Early Wilco thoughts
Wilco began streaming A Ghost Is Born on the Web today. I spent the afternoon listening, giving the new album more ears than I should have if I wanted to get anything else done. But I didn't.
After one-and-a-half times through, I love the disc. The roll and kick of At Least That's What You Said open the work perfectly in character for the band. The following tracks drive and detour in steady but challenging fashion, with a harder edge up front evolving into naturally softer explanation. Choking guitars become juts of piano and then drone.
I'll be interested to read others' reactions, especially to the sequenced drifts of the latter songs. From a Walden broken heart on Company in My Back to the outward and inward warnings of I'm a Wheel and Theologians to the SETI-stolen Less Than You Think, what question does the subsequent and closing Late Greats answer?
For me, the gem of the album is Muzzle of Bees. Starting the disc's midsection, the song draws hopes. It makes me imagine Lake Michigan on a late spring day — captured in time-lapse photographs but lived in long seconds. The song's fills and gaps seem light enough.
