Wilco “Schmilco” Album Review

Last year, during their tour, Wilco rearranged the stage for the encores into a setup for an all-acoustic hootenanny, trading the showmanship of their main show for intimacy. Pat Sansone said that it was their backstage rehearsals, which often followed a similar, small set-up, that inspired the approach they’ve taken with Schmilco, their tenth album. (I thought immediately of their tiny desk concert where Glenn Kotche made a percussion kit out of items on the eponymous tiny desk.)  It’s an album that invites attention to the small sounds and lyrical precision that have long-defined Wilco as a band–a group that cares deeply about exploring the intersection of telling stories with sound and words, using both to evoke feeling, and encourage listening and listening again.

Schmilco is a truly worthy extension of this project. The first track, “Normal American Kids,” starts with a simple strumming pattern and Tweedy reflecting on a suburban upbringing that many people have but are afraid to describe until they’re much older: feeling out of step,  knowing the “normal” kids are often terrible. “I always hated normal American empty summer days / Lightning crazed and cracked like an egg / High behind the garden shed / Painting myself as a normal American kid / I always hated it.” Nels Cline accompanies with a lilting guitar that plays in and around the beat–just off enough to reinforce the distance between the character in the song and the surrounding, sometimes hostile, environment around him.

I’ve heard Schmilco described as “mellow” and it’s hard to say how much I disagree with that description. It’s not loud, that’s for sure, but what is really impressive about this album is that there is so much happening in each track, and yet the songs sound simple. The lyrics are spare, but they’re spare like Cormac McCarthy–three words communicate more than a paragraph. On “Shrug and Destroy,” for example, the beat is steady and Jeff Tweedy delivers the lyrics methodically (“When nothing is left, rejoice”); but Mikael Jorgenson’s runs and fills on the piano are the story of this song. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition, as the lyrics point to endings and destruction and the piano feels generative, creative, inventive. What’s being communicated here? Why do we rejoice when nothing is left–is it because that through this letting go we find something newer or deeper? I honestly don’t know, and I’m not sure if I’m even on the right track here–but the songs on this album have me thinking, and that’s enough.