Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

2-LP Wilco Set also Comes Complete with the CD of the Album!

It's been a while since the last offering from Jeff Tweedy and Co, but three years of slavering from fans is about to be rewarded with this seventh studio album. Well... Sky Blue Sky was well worth the wait! Though Wilco are known as purveyors of alt country rock, Sky Blue Sky is an astounding demonstration of their ability to move between soulful acoustic folk, jazzy blues, country skank and pumping rock. Tweedy has the vocal range of three people, from country lilt to blues ache to folk sweetness - all this often in the space of one song. And what songs they are. 'You Are My Face' is a classic Wilco segue, as a sleepy 'Beatles-esque' ditty is suddenly interrupted with a jazz guitar explosion twinned with Tweedy's achy blues voice before returning seamlessly to piano tinkle and smooth vocals. There are stories of love lost and found, told with originality, humour and sweetness. 'How can I warn you my tongue turns to dust? Lack of disgust doesn't mean that I don't care. It means I'm partially there,' sings Tweedy on the delicately beautiful 'Please Be Patient With Me'. The instrumentation is a mini-rock opera in itself. Glorious riffs, thumping piano and virtuoso guitar solos from Nels Cline are orchestrated with skill, complementing the intricately composed and woven melodies. Simple and soothing, yet rich and rewarding, this is an album you unknowingly yearn for, like a cool hand on a hot forehead. A great album from a band in their prime. Our highest recommedation!

Wilco’s first studio album in three years, Sky Blue Sky, has been perhaps the most ardently awaited release of ’07. Eager fans had taken to shouting out pleas for information to bandleader Jeff Tweedy during his recent solo acoustic tour, and the web chatter has been virtually deafening. Critic Katie Toms of London’s The Observer addressed fan speculation in an advance review, declaring, with unalloyed delight: “Boy, was it worth the wait.... Simple and soothing, yet rich and rewarding, this is an album you unknowingly yearn for, like a cool hand on a hot forehead. A great album from a band in their prime.” Sky Blue Sky is as eloquently straightforward as Wilco’s last studio recording, the Grammy-winning A Ghost Is Born, was daringly experimental. Tweedy’s lyrics deal forthrightly with romantic separation and reconciliation, their bittersweet quality giving way, as the album progresses, to a more uplifting, redemptive mood. Tweedy quite literally banishes the darkness on the penultimate track, the inspiring, gospel-tinged “What Light”—the album’s first single—and concludes with a deeply affecting, ’til-death-do-us-part lullaby, “On and On and On.”

There are hints of early-seventies Southern California folk-rock sweetness in the harmonies throughout the band-produced Sky Blue Sky, a bluesy Allman Brothers feel to the guitar /keyboard interplay, and plenty of brash guitar solos that take songs like “You Are My Face” and “Shake It Off” in thrilling, unexpected directions. This is especially good news for the crowds that will fill the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, this June, where the band plays the first U.S. date of its 2007 world tour in support of Sky Blue Sky. Principal songwriter Tweedy cut these tracks in the band’s Chicago studio with members John Stirratt (bass, vocals), Glenn Kotche (drums), Mike Jorgensen (keyboards), Nels Cline (guitars) and Pat Sansone (guitars, keyboards, vocals)—all of whom are also becoming notable performers in their own right. A Ghost Is Born co-producer Jim O’Rourke returns as music contributor.

Wilco Sky Blue Sky Track Listing