Wilco f/ Feist: "You and I"

And so Jeff Tweedy’s chopping away at Wilco until it’s a tyrannical utopia of dad rock and feel-good summer festival wistfulness, until the last vestiges of all that once made Wilco seem exciting is absorbed into the nadir of neutered pap that “You and I” surely represents. One is left to regretfully conclude that the pre-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) kicking out of Jay Bennett, whatever personal comfort it afforded Tweedy and company, robbed Wilco of a formula it was only then perfecting. Tweedy’s folk fragility seemed to shudder against the storm of Bennett’s pretentious, egotistical temporalities. Since then Tweedy’s surrounded himself with the kind of musicians—Koche, Cline, and occasionally O’Rourke—you’d think would generate efforts still more avant, or at least as aware, as those for which Wilco is rightfully revered.

But somehow post-YHF Wilco has become less and less the sum of its parts. Every member’s talents and personalities have been bleached into faceless devotion to Tweedy’s traditionalist underpinnings. Even A Ghost is Born (2004) lost contrast to volume, interplay to hysterics. Now, all is Tweedy—turn him up to 11, turn him down to 2, it’s not a conversation anymore. Which is not in itself terribly problematic until the man responsible for the succinct, perfect heartbreak of having become the American aquarium drinker who assassins down the avenue begins to write such meaningless placeholder lyrics and toss-off poetry as “You and I.” To quote it would simply be to confirm what one already assumes about a song called “You and I.” Even the nothing-if-not-charismatic Feist is sucked mercilessly into this solipsistic void of self-indulgent easy listening. Tweedy just sounds so comfortable. This is the Tweedy that plays guitar to his kid on the tour bus to cheer him up after the claw game rips off his dollar.

Chet mentioned that this was Wilco’s Red Album, and he’s right: this is Tweedy at his most narcissistic and self-legitimizing, exiled to a world of revisionist AM radio nostalgia. A band that once seemed to burst with ideas—even the CD that came stuck to The Wilco Book had electric, bracing material on it, even if most of it was left without the pending polish of Wilco (The Album)—now seems content to tread out rote traditionalism. It may seem unfair and facile to constantly compare a band’s output to their best album, but this isn’t just sub-Yankee. This should be sub-Wilco.