You know, not all my email comes from angry gods. Some of it comes from the bands I like to listen to. Like just last night, I'm checking my inbox and I see this:
That's right, Wilco was streaming their new album - which isn't scheduled to come out until the middle of May - on their website last night. So right about 10pm Central Time (which around these parts is what we call 11pm Eastern Time), I plugged my cheap headphones into the laptop, clicked on over to the Wilco site, and listened to the new disc in its entirety. And then I listened to it again.
I didn't listen to it twice so that I could write up a nice little song-by-song preview of it on this here blog, I listened to it twice because it sounded so good. It's a beautiful album that builds on their recent Yankee Hotel Foxtrot / A Ghost Is Born sound. There's much less of the sonic discord, a lot more melody, and writing that seemed less abstract than it was on those albums. Plus, Jeff Tweedy's voice sounds stronger and clearer than it's sounded since Wilco's early stuff.
And it's not that I minded the sonic discord or abstract lyrics of recent albums, but the reduction of both on Sky Blue Sky makes it more than just Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 3. Where A Ghost is Born sounded to me like a continuation of the YHF sessions (not that there was anything wrong with that), Sky Blue Sky strikes me as a refinement of that sound, and a bit of a move away from it at the same time.
I think I'm writing way too much here about an album I only listened to twice, but I'm very excited about this release and I'm happy that I got to hear a sneak preview. I'm even happier that it sounded so good.
[I apologize for not posting about the preview before it happened, but there wasn't much time between me opening the email and the start of the preview. If you're really into Wilco, I would suggest signing up for their emails (there's a link at the bottom of the page). They do a lot of cool things with them.]
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