REVIEW: Wilco, Summer Teeth (Reprise)
- Daniel Aloi
As if to prove just how far from the "alternative country" label you can run, Wilco has made the perfect pop album of the late '90s, or the late '60s, for that matter. You can play Summer Teeth alongside Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and it will hold up.
Replete with Beatlesque melodies and backward tape loops, Beach Boys harmonies, experimental keyboard sounds and cracked-mirror introspection (a la those groups' geniuses John Lennon and Brian Wilson), Summer Teeth wraps its overriding darkness in pretty pop melodies and multilayered production. It isn't a total departure, as it takes off from the pop side and downcast, troubled characters of 1996's double album Being There.
Frontman Jeff Tweedy said last year that Wilco's next album would have "zero country references," and he stayed true to his word. With Max Johnston gone and taking his dobro, fiddle, banjo and mandolin playing to The Gourds and Freakwater, this third Wilco album relies on keyboards more than guitars and other strings. Multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett is responsible for much of the sound, with Mellotron tape loop samples, a Moog synthesizer and orchestral swells tying the album together as surely as Tweedy's maladjusted, up-from-the-unconscious lyrical themes. Bells chime, birds twitter and an alarm clock rings -- loudly. To borrow a phrase from another band, it's a head trip in every key. It's also catchy as a cold, and when the words set in, ultimately just as miserable. Loneliness, alienation, drug dependence ("A Shot in the Arm"), violence, and thoughts of murder and suicide occupy the characters' minds. The breezy, uptempo title track recounts a loner's recurring dreams, while a running stream and chirping birds accompany the guitar's melody. Tweedy, no stranger himself to revealing tortured souls in his songs, gets as down as Lennon ever did in "We're Just Friends," writing on piano in the late Beatle's solo style -- and dashing any chance of that phrase being considered positive.
With its moody bassline, "How to Fight Loneliness" offers this gloomy sarcastic advice: "You smile all the time" and "You laugh at every joke." On "She's a Jar," Tweedy sings "she begs me not to miss her" and the line later becomes "She begs me not to hit her." On the powerful centerpiece, "Via Chicago," his narrator's fevered mind reveals all: "Dreamed about killing you again last night/and it felt alright to me/Dying on the banks of Embarcadero skies/I sat and watched you bleed," as the song builds from acoustic guitar to a full crescendo and back.
While the opening track "Can't Stand It" is the first single and represents the dark pop content to come, "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)" could be the surefire hit, with handclaps and a killer chorus. Talking of hooks, "I'm Always in Love" pounds along like the Velvet Underground's "Waiting for the Man," in a bash-out powered by bassist John Stirratt and drummer Ken Coomer, supplemented with Bennett's rubbery piano and a keening synthesizer that might remind you of Styx. "Pieholden Suite" is a ringer for the later Elvis Costello, and "Candyfloss" recalls the Beach Boys by way of the Attractions, with the added oddity of an operatic tenor voice holding a note at the coda. There's a further nod to Harry Nilsson in Tweedy's voice and slow piano-led tempo on "My Darling," which also contains more Beach Boys "bow-bow-pow" harmonies.
While it's fun to play spot-the-reference, this is also an ambitious work in its own right, and one true to Wilco's identity, country content or no country content. And never mind that all but Bennett came to the band from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo (the album is credited: "Written, Produced and Performed by Wilco"). Tweedy's acoustic guitar runs through most of the tracks, and his and Bennett's electric guitar playing rings out as it always has.
What longtime fans of Uncle Tupelo (and Wilco's rootsy rock 'n' roll debut A.M.) should understand is that Summer Teeth isn't a betrayal, or even a total departure. It's a direction and a milestone, and a statement by a band trying to make its mark.
The band has had a fair amount of stage and studio time for their roots-music talents since the transitional Being There, with Tweedy's membership in the heartland pop supergroup Golden Smog and Wilco's involvement in the Woody Guthrie song project Mermaid Avenue with Billy Bragg. And the other Wilco members have a group of their own, Courtesy Move, that backed up Australian country rocker Sherry Rich on an album in 1997.
Wilco began playing some of these new songs live over a year ago, along with a mix of songs from all of the Tweedy projects (from Uncle Tupelo's "New Madrid" to "Candyfloss"). And if those shows are any indication, the current European tour and upcoming U.S. dates (with added keyboard player Leroy Bach) will be real eye-openers, for old fans and new ones drawn to the new material's undeniable melodic appeal. It should be one joyous bummer of a summer.
Tour dates and lyrics are available at the band's official website, http://www.wilcoweb.com
