Last year’s album Star Wars was a grungy, scuzzy road trip around Americana. On Wilco’s 10th album, the group’s enthusiasm is packed away in the boot along with the musty blankets and empty water bottles. If its title didn’t give the game away, here lies irony and disillusionment; a slow, mellow exploration of the middle ground between introverted and cantankerous. Yet somehow Jeff Tweedy and his band radiate warmth with the disheveled romance, from the solace he offers other 49-year-olds when he confesses “I cry, cry all day, cry all night,” to his wry reflection on the “normal American kids” to whom life is one big poncho parade full of “bongs and jams, and carpeted vans”. There’s something of Supergrass’ fumbling glam stomp about Someone to Lose, while the creeping Common Sense and the sweet, soft, skiffle of If I Ever Was a Child are gorgeous. It all ends with Just Say Goodbye, Tweedy’s whispered – or rather weary, wheezy – finale.
