Wilco (The Album)

Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
Critic Score
Based on 33 reviews
2009 Ratings: #194 / 923
Year End Rank: #20
User Score
Based on 192 ratings
2009 Rank: #214
Liked by 11 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
musicOMH

Wilco (The Album) has a beautifully warm production sound with parts that are gently layered and blended into each other to the extent that it’s difficult at times to discern guitars from keyboards and synthesizers.

100
The Independent

It's an album in the classic sense of The Band and Nevermind, beautifully conceived to reflect misgivings about its changing era, and executed with the kind of intelligence that can fool one into thinking it's instinctive.

80
Rolling Stone
Wilco's seventh studio album is a triumph of determined simplicity by a band that has been running from the obvious for most of this decade.
80
Evening Standard
Wilco (the song) is a wry rocker, while Sonny Feeling affects a gentle swagger. Best of all is Bull Black Nova, the guitar-drenched tale of a killer on the run that summons up the ghost of Television. Set aside your misgivings, be not afraid — there are no monsters here, only joys.
80
Q Magazine
Everything here delivers the predominant warmth "Sky Blue Sky" lacked and betrays a sharp ear for melody that has often been obscured by sonic theatrics.
80
Spectrum Culture

Wilco {The Album) ultimately serves as a statement that the band isn’t bored with their steadiness, but is instead reveling in the opportunity to explore it from different angles. It’s a collection of gorgeous, well-written songs, and asking for more is unnecessary – and unfair to the band. Let them be happy.

80
The Observer
Chicago's veteran alt-rockers haven't sounded this much fun in ages, their seventh album balancing their easy-going and experimental sides.
80
The Telegraph

Jeff Tweedy has got the balance just right, with a collection of unflaggingly high-quality, Beatles-y tunes, less tormented than of old and with a yearning, uplifting summery spirit.

80
NOW Magazine
It’s middle-of-the-road, but only by Wilco standards. A worthwhile listen.
80
Mojo

Wilco (The Album) is as consummate as anything its author has yet delivered.

80
Uncut

Wilco (the album) picks up more or less where 2007’s mellow and soulful Sky Blue Sky left off, but subtly expands that record’s parameters.

80
Alternative Press
Wilco continues to reign in their experiemntal fuzz, focusing more on pretty melodies, upbeat toe-tappers and sweet acoustic numbers for their seventh full-length.
80
Sputnikmusic
Wilco have made their most confident record, one nearly brimming, even for all its flaws, with possibilities for the future.
80
AllMusic

If Wilco (The Album) as a whole is considerably less ambitious than its predecessors, it compensates with its easy confidence and craft: it's the work of a band that knows their strengths and knows what they're all about, and it's ready to settle into an agreeably comfortable groove.

80
NME
The band have covered all bases this time; pushing themselves to experiment while still celebrating what makes their music so catchy and compelling.
80
SPIN

Wilco (the album), the band's seventh studio effort, treats verse-chorus-verse basics like holy truths. The result is the rare rock album about acceptance. And it's fantastic.

75
Pretty Much Amazing

The album blends well and leaves the listener relaxed and feeling like they had an experience with the music. The album, overall, will draw more similarities to Sky Blue Sky, than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it includes enough moments of beauty to be viewed as a necessary progression in Wilco tapestry.

75
A.V. Club

The back half of Wilco (The Album) is too sing-song-y, too underdeveloped, too “good enough.” This band is capable of so much more.

75
Entertainment Weekly

Tweedy's ability to craft great hooks does make this worth a listen, and maybe the band simply needs a pause to catch its creative breath. Let's just hope the next one isn't called Wilco (another album).

74
Paste

The album is full of thoughtful, artfully crafted lyrics wrapped in memorable hooks that should stand the test of time. What’s missing is the experimentation that was Wilco’s hallmark until Sky Blue Sky.

73
Pitchfork

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.

70
Billboard

The band's current six-member lineup, together five years and responsible for 2007's stunning "Sky Blue Sky," is its strongest to date-and Wilco (The Album) is as well-rounded an effort as the group has released.

70
Under the Radar

The album rumbles out of the gate with a scruffy exuberance reminiscent of the early tracks of Summerteeth, before finding its way back to the high-end country art rock the band has specialized in since we first found out Tweedy gets bad headaches.

70
Drowned in Sound

While (the album) tips far more convincingly on the successful end of the scales, there remains the sense of a band playing safer than needs be; a sextet pushing against their limits but never straining outright at them.

60
The Guardian
It's well written, nicely produced and tastefully retro, with a few vaguely experimental bits.
60
No Ripcord

The major problem is that this doesn’t sound like a band that’s pushing itself any more, or at least not making the same sort of pushes that lead to the brilliant sucker-punch of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the vastly underrated A Ghost Is Born.

60
Consequence of Sound

There is much to love, but almost as much to care less about on Wilco (The Album). It’s no doubt a recommended listen, but before long, you’ll be skipping tracks left and right.

60
Slant Magazine

It doesn't help that Wilco is such a complacent album, so easily redolent of sounds and textures the band has called up in the past.

60
PopMatters

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.

60
Record Collector

It’s no (career low-point) Sky Blue Sky, but Wilco is far from their best work. The overall conclusion is one of fleeting moments of piercing greatness rather than outand-out uniform brilliance.

50
Coke Machine Glow
Clearly, this record is boring. Whether or not that’s a good thing remains up to your discretion.
50
Tiny Mix Tapes

Wilco (The Album) isn’t a failure — not by any means — but when a band has become so attached to the notion of change and then stagnates, it casts a heavy shadow that's hard to escape.

StygianHollow
70

Wilco (The Funny Birthday Camel)

Favourite tracks: One Wing, Solitaire, ★ Everlasting Everything

mike_drop
60

Wilco - 9/16

The camel is so real.

Honestly, “Wilco (The Album)” feels like a “Sky Blue Sky”-lite to me. It carries on with that same Americana sound only this time the highs are way less high and the lows way less low. It manages to stay pretty consistently okay which for a band as great as Wilco’s self-titled record is just a bit disappointing.

Especially cuts like the insanely boring “I’ll Fight” or the closer which is so awkwardly ... read more

wiloptics
77

this is uh. a weird one. i'm not really sure where to even begin.

not all of it is weird and that's exactly what makes it so weird. at its core, this is a classic Americana album, y'know, indie rock that wants to be country but back in the good ole days when country sounded good, sounds that are only retrospectively considered country because rock used to be a lot more yeehaw than we give it credit for. all that. lots of Bowie, Beatles, and Velvet Underground vibes, which are all artists that ... read more

mike_drop
60

Wilco - 9/16

The camel is so real.

Honestly, “Wilco (The Album)” feels like a “Sky Blue Sky”-lite to me. It carries on with that same Americana sound only this time the highs are way less high and the lows way less low. It manages to stay pretty consistently okay which for a band as great as Wilco’s self-titled record is just a bit disappointing.

Especially cuts like the insanely boring “I’ll Fight” or the closer which is so awkwardly ... read more

Kertia
80

Album/EP each day for 1 year
Day 16: Wilco - Wilco (The Album)

If anyone has suggestions for albums or EPs for future days, please tell me :)

it's... okay?

favourite track: one wing (100)
least favourite track: sonny feeling (55)

StygianHollow
70

Wilco (The Funny Birthday Camel)

Favourite tracks: One Wing, Solitaire, ★ Everlasting Everything

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