Gave this another go tonight, with greater success this time. This is easily the Wilco record that sticks with me least -- which isn't to say it's the one I enjoy least necessarily, just that much of it feels transient and ill-defined in a way that their other records never were (a few of the songs on the back half have demo-like qualities, like Bonnie 'Prince' Billy songs from "Superwolf," with multiple guitars chugging along as though there are bass and drums hammering away on the bottom, only there aren't). Conceptually, it reminds me of the Paul Weller album "Wake Up the Nation" -- a kind of lo-fi, mechanical sounding collection of songs that moves quickly from one thing to the next without much fanfare, but in a patchwork-like fashion that becomes increasingly attractive as more squares are stitched on. It's noisy and moderately experimental, but slight and not particularly demanding, and as such perhaps the one Wilco record I respond to with interest rather than feeling.Kevin Davis wrote:I started "Star Wars" but didn't make it far before falling asleep (not the album's fault). Tonight.
The thing that elevates it is context -- first its release model, off-the-cuff and in-the-moment like the record itself, and second the fact that it was followed up with a fuller, sturdier collection of songs barely a year later. Had "Star Wars" lingered too long as "the new Wilco album," I think it might have fallen victim to "Backspacer" syndrome, where a minor, somewhat anomalous work eventually comes to represent an extended period of creative inactivity, lessening the impact of the work by essentially asking it to carry a load that it can't. "Star Wars" sounds like a momentary indulgence, and "Schmilco" kind of bears out that it was -- and the two albums complement each other like no other two albums in their catalog do.
