{"id":19317,"date":"2024-02-21T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=19317"},"modified":"2024-02-20T18:23:08","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T18:23:08","slug":"long-lost-cousin-wilco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2024\/02\/21\/long-lost-cousin-wilco\/","title":{"rendered":"LONG LOST COUSIN WILCO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Norman Warwick hears of a<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LONG LOST COUSIN WILCO<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a0\u201cDepending on how you look at it, the connection to\u00a0The Bear<\/em>\u00a0was an unfortunate\u2014or fortunate\u2014coincidence,\u201d singer-writer Jeff Tweedy (left)<\/em><\/strong> recently told Paste on line magazine, laughing, during a Zoom from Wilco\u2019s Chicago studio, The Loft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was certainly not conscious. I saw most of the first season and I hadn\u2019t seen any of the second season. And then people started saying [we titled it after the show], once we announced the record. I don\u2019t really remember it being that prominent in the first season, that \u2018cousin\u2019 thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title\u00a0Cousin<\/em>\u00a0wasn\u2019t even the first choice for the record. Initially, Wilco wanted to call it\u00a0Infinite Surprise<\/em>, after the opening track. But with a limitless action like \u201cinfinite,\u201d you open yourself up to a lot of speculation and a lot of expectations, so the band pivoted to something simpler\u2014something that couldn\u2019t become oversaturated with destiny or assumptions. \u201c[Cousin<\/em>], I think, internally, it was a reaction to the working title\u2014feeling over time like it was a little too heavily weighted,\u201d Tweedy explains. \u201cBut it just felt like that was\u00a0too<\/em>\u00a0leading to somebody\u2019s anticipation of what the record might be. Are they going to think that they\u2019re going to be surprised every 10 seconds? It\u2019s just a more weighted, meaningful phrase than just the word \u2018cousin.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m cousin to the world,\u201d Tweedy confessed upon the lead-up to the record\u2019s release. While the intentionality behind the title isn\u2019t tethered to The Bear<\/em>, the meaning of it rings in similarly. In the show, characters refer to each other with such an affection, even if they aren\u2019t blood-related. It\u2019s a gesture of communion, of brotherhood, of understanding. \u201cI\u2019m here and you\u2019re here. We\u2019ll get through this one way or another.\u201d That\u2019s Cousin<\/em>. That\u2019s Wilco. \u201cI think I was, primarily, looking for a word that could absorb anybody\u2019s interpretation of the record,\u201d Tweedy adds. \u201cSometimes you just want a word that\u2019s hollowed out and neutral and just has a nice sound to it. That was what the appeal was, that Cousin<\/em> could come to mean this record to somebody\u2014the way a band name stops meaning the words, like the Rolling Stones. Over time, it just absorbs the impression that your work has made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tweedy did<\/em> see \u201cReview,\u201d the seventh episode of season one, where a 12-minute live rendition (from a 2005 show at the Vic Theater in Chicago, which would appear on the record Kicking Television<\/em>) of \u201cSpiders (Kidsmoke)\u201d soundtracks almost the entire story\u2014which is also a bottle episode, and maybe the most anxiety riddled attempt in recent memory. Tweedy calls the song cue an \u201cinspired music programming choice,\u201d noting that it\u2019s rare to see such long sync licenses. But, like the rest of us, his reaction to the unraveling of the episode and the well-being of the show\u2019s characters is one of communal frustration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI think I had the impression most people would want, that maybe things would settle down if you turn that off,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s not helping if that\u2019s in the background. Usually, when I hear stuff in movies, or out in public, if it\u2019s being played over the PA in a restaurant or something, it takes me a long time to realize that it\u2019s me. [Watching\u00a0The Bear<\/em>], I was sitting there thinking \u2018This is really familiar,\u2019 because, especially something like that, that\u2019s a live version that I\u2019ve probably when the songs and sounds of\u00a0Cousin<\/em>\u00a0started coming together around the time Wilco put out their 11th album,\u00a0Ode to Joy<\/em>, in 2019. An encounter with Cate Le Bon at the band\u2019s perennial Solid Sound festival (at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts) spurred the work in motion, too. Over time, the architectural skeleton of\u00a0Cousin<\/em>\u00a0slowly began straightening out. But, in the four years in-between meeting Le Bon and releasing\u00a0Cousin<\/em> (right)<\/em><\/strong>, Wilco would pivot from that work and churn out 21 songs for\u00a0Cruel Country<\/em>\u00a0in 2022. This era of productivity for the sextet is greatly a product of Tweedy\u2019s own output, given how prolific he is with his writing (three books, three Wilco albums and three solo albums in a five-year period solidify that truth alone). Making\u00a0Cruel Country<\/em>\u00a0was a breath of fresh air for the band\u2014not because making\u00a0Cousin<\/em> was an exhausting labor, but because these 10 tunes required extra care and extra attention. To let songs that are this conceptually and constructionally dense and rewarding become what we hear them as on the record, getting to that destination can be intense and, sometimes, you just gotta cut through that intensity with some lower-stakes noise hardly\u00a0ever<\/em>\u00a0listened to\u2014so it\u2019s like, \u2018This sounds like something I should know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI write a lot of songs, so I always feel a little anxious to get them out into the world\u2014because I feel like there\u2019s no way I\u2019m ever going to be able to share\u00a0all of them<\/em>,\u201d Tweedy says. \u201cAnd I write them because I like sharing them. What\u00a0Cruel Country<\/em>\u00a0did was buy a little time to give these songs [from Cousin<\/em>]\u2014that really seem to be crying out for this kind of treatment\u2014a little bit more time for that to actually happen, a little bit more time to reach their potential. You can\u2019t really rush that type of arranging or sonic shaping. It\u2019s a more considered process. The song shapes on\u00a0Cruel Country<\/em>\u00a0were really easy to grab a hold of, and everybody really responded to them quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A big part of Cruel Country<\/em> was that it was a band-in-a-room record, the first one Wilco had made in at least a decade. And, even though there was overlap between that record and Cousin<\/em>, the latter didn\u2019t sport the same intimacy. A song like \u201cSunlight Ends\u201d\u2014which sports this real strange and cosmic instrumentation of bubbly, almost robotic guitars, Kotche\u2019s rototom cues and ripples of electronica\u2014is nearly impossible to lay down with six guys all chipping in at once. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like you have to get the skeleton together and then bring in somebody to do the eyes,\u201d Tweedy notes. \u201cIt\u2019s more fragmented as a process than just getting together in a room and playing. It\u2019s almost like you have to write the score and you have to show everybody a little bit of the shape, so that we can all see the same thing at the same time. Whereas, if you have a song that\u2019s three chords and built on a country shape, everybody goes, \u2018Oh, I know what to do with that.\u2019 And then we all work within our personal preferences on how we bring ourselves to that and make it our own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Le Bon would stop by The Loft in late 2019 and record a cover of \u201cCompany in My Back\u201d from\u00a0A Ghost Is Born<\/em>\u00a0for\u00a0Uncut<\/em>\u00a0and then, in 2022, she was invited to produce Cousin<\/em>. The line between her work and Wilco\u2019s is not blurred; her last solo LP,\u00a0Pompeii<\/em>, features a striking minimalism rife with complex intimacies and divine poetics that are not unlike the interpersonal and graceful portraits Tweedy lines his records with\u2014and, especially on a record like\u00a0Schmilco<\/em>, where the band leaned into delicacy and soft spots with more intent than ever before. The best American band and the most underrated producer in music\u2014it\u2019s a collaboration that makes sense, and it lends a chromatic touch to Wilco. And, via Le Bon\u2019s guidance, a big part of her presence on\u00a0Cousin<\/em>\u00a0was using subtle, minor detail changes to completely reroute the destinies of songs like \u201cTen Dead\u201d and \u201cSoldier Child\u201d and \u201cMeant To Be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s exciting to be around Cate, it\u2019s exciting to work with Cate,\u201d Tweedy says. \u201cWe had just done\u00a0Cruel Country<\/em>, and that was such an easygoing and fun process. I think, initially, there was a little tension as to how this is going to work, because [Cousin<\/em>] wasn\u2019t going to be easy like that. It wasn\u2019t going to just be an immediately rewarding scenario. It was going to take some time and some trial-and-error and some frustrations. But, Wilco is a band that, once we understand the parameters of what it is we\u2019re searching for, everybody\u2019s on board. I spent the bulk of the time working with [Cate] within the band, and it became very clear very early that this wasn\u2019t going to be just be six guys in a room playing with Cate sitting in the room and directing everybody. It was gonna take more individual exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilco just isn\u2019t a band that\u2019s going to phone it in. As a longtime fan, you begin to see how divided their audience can get. There\u2019s the old heads, the\u00a0Being There<\/em>\u00a0through\u00a0A Ghost is Born<\/em>\u00a0purists who don\u2019t completely engage with the contemporary stuff; then there\u2019s the new guard, the folks who devour the dBpm-era work. But there\u2019s a reason why\u00a0Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/em>\u00a0wasn\u2019t even in the same stratosphere of attitude or sonics as\u00a0A.M.<\/em>: Wilco refuses to settle into one mode, instead pointing their aim at a lifetime of surprise. And, across 29 years together as a band, they\u2019ve fully committed to the idea that the only type of music worth putting out is the music they haven\u2019t made yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m afforded a great luxury of having some really great musicians trust me and believe in me enough to get uncomfortable,\u201d Tweedy says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem like bands really want that over time, I think they work towards some way to make it easier or more comfortable. We\u2019ve never made any of the records we\u2019ve made the same way twice, and that\u2019s a built-in kind of discomfort. And, a lot of people maybe don\u2019t even hear it because, once you\u2019re a band for a long time, you\u2019re also competing with everything you\u2019ve ever done. And there\u2019s just a lot of baggage; you\u2019re never going to be a band nobody\u2019s ever heard of again. And we all understand that. The only way to combat that kind of familiarity being diminishing\u2014being projected onto us\u2014is to allow ourselves to be uncomfortable and accept it as being a challenge, to live up to our own idea of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his memoir,\u00a0Let\u2019s Go (So We Can Get Back)<\/em>, Tweedy wrote that melody is king. On those Y2K Wilco records, like\u00a0Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0A Ghost is Born<\/em>, the orthodoxy of pop melodies were obliterated\u2014and the band has done that again on Cousin<\/em>\u2014though Tweedy acknowledges the spectrum of music he cut his teeth on. In his new book\u00a0World Within a Song<\/em>, he lends space to everything from R.E.M.\u2019s \u201cRadio Free Europe\u201d to Billie Eilish\u2019s \u201ci love you\u201d to Dolly Parton\u2019s \u201cI Will Always Love You\u201d and cites them all as integral fixtures of his musical identity, down to a molecular level. There\u2019s a moment on\u00a0Cousin<\/em>\u00a0closer \u201cMeant To Be\u201d where Tweedy\u2019s vocals go to pockets of pitch that are underscored in his oeuvre, and that experimentation comes from a desire to not see himself as just one thing or one kind of musician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI admire and wish\u2014a lot of times\u2014that I had been more disciplined in my aesthetics in my life and had been able to plow a very narrow path for myself. But, I\u2019ve never had a coherent philosophy about music, so I\u2019ve always wanted to be everything<\/em>. I\u2019ve always wanted to hear myself be able to do everything<\/em>. And that allows a lot of things to grow based on \u2018Well, I\u2019ve never sounded like Echo & The Bunnymen before.\u2019 I\u2019ve never tried to write a song like Echo & The Bunnymen or The Cure. There\u2019s a realization that that music is actually a part of my vocabulary as much as any country music\u2014maybe even more. Maybe that\u2019s not apparent to a lot of people, but I grew up in that and in the heyday of that kind of pop music. It\u2019s, maybe, almost more like giving myself permission to explore that type of song. I don\u2019t think it ends up sounding like New Order or anything like that. It sounds like Wilco.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tweedy\u2019s songwriting is glacial and organic. When he was writing his memoir, he was also working on his solo records Warm, Warmer<\/em> and Love Is King<\/em> and, as a result, he began making songs that were much more direct and biographical\u2014because his focus was so centered on memory and on prose. That period of a few years really gave him, and Wilco, time to remain in a pseudo-abstract energy. Tweedy\u2019s aim on projects like Ode to Joy<\/em> and Cousin<\/em> is to make his language conjure the mysticism of negative spaces\u2014to not say anything but still rein in imagery somehow, tapping into disciplines (like haiku writing) where the words aren\u2019t necessarily related but can extract consciousness and perceptions through description. \u201cIt\u2019s like writing the songs and then getting out an eraser and taking away some of the specifics,\u201d Tweedy adds. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot less lyrics on [Cousin<\/em>]. There\u2019s, I think, a real effort to try and stay in some economy of language and let the sonic textures of the record be more communicative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first time I ever heard a Wilco (left)<\/em><\/strong> song was in late 2014, when I was 16 and getting my film buff hat sized for the first time. I was making it my mission to watch all of the critical darlings of the year: Whiplash, Birdman, Gone Girl, Inherent Vice<\/em>. At some point, I got around to seeing Richard Linklater\u2019s Boyhood<\/em>. There\u2019s a scene around the halfway point, where Ethan Hawke\u2019s character is driving his Pontiac GTO and absolutely crooning to Wilco\u2019s \u201cHate It Here.\u201d I was entranced without a hitch and, immediately, went to my Beats Music app (before it was bought up by Apple Inc. and turned into Apple Music in 2015) and added every song from Sky Blue Sky<\/em> into my library. I consumed Wilco\u2019s catalog like it was my well-kept secret; no one around me was kicking it with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/em> like I was, though I certainly tried to get everyone hip. It wasn\u2019t until about five years later, when I was visiting my dear friend in Los Angeles on college break, that I saw he had an Uncle Tupelo CD in his car. It\u2019s the little things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is just to say: When you spend enough of your life listening to one artist, they become such an integral piece of you. I remember the exact second I heard Wilco for the first time because it follows me on a molecular level. I see a lot of similarities between Sky Blue Sky<\/em> and Cousin<\/em>, if only because they both tap into a place of recovery, a present-tense circumstance of reconvening with loved ones and reshaping existing relationships after separation or distance. In between A Ghost is Born<\/em> and Sky Blue Sky<\/em>, Tweedy had entered a rehabilitation clinic program to receive treatment for his ongoing addiction to painkillers. He wrote in Let\u2019s Go (So We Can Get Back)<\/em> that, when Wilco was making Sky Blue Sky<\/em>, he was making an effort to forego the myths that surround suffering and art. Cousin<\/em>, I think, is rid of myth altogether\u2014in that much of the struggle and survival across the album arrives as if from a place of plainspoken truth towards a reality that\u2019s unavoidable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lyrics like \u201cit never hurts to cry, the dead awake in waves\u201d or \u201cI\u2019ve always been afraid to sing, somehow that\u2019s all I do, strange as it seems, I\u2019ve outlived my dreams\u201d feel existential yet grounded, pulling at this fabric of disquiet. Yet, moments like \u201cholding our hearts close together, keeping to ourselves an empty sea, so we can believe our love is meant to be\u201d or \u201cyou dance like the dust in the light where the sun comes in, and I\u2019m following\u201d or \u201clet you save me, save me again\u201d employ nebulas of grace and affirmation. Despite the conceptual nature of a record like Cousin<\/em>, there\u2019s a real focus that lives beyond the pushes and pulls of reality and clutter of chaos. That attention lives in the dichotomy of love and distance. It\u2019s a complex braid to untangle, but one that always, always, always reveals the stunning branches of empathy that ache beneath the surface of Wilco\u2019s offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing a person in recovery almost 20 years, one of the things that you think\u2014when you\u2019ve been through recovery, or you\u2019ve been through treatment for mental health issues\u2014is there\u2019s a sense of gratitude that you\u2019ve been given this hurdle, something to give your life some meaning, in a negative way or in a positive way. It\u2019s something that not everybody has and, being forced to look at yourself honestly, being forced to introspect on a daily basis to keep yourself healthy, leads to a lot of matter-of-fact wisdom. It\u2019s not really that<\/em> fucking hard. On one level, it\u2019s really very simple. On another level, I\u2019m saying the stupidest shit in the world but it\u2019s, for some reason, very complex and hard for humans to keep an eye on an authentic self. I would easily be compelled to do drugs again if I wasn\u2019t centered and really focused on the things that matter and things that are my problems that I can distinguish from other peoples\u2019 problems. It\u2019s a good thing to have happened to you, in a weird way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sky Blue Sky<\/em> wasn\u2019t given much of a fair shake upon its release in May 2007. \u201cI think they\u2019ve all been given an unfair shake,\u201d Tweedy chimes in, cracking up. Folks wanted another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/em>, but even A Ghost is Born<\/em> suggested that wading through the same water was never going to be on the band\u2019s radar. Tweedy chalks the initial response to Sky Blue Sky<\/em> coming out at \u201cthe height of gatekeeping\u201d and points to Wilco not getting the benefit of the doubt that there was a conscious decision to make a straightforward record using some of the vocabulary of soft rock and multi-generational motifs and textures. \u201cI was making the first record I\u2019d made since I had been in the hospital, and I really didn\u2019t want to make a lot of decisions,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted everything to be us sitting together and making arrangements together. The thing that\u2019s quite puzzling to me is that [Sky Blue Sky<\/em>] is looked at as very simple. But it\u2019s not, it\u2019s actually very hard to play a lot of those songs. The arrangements were really highly considered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every record Wilco makes is met with warmth from fans and admirers alike, even the projects that folks might not fully get<\/em> until the next one comes out. I felt that way about Star Wars<\/em> and Schmilco<\/em> (two back-to-back releases that were originally intended to be one double album), in that I truly didn\u2019t appreciate the former until I got heavily obsessed with the latter. And then, just when I expected Ode to Joy<\/em> to be this continuation of diaristic, softened folk songs about childhood and history, Tweedy and the guys made a percussion-forward, troubadour joint about the world\u2019s decline and the act of embracing our loved ones. To spend a part of your life with Wilco\u2019s music is to give yourself the gift of holding stock in a band that\u2019s unafraid of taking a left turn away from what\u2019s expected of them. \u201cI think that people have a lot to choose from in Wilco and, wherever they end up coming into the band, they might want more of that the next time around, because they made a connection with us through this certain thing,\u201d Tweedy adds. \u201cAnd the next thing is usually not that, so there\u2019s a reaction to that\u2014and, maybe, even a repulsion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Cousin<\/em>, the record begins with white noise\u2014as if you\u2019re listening to the noise pollution outside an apartment window. It\u2019s as if Wilco have embedded the majesty of Chicago and of metropolitan wonder and the places the band has called home into the actual DNA of the band and the songs they make. And Chicago, it\u2019s filled with monolithic shapes and beautiful, ornate architecture, and there\u2019s so much sonic information. You aren\u2019t just walking through silence, with every step you become an attachment to that busyness. \u201cThe beginning of \u2018Infinite Surprise,\u2019 to me, I like the record starting as if you were just being dropped into something that was already happening,\u201d Tweedy explains. \u201cLike, when you come out of a movie theater and the wash of street noise hits you for the first time\u2014which is what happens every day when I leave the studio. I walk into the world as it\u2019s already happening, and that\u2019s an exciting moment. That\u2019s an exciting feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though parts of Cousin<\/em> were already being worked on before Cruel Country<\/em> was written and recorded, they make sense in a sonic order of continuity\u2014as if Tweedy is leaving a room with his band and exiting into this panorama of commotion. That cohesion anthologizes the Wilco canon like a short story, or an assembly of pointed, divorced vignettes embossed with a network of subtle throughlines. There\u2019s an effort there, to\u2014as every record or, even, every side<\/em> of a record, ends\u2014pick up the conversation where the band left off, but in a different room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cousin<\/em> is the most industrial record Wilco has made since starting their own record label, dBpm, in 2011. What I mean by that is there\u2019s a lot of computerized elements, heavy overdubs, samplers and pitched percussion on this thing\u2014be it the startling, melancholic drum machine on \u201cSunlight Ends\u201d or the jagged soundscape swell on \u201cPittsburgh.\u201d Having gone from making a full-blown Americana, singer\/songwriter statement like Cruel Country<\/em> to fashioning a bold, diverse and complex palette on Cousin<\/em> in just a year\u2019s time, the traditions of \u201cfan service\u201d are fully out the window. Instead, Wilco put a lot of investment in giving their listeners something worth disentangling and being curious about\u2014and much of the reason for these changes in speed and creative challenges across albums is a result of Tweedy wanting to be heard and wanting to reach people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a really sincere desire for there to be a connection and to communicate,\u201d he says. \u201cIn my mind, one of the elements that you have to use in communication is surprise. It\u2019s one of the elements of poetry, it\u2019s one of the elements of art. If everything unfolds in the way that you expect it to unfold, you tune out. You become very bored. I become bored\u2014as a listener, as a reader\u2014if I\u2019m not having the rug pulled out from me from time to time. I think it\u2019s just better that way. I think art is better that way, to have to trust that you\u2019re going to come to your audience in a way that treats them with respect\u2014like they\u2019re going to be willing to invest in it, you assume that there\u2019s a desire. That\u2019s a leap of faith. And, then, there\u2019s a leap of faith in us that, when we pull the rug out, we\u2019re not just doing it just<\/em> to pull the rug out; we\u2019re doing it so that you can see the song again. You have to fuck with the language, you have to fuck with the status of how people perceive things to be heard again, to be understood again. And it\u2019s just the only way it works, to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song \u201cSoldier Child\u201d is the most Wilco-sounding part of\u00a0Cousin<\/em>. There\u2019s an outro guitar part\u2014which Tweedy played himself, and nailed on the first take\u2014that reminds me of the pedal steel on the\u00a0Cruel Country<\/em>\u00a0track \u201cTired of Taking It Out On You,\u201d at least in the sense of what emotional response I pulled from it. I\u2019m not a musician, but I hear these fragments in songs and they yank something from my soul. Wilco have made it a habit of continuing the stories in their songs through instrumentation, be it by constructing a lick or a piano sequence as if they\u2019re characters in the songs. Tweedy calls it \u201ca wordless feeling that continues the thought or the emotion. It\u2019s something that you do for 30 or 40 years, you have a guitar in your hands so much in my life that, at some point, miraculously, you\u2014if you want it\u2014become more conversant with it,\u201d he says. \u201cThat started happening for me around\u00a0A Ghost is Born<\/em>, when I was forced to play all of the electric guitar just by the situation of the environment and the band changes. I looked around and it was like, \u2018Oh, if I want a lot of guitar on this record I guess it\u2019s gonna be me.\u2019 So, I really started thinking of the guitar as an instrument that does\u00a0that<\/em>. Everybody in the band, we can talk to each other with our instruments. It sounds really cosmic or like some sort of exalted state that I\u2019m trying to front. It\u2019s eternal, it\u2019s a timeless thing that people have figured out [while] sitting on their porches in Appalachia, figured it out in the Sub-Saharan Desert.\u201d but he doesn\u2019t know how to explain to anybody what that really is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of motifs spread within the 10 tracks of Cousin<\/em>, but the one that speaks the loudest is this idea of humanity and the binds that hold us all together, whether we recognize them or not. It makes me think about what Woody Guthrie was singing about 75 years ago. Tweedy says something in World Within a Song<\/em> about \u201cThe Message\u201d by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, that honest depictions of the world aren\u2019t always sympathetically written about in popular music. As a writer, I\u2019m always interested in using music and lyricism as a vehicle for better understanding the core connective tissue that we share with our neighbors and our loved ones and strangers, too. The way Tweedy puts it is \u201chigh-art journalism,\u201d something that Cousin<\/em>, in its most flourishing moments, taps into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an authentic world that is very hard to see without art. I think that\u2019s the main role of how books work, how records work, how paintings work\u2014to snap people out of an illusion of the world, that they think they\u2019re participating in, and open a window into something that\u2019s more cosmic and real then we\u2019re usually able to conjure on our own without it, without art,\u201d he says. \u201cHaving a sincerely held belief that that is a worthwhile thing to contribute is pretty motivating. It\u2019s pretty inspiring. I love being a part of that; I love that I, somehow, figured out how to keep\u00a0reminding<\/em>\u00a0myself of that. And I like doing whatever small part I can to share it. The generosity of it, to me, is that people keep allowing me to do it. And that\u2019s a responsibility, in a weird way. I don\u2019t think people\u00a0need<\/em>\u00a0 Wilco records. They don\u2019t\u00a0need<\/em>\u00a0my songs. But,\u00a0yes<\/em>, they do at the same time. They need what it is they might be able to get from me. I don\u2019t want to live with being one person that just stopped believing that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every morning, Tweedy writes a song. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s good or bad; it\u2019s the habit of getting something out of himself that didn\u2019t exist before he woke up that\u2019s become a sustaining, fulfilling practice. The byproduct of that is so wonderful and so rewarding that we might get to hear even a fraction of it. When Tweedy and I talk about his relationship to music with his sons, Spencer and Sammy, the way he describes what they\u2019ve been able to achieve together\u2014how the environment Tweedy and his wife Sue were able to foster, where making music wasn\u2019t looked at as something Dad did for money, that it wasn\u2019t just a job or something the next generation was expected to carry forward\u2014it becomes clear that\u00a0Cousin<\/em>\u00a0was an apt title for this new record after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe end result is [Spencer, Sammy and I] get to have this ability to sit in a room and not talk, but have intimate trust in each other,\u201d Tweedy says. \u201cThat\u2019s what music is built on, an intimate trust in the people you\u2019re playing with. We\u2019re all going to the same place, and that\u2019s beautiful. It\u2019s profound, to get to share that with your children. For them, individually, they make music without me. And it\u2019s just a beautiful thing, to watch them commune in a way that they grew up believing in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a thesis statement for this chapter of Wilco, that the people we choose to make sense of the world with\u2014be it our kin or our confidants\u2014are what makes each day worth getting to, even if getting to that place isn\u2019t immediately streamlined or easy. It sounds a lot like what happened when the band made Cruel Country<\/em> at The Loft together in order to let the intricacies of Cousin<\/em> continue to marinate beyond being just leaps of faith, and it sounds a lot like what happened when they reassembled to make Sky Blue Sky<\/em> 16 years ago. It\u2019s true, the world does need Wilco. The world needs these six people who put care and gentleness and curiosity and magic into their art and then have the guts to walk through the doors and back into the noise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norman Warwick hears of a LONG LOST COUSIN WILCO \u00a0\u201cDepending on how you look at it, the connection to\u00a0The Bear\u00a0was an unfortunate\u2014or fortunate\u2014coincidence,\u201d singer-writer Jeff Tweedy (left) recently told Paste on line magazine, laughing, during a Zoom from Wilco\u2019s Chicago studio, The Loft. \u201cIt was certainly not conscious. I saw most of the first season […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,13,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-tradition","category-literary","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19317"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19555,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19317\/revisions\/19555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}