Wilco Star Wars

When Wilco announced the upcoming release of their album Cruel Country in late April 2022, it immediately generated a lot of excitement from a part of their fan base that hadn't been heard from much in a while. In the initial press releases on the LP, Jeff Tweedy described it as a country album, exciting news for the folks who had been following the band since their earliest days as Tweedy's post-Uncle Tupelo project, and had felt disappointed since their audible twang essentially disappeared with 1999's Summerteeth. But anyone hoping Cruel Country was going to take Wilco back to the rollicking alt-country sound of 1995's A.M. or 1996's Being There needs to adjust their expectations. Though Cruel Country is indeed the most "country" album Wilco have delivered in over 20 years, it's not "country" in the way they sounded in the mid-'90s.

Hope and compassion are not emotions people often associate with rock & roll – joy, rebellion, fury, lust, and exhilaration are usually parts of the formula, but few people think of rock & roll as the equivalent of a warm hug from a good friend in a time of need. Jeff Tweedy wants to change that, or at least that seems to be the recurring theme of 2018's Warm, the Wilco founder's first solo album of original material. Tweedy has never been afraid to dwell on his introspective side, as far back as his days in Uncle Tupelo, and it takes center stage on Warm, which features 11 songs about the search for respite in a world where little seems to go right.