Wilco (the album)

It’s a gloomy, windy, cold and wet late-winter day, but in the industrial loft space that houses Wilco’s studio and headquarters on the Northwest Side, the band is happily playing with garden tools. “Glenn, show him your Garden Weasel,” frontman Jeff Tweedy says. Glenn Kotche looks up from his roost in the drum booth and holds up the gleaming spikes, the latest addition to his large collection of esoteric sound makers. As he brandishes them, they clash together and twinkle.

The sextet has just added the final touches to its new album. (At least, it’s final for now—the persnickety Tweedy will almost certainly recut a few vocal/guitar parts at the 11th hour.) A surplus of rare and wild instruments—an antique cimbalom (a sort of giant hammered dulcimer), a mellotron (the primitive tape-loop sampling keyboard favored by the Beatles)—lie all around the loft, hinting at why—and how—the group’s albums have become progressively more ambitious and sonically intricate. But Tweedy insists the new release, Wilco (the album), is not about the band’s beefed-up toy collection, but “overdubs—lots more of them.” That’s studio geek-speak for adding instrumental layers to a song post factum. “More sonic flavor,” as lead guitarist Nels Cline puts it. “It’s more orchestrated, more composed…baroque…but not rococo!”

The somewhat beat-looking Tweedy apologetically ducks out with his two young boys, returning alone a short time later for a final celebratory playback of the new songs.

“I’ll Fight” is an up-tempo ballad in which his dour refrain of “I’ll die for you” is sweetened by B-3 organ bleats. On “Deeper Down,” Cline lays down gorgeous lap steel and electric leads that are at once country, Andalusian and bebop. Kotche draws ethereal tones from malleted cymbals, and the song closes with the long drone of a bowed piano harp. Tweedy lolls on a leather couch, cross-armed and listening intently with furrowed brow.

“There’s a lot less ‘finger-wiggling’ on this new one,” Cline says, referring to his famously bombastic style.

“There’s a lot of lawn implements,” Tweedy adds.

Wilco (the album) drops June 30. Stay tuned to the Music section for updates on possible Chicago tour dates.

NEXT>>