Sky Blue Sky: Thoughts

In case you haven’t heard, allow me to be the millionth person to say (before discussing Wilco’s most recent album) that Jeff Tweedy, the long time maestro/face/ voice of the band has… given up prescription pain killers. I mention this simply because most people who decide to talk about Wilco’s newest (and mellowest) album, Sky Blue Sky, feel it relevant. Listening to the album, I couldn’t help but wonder what one had to do with the other since Sky Blue Sky is one of Wilco’s more trance-inducing albums, with songs fading lazily into one another (not quite, but similar, to a Jack Johnson album with better lyrics) in a subdued state that made me question how people would read this as a sign of Tweedy’s sobriety. Perhaps it’s because he is more lucid here, his lyrics more concrete and solid. Gone are the paranoid apparitions of, say, “Kid Smoke” (off of A Ghost is Born), as are the shards of noise and feedback of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that seemed to be scrapping behind Tweedy’s eyes and into his skull. On second thought, perhaps it’s worth mentioning again… Jeff Tweedy is off prescription painkillers!

I couldn’t offer an opinion either way as to whether or not this is a good thing since Wilco can always be counted on to make good music. But the quiet discipline of Sky Blue Sky, while making it the perfect album to listen to when you’re feeling particularly melancholy or numb (and 70’s AM rock just isn’t cutting it), lacks the devastating cacophonous beauty of previous albums (most notably on tracks: “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” and “At Least That’s What You Said”), or the jaunty march of 1999’s Summerteeth, or, heck, any of the Mermaid Avenue albums. Still, there are gems here: “Impossible Germany” is an ideal track for the resolute stoner, and “Hate is Here” is Tweedy at his most Beatles-esque. The best song is, however, the powerful, “Leave Me (Like You Found Me)”, a quiet apology/plea (hence the parenthesis) to an absent lover to rescue the narrator from his addiction (by abandoning him). It is a song that, in any other hands, would sound self-pitying, but with Tweedy’s measured vocals, comes across as sincere and practical.

Jeff Tweedy may be off of prescription painkillers, but he hasn’t lost the ability to craft important music. Still, one hopes that the reconciliation phase of his sobriety has run its course and, on his next album, and that he can go back to kicking the television.

Song I advocate paying real money for it's so good: "Leave me (Like You Found Me)"