Wilco (The Comeback)

Consider, if you will, the image of a two-humped camel standing behind a semi-circle of six chairs. The camel is adorned with a party hat, and the empty chairs appear to be celebrating something as there is a small, ordinary-looking cake at the center of the whole image.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the new face of Wilco. Lead singer Jeff Tweedy, in a not too surprising move, appears to have relinquished all songwriting duties for Wilco (The Album) to the distinguished Camel pictured on the album's cover art to once again regain indie cred.

This, of course, is all a metaphorical exaggeration, but not much of one. Wilco (The Album) is actually the first effort in the Post-Tweedy age of the band. Of course, the band from the Windy City is still playing his sad songs, but for the first time, Tweedy seems to have realized all he had to gain from allowing key members of the band, such as supremely gifted guitarist Nels Cline, their own slice of the cake.

The eccentric cover, the odd title and even the opening track, "Wilco (The Song)," all focus on the concept of Wilco as a band and what that entails for the music. After all, the vast majority of the band's output has been Tweedy-centric: deeply troubled laments about deadly love, vague loss and the deadening struggle against modernity.

A Ghost is Born is perhaps the best example of Tweedy's gripping obsessions, as he injected songs with vast passages of drone to fully convey the personal hell of his debilitating migraines. He even recorded using artificial instruments in Pro Tools, preferring computer simulations over actual bandmates.

That period is largely over. The spiritual struggles, the long list of departed band members and the resulting masterpieces are all in the past. Don't believe it? Well, Tweedy himself will tell you just as much in one of the album's most intimate numbers, "Solitaire": "Once I thought the world was crazy/ Everyone was sad and chasing happiness and love/ And I was the only above it."

The song is driven by a simple chord progression on Tweedy's acoustic guitar, accented by occasional notes of pedal steel and a wistful piano line. Beautiful and somehow spare, "Solitaire" could have easily inhabited Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's bruised emotional landscape if not for one major detail: Tweedy is singing about the past and not describing his present state.

Fans begging for another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are misguided - the lyrics to "Solitaire" indicate Tweedy and his band are in a much different place now: "Took too long to see/ I was wrong to believe in me only."

Perhaps the most overlooked portion of Tweedy's acumen is his exceptional gift for constructing a pop song. When one recalls some of the top Wilco songs of old, most striking are not the brilliant sounds and ideas, perfect as they are, but Tweedy's effortless gift for creating a chorus at once melodic, affecting and not at all contrived (for example, "Jesus etc.," "Kamera" and "She's a Jar").

Tweedy's exceptional craftsmanship is still on full display. A gorgeous refrain such as "So every evening we can watch from above/ Crushed cities like a bug/ Fold ourselves into each others guts/ And turn our faces up to the sun," when sung through Tweedy's aching voice during "Country Disappeared," manages to both rhyme and adroitly fit into the towering piano and drums arrangement behind them.

Although "One Wing" and "I'll Fight" are classic Wilco-lovers' laments in the style of "Via Chicago," "You and I" finds a breathy Tweedy reaching out to Feist. The Canadian pop-folkie and inadvertent Apple pitchwoman easily tops her duet with Ben Gibbard off of Dark Was the Night by taking a simple ballad and making it an event.

Wilco's previous efforts have been canonized many times over, and deservedly so. It would be a shame, though, if Wilco (The Album) was likened to the flaccid Sky Blue Sky and summarily dismissed by certain critics. Tweedy seems to be living and brilliantly creating under a motto which may seem a bit familiar to longtime fans: No Depression.

vmain13@umd.edu

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars