Wilco (The Album)

At this point in Wilco's 15-year history, the band have been a lot of things, all of them sort of nebulous: alt-country, Americana, neo-folk, quasi-experimental, and, if you insist, "dad rock." Miraculously, the disparate strains within the group's catalog have somehow flowed together into a unifying aesthetic, largely due to Jeff Tweedy's distinctive singing voice and remarkable consistency as a songwriter. Though their previous releases, particularly the schizoid A Ghost Is Born, have embraced this eclecticism, the band's seventh proper LP, Wilco (The Album), does just what the title implies, and consolidates their style into a coherent statement of identity.

Wilco’s success is largely due to their ability to continually surprise, if not outright confound, their audience. Their first five albums saw the band transform from alt-country torchbearers to Wall-of-Sound sculptors to post-rock deconstructionists. Facilitating this transformation was a steady rotation of band members, moving both into and then out of the ranks, eventually leaving frontman Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt as the only two orig inal members. Looking back over their career, it’s easy to see that this constant shuffling of members propelled Wilco’s sonic evolution.