September 27th, 2011 7:51am
How Dark It Can Be
Jeff Tweedy has a lot of strengths as a songwriter, but I'm very partial to his gift for writing sweet love songs within the context of a long term relationship. It's easy to find a lot of good songs about new love or love that is broken and ending, but Tweedy's tunes about rediscovering or reaffirming affection after years of ups and downs and prosaic routines is pretty inspiring. I'm not too crazy about
The Whole Love at the moment – it's certainly not a bad record, but most of it doesn't hold my interest – "Dawned On Me" hits my sweet spot basically by cross-breeding the tone of their classic "I'm Always In Love" with that one hit by Supergrass.
6 Responses.
9/27/11 4:45 pm
Nice little slice of pop…Classic Wilco bumper cars…
9/27/11 9:31 pm
I always thought Yo La Tengo did a great job of writing about a long term relationship. “From a Motel 6″ in particular comes to mind — it’s obviously about a bad spot in a marriage, but there’s no hint that they’re about to break up. There’s minimal drama, they’re past that. The beat is a sort of sweet inertia. The vocals are warm but numb. The shoegazey riff could be sobbing, or swooning, or both, or neither.
9/28/11 12:27 am
I really hope that you’ve looked into Supergrass beyond that one hit. They were so great.
9/28/11 8:31 am
The mere mention of sweet long-term love songs sent me into a Jonathan Richman binge. These kinds of songs are so rare and loving that it’s impossible not to cherish them.
9/29/11 1:40 pm
I love you guys … nice insights all (of course in American fan/hipster culture that means i agree with you … so, why don’t I read / write to Fluxblog more often?
10/12/11 6:10 am
i really like the Whole Love, better than the last two (which i thought were pretty good by any other band’s standards). Given time, this album will reveal itself. Plus if you get the expanded version you get four more songs which are also quite good. just saying. not trying to provide critical analysis or anything, but if you like Wilco this album should grow on you.