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Wilco: The Whole Love

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The message, promise and joyous surprise of Wilco’s The Whole Love all unfold within the first minute of the album-opener “Art of Almost.” An expectant, off-accented beat recalls the 5/4 drum kickoff of Radiohead’s In Rainbows. Stray krautrock ambience opens up some space and an orchestra swells imperceptibly until it floods over the entire grooving band. When it clears, Jeff Tweedy’s voice floats in over a dial-up modem bleep and Wilco snaps to work. For the duration of the hour-long LP, nearly each arrangement comes landscaped with glockenspiel flourishes, between-verse instrumental melodies, field recordings, organ runs and sudden background vocals.

The most experimental and band-oriented Wilco work since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot —and the band’s best in years—it’s as if the gradual, two-album descent into unambitious dad-rock never happened. The foreground lushness makes it easy to lose track of the songs, not to mention the songwriting. Tweedy’s melodies wend like hidden jungle canyons through cluttered cliffside tableaus of Nels Cline guitar shredding (“Standing O”) and achingly melodic Glenn Kotche percussion (“Black Moon”).

There’s also abstract reflections that could be strummed acoustically (“Rising Red Lung”), easily jangling boogies with inviting choruses (“Dawned On Me,” “Capitol City”) and lyrics that display deep folk genetics (“Born Alone”). The prevailing mood, though, comes with complex, patient structures that might require some deep absorption before achieving sing-along status, like the 12-minute closer “One Sunday Morning.” It’s a good thing it’s all equally fun to listen to. The Whole Love sounds exactly like Wilco in an entirely new and satisfying way, always a towering achievement for a band some 15 years into their career. It also happens to be the richest, most thoughtful music that J. Tweedy & Co. have written yet. Whether or not one can sing along also kind of doesn’t matter.