You don't hear much about Wilco these days -- what have
they been up to? These one-time recluses seem to unveil another big
statement every few months, and in the wake of their career album Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot, their career-album documentary and their Loose Fur side
project, here's Down With Wilco, the band's collaboration with indie-pop vet
Scott McCaughey and his collective, the Minus 5. Other hands on deck include
R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, the Spinanes' Rebecca Gates and the Posies' Ken
Stringfellow, with everyone collaborating on thirteen new songs. It's a
Saturday- night version of Foxtrot: laid-back, poignant and comic. The
opening ballad, with McCaughey solemnly intoning the chorus "I never wanna
lose/The days of wine and booze," is worth a standing ovation all by itself
-- the funniest drinking song since "Passenger Side," on the first Wilco
album.
(From RS 917, March 6, 2003) |
