Heavens Above! - Wilco

To fully do justice to the tumultuous career of alt-country pioneers Wilco, you’d need to write a thesis. Whole rainforest have been cut down to feed the reams of news and magazine print that have tried to deconstruct this most beguiling and fascinating of bands, led by their preternaturally talented, and notoriously prickly frontman Jeff Tweedy. It would not be too far off the mark to suggest that the Chicago-based band have, in the past 13 years, produced some of the most important, surprising and continually excellent records to come out of the American rock scene.

Formed from the ashes of country band Uncle Tupelo, Wilco released two critically acclaimed, but pretty straight down the line albums, before begin to interweave more and more experimental ideas - taking in elements of electronica, sonic soundscapes and even krautrock, to the horror of country purists and the delight of critics. However, internal problems have never been too far from bubbling to the surface. The band almost tore themselves apart during the recording of their masterpiece, 2002’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’, and touring of its follow-up, the Grammy-winning ‘A Ghost is Born’ in 2004, had to be aborted so Tweedy could go into rehab to beat an addiction to prescription painkillers. 

But if the weight of past troubles hangs heavy over the band with the imminent release of their sixth album, ‘Sky Blue Sky’, it doesn’t appear to be bothering bassist and long-time Tweedy collaborator John Stirrant, whose laconic voice - just this side of surfer-dude - crackles from a Chicago recording studio on the eve of the band’s Australian tour. “You know, I really enjoyed the sessions we had on ‘Sky Blue Sky’,” he says. “This record was the easiest, and the most productive yet. It’s really the case now that none of us can wait to get out on the road and start playing the songs.”

It’s an attitude that permeates the new album, their most relaxed and untroubled recording for some time. The first thing you notice about ‘Sky Blue Sky’ is the warmth, and dare we say it, happiness that permeates every track. Gone is the glacial production of ‘YHF’, and the lovelorn, roughshod beauty of ‘A Ghost Is Born’, replaced by the kind of wide-eyed beauty that only men who’d been through and hell and back and lived to tell the tale could produce. “Jeff is really the leader of the group, so I guess the album reflects what’s going on with him at the moment. It’s definitely much more of a roots record this time around. We’ve been listening to more traditional rock records, things like John Martin and Neil Young, and I think that’s been a big influence on us.”

Yet Stirratt doesn’t feel that the record is a deliberate move away from the experimentation that infused both their lauded last two records to reconnect with their country roots. “It wasn’t something we really thought about. ‘Sky Blue Sky’ was a much more organic album than we’ve done for a while, there were a lot of one-take songs, where we’d just come in and play through. It really felt like a natural progression from where we were.” Tweedy has previously said that this incarnation of the group is the best yet, both live and in the studio, and Stirratt seems to concur: “The group at the moment is full of really talented, creative people. It’s been a joy to work with them.”