Star Wars Wilco

• 1EKG01:15
• 2More...02:43
• 3Random Name Generator03:49
• 4The Joke Explained02:33
• 5You Satellite05:16
• 6Taste the Ceiling03:15
• 7Pickled Ginger02:29
• 8Where Do I Begin02:54
• 9Cold Slope03:11
• 10King Of You02:40
• 11Magnetized03:40
• Total Runtime33:45

Info for Star Wars

„It’s the first new Wilco album since 2011’s The Whole Love. But in a more abstract way, it’s the first new album Wilco has released in almost a decade. The Whole Love was lauded as a corrective path after 2009’s Wilco (The Album). But the majority of the album’s praise seemed to state that The Whole Love was a hodgepodge of the best elements of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost Is Born, and Sky Blue Sky. The only problem with that compliment is why should listeners put on The Whole Love when they have three perfectly great albums to listen to instead?

Star Wars doesn’t suffer from that problem. It’s Wilco’s shortest album, coming in at a featherweight 33-minutes, nearly the same length as Against Me!‘s “blink and you’ll miss it” Transgender Dysphoria Blues. And like that album, there’s a wonderful, punkish energy populating most of the songs on Star Wars. Gone are the Grateful Dead-style jammy breakdowns of ten-minute plus tracks like “One Sunday Morning” or “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” Instead, we get jumpy pop statements like “Random Name Generator” or the fuzzy mid-‘70s guitar groove (courtesy of Nels Cline’s near-peerless guitar work) of “Pickled Ginger.” Aside from the immediate, goofy jolt of “Random Name Generator,” the finest song on Star Wars is “More…”. Armed with an immediately likable chorus, it’s Jeff Tweedy’s warmest vocal performance since the best moments on Sky Blue Sky.

Wilco songs tend to take on another light (and grow in stature) in a live setting. Tracks that were labeled too impersonable or sterile on A Ghost Is Born sounded perfectly intimate played in a live setting, as displayed in the Ghost songs on their double-live album Kicking Television. It seems that a few tracks on Star Wars that fall closer toward the ‘miss’ than ‘hit’ category will still sound fantastic live, namely “Taste the Ceiling” and the somewhat underwhelming closing track “Magnetized”.

Star Wars has the great, “fuck-it-all” carefree attitude that has populated other high-profile free releases, namely Nine Inch Nails’ The Slip and the collaborative effort of Chance the Rapper and Donnie Trumpet’s Surf. But the most bracing thing Star Wars brings to listeners is a whole new set of possibilities for Wilco. By stripping away their sound and for the most part, getting in and out of a song in about three minutes, Wilco has embraced their punkier roots. And for the first time in about a decade, listeners are now going to wonder what exactly a new Wilco album is going to sound like.“ (Sean McCarthy, PopMatters)

Produced by Tom Schick, Jeff Tweedy

The Chicago rock band founded in the mid-’90s by singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeff Tweedy last year launched and headlined the inaugural Solid Sound Festival, while Tweedy produced and wrote two songs for the Grammy- winning release by soul legend Mavis Staples, You Are Not Alone, which won Best Americana Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in February.

Staples joined Wilco, Avi Buffalo, Vetiver, the Baseball Project and more to perform at the first Solid Sound Festival, held Aug. 13-15, 2010, on the grounds of MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), a converted textile mill in North Adams, tucked away in the scenic Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts.

Wilco has already announced the second incarnation of Solid Sound June 24-26. Along with a pair of headline performances by Wilco, this year’s version features the Levon Helm Band, Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore, New Zealand rocker Liam Finn, alt-country duo The Handsome Family and folk couple Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion. Also performing are soul singer Syl Johnson, jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas and Chicago retro-soul band JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound, plus indie-rockers Here We Go Magic, Sic Alps, Purling Hiss and a rare live set by Pillow Wand, a collaboration between Moore and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline. Comedian John Hodgman hosts this year’s Comedy Cabaret, featuring Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac and comics Eugene Mirman and Morgan Murphy. Tickets are available via solidsoundfestival.com.

Also, Wilco this winter founded dBpm Records, headquartered in Easthampton, MA, to release future Wilco albums. Speaking of which, the band is currently recording the follow-up to its Grammy-nominated 2009 release Wilco (The Album) at the band’s studio in Chicago, The Loft.

It’s the latest chapter for Wilco, which Tweedy founded in 1994 after the dissolution of his previous group, Uncle Tupelo. From its raucous roots-rock origins, Wilco over the years has expanded its sound to encompass classic pop and genre-spanning experimentalism on acclaimed albums including 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (the subject of Sam Jones’ 2002 film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart) and 2005’s Grammy-winning effort A Ghost is Born. Wilco also teamed with English singer Billy Bragg in the late ’90s at the invitation of Woody Guthrie’s daughter, who invited them to collaborate on setting to music some of the folk icon’s previously unrecorded lyrics, resulting in a pair of highly regarded Mermaid Avenue albums.

The current Wilco lineup solidified in 2004 with the addition of guitarist Nels Cline and guitarist/keyboardist Pat Sansone, who rounded out a roster featuring Tweedy, founding bassist John Stirratt, drummer Glenn Kotche and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen. Kotche joined the band during the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Jorgensen helped with live sound manipulations on that tour before switching to piano and becoming a full-time member of Wilco.

In life beyond Wilco Stirratt and Sansone play together in the folk-pop group Autumn Defense, Jorgensen fronts the pop-rock band Pronto and Cline performs in multiple side projects, most notably with the free-jazz instrumental group The Nels Cline Singers. Kotche performs with bassist Darin Gray in On Fillmore and as a composer and a solo percussionist. He has also collaborated with Tweedy on the Loose Fur side project.

This album contains no booklet.