Cousin

About

It takes less than a second for Wilco’s 13th album to make its intentions known. Opening track “Infinite Surprise” begins in medias re, with an abrupt wash of dissonance and a metronome that sounds purposefully not on purpose. On the heels of 2022’s what-it-says-on-the-tin throwback to the band’s y’alternative root, <i>Cruel Country</i>—and, really, most of the band’s work for the prior decade or so—this jarring introduction announces a welcome sense of mischief. <i>Cruel Country</i> arrived as Wilco was celebrating the 20th anniversary of their defining opu, <i>Yankee Hotel Foxtrot</i>, complete with valedictory mini-tour and lush box set recounting and relitigating the album’s famously tense personal/personnel drama. If there’s anything that defines Wilco’s career since, it’s Jeff Tweedy’s reluctance to replicate those conditions; no amount of creative energy and friction could be worth the psychic cost. Wilco has had the same lineup since 2005, they write and record in a cozy Chicago home base, they are a fully thriving and self-sufficient entity like few bands would dare to dream of. So the moment of noise and unease feels like a recentering, even if no one will mistake <i>Cousin</i> for <i>Yankee Hotel Foxtrot</i> or the winding krautrock freakouts of 2004’s <i>A Ghost Is Born</i>. Produced by Cate Le Bon—the first time the band has worked with an outside producer since Jim Scott co-produced 2009’s <i>Wilco (The Album)</i>—the album is the sound of a band wriggling out of that comfort zone in small but meaningful way. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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