WILCO - The Whole Love

There's a lot to be said for first impressions. Except when they're wrong. 

Take Wilco's last album, 2009's Wilco (The Album). Opening with the pleasing yet slight and self-referential silliness of "Wilco (The Song)", one tends to remember the entire album as a bit of a lark. In truth, the material within contained nothing else that approached that track's looseness—rather, it was a sweeping and detailed cataloguing of the band's many and varied strengths, from gorgeous balladry ("You and I") to tense paranoia (the terrific "Bull Black Nova") and all points in between.

Given that The Whole Love comes to life with the seven-minute skittering beat study meets full-on guitar freakout of "Art of Almost" (as well as the fact that it's the band's first album on their own dBpm label), it's easy for it to feel like a return to their art rock heyday of the first half of the 2000s. At that time, riding high (or low) on a wave of fractious interband relationships and agitated creative sparks, the group produced a double whammy of peerless and thorny music.

But despite our first handshake with The Whole Love, this is not a return to the days of 2004's intriguing if distanced A Ghost Is Born. After the wild ride of "Art Of Almost", the record hits a more casual, relaxed stride. Much like Wilco (The Album), it is a somewhat varied yet content collection of all of the things Wilco does well. And it's hard not to be of two minds on this. 

It would be terrific to see Wilco spread their experimental wings wide and make an album that challenged and surprised their audiences as much as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot did. Perhaps that's just too obvious (or difficult) a move to make. And yet it's next to impossible to resist the charms of Wilco being Wilco. I don't want to say that Tweedy the songwriter and Wilco the band are good enough to get away with doing just enough...but they kind of are. The ten songs that form the meat of The Whole Love are all three- to four-minute slices of prime Tweedy, with the occasional guitar burst ("Born Alone"), tender moment ("Open Mind") or heartwarming horn shuffle ("Capitol City") to define the landscape. If it isn't revolutionary, it is great.

If only just a little, Wilco may forever live in the shadow their most daring times. It was an exciting moment to see someone willing to allow his songs to be beat up in the name of art not as a crutch for his lack of ability, but simply because it made terrific songs extraordinary. But if the last impression made by The Whole Love is anything to go on, they still have a wandering muse to follow. At twelve minutes long, "One Sunday Morning" is neither wild nor drawn out. It is a gorgeous wander through an autumnal soundscape, guiding the listener by the hand with a gentle acoustic refrain and Tweedy's sure, steady tenor. It's ambitious in its own right, and a fitting reminder of the band's endless capability to sneak up on you. No one really saw Yankee Hotel Foxtrot coming. If the winds in Wilco's camp ever blow that way again, I doubt we'll see it on the horizon either.