the title track. It’s also a good example of Le Bon’s production touches: throughout she emphasises the percussive elements, and builds interesting textures.
This is the fifth Wilco album to be released in the last 10 years, during which time Jeff Tweedy has also put out four solo albums, and three books. Vocally he’s at his most wizened here, and it’s fair to say he almost sounds disengaged on some of these songs, but weirdly it often works in their favour.
The music around him is colourful enough to offset that cool remove, and goes out on a particularly upbeat note on ‘Meant To Be’. Cousin doesn’t rewrite the rulebook, but it mixes things up enough to feel very refreshing.
For more of Tony Stamp's album reviews, check out The Sampler.
