You can read a thousand other reviews of “Wilco (the Album),” which came out yesterday, but a lot of the write-ups miss what I think is the most striking thing about the record: It’s by far the band’s most accessible disc since “Summerteeth.” And I, for one, don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.

My favorite tracks are the ones I could easily hear getting radioplay, and I’m not just talking on NPR stations: “You and I,” featuring Feist on guest vocals, is a loose and pretty pop duet that’s sweet enough for Top 40 play, or at least Cities 97 (but not too sweet for old cynics like me to love it). Even better in the ballad department is “Country Disappeared,” a slow but gushing piano groove that shows Tweedy’s old-soul influence. Meanwhile, fans of the “A.M.”-style, straight-up, melodic Wilco rock sound should dig the cheeky rockers “Sonny Feeling” and “Wilco (the Song).”

What most of the reviews seem to agree on, as do I, is that this is also the band’s least ambitious disc since… maybe forever. Wilco’s not keeping up with Radiohead as envelope-pushing art-rock-gods, in other words. Again, not a bad thing. I’d kill to hear Radiohead make a more straight-up album like this again (as much as I loved “In Rainbows”). But there’s a little of that “Yankee Hotel”/”A Ghost” innovation here. The fragmented and harried “Bull Black Nova” features guitarist Nels Cline at his freakiest, while “One Wing” is a bleak and brilliant epic.

As far as Wilco’s amazing live shows go, those latter two tunes are the ones I most look forward to hearing up at the 10,000 Lakes fest on July 23. But I’d also like to hear some of these songs on my preteen niece’s little pink boombox or her mom’s mini-SUV radio.Â

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.