Sky Blue Sky
3 1/2 stars
It’s not a complete 360, but alt-country chameleons Wilco exit a good three-quarters around the musical roundabout with their sixth studio effort.
Ship-running singer/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, pianist Mikael Jorgensen and drummer Glenn Kotche took on new members Nels Cline (guitar) and Pat Sansone (multiple instruments) after the 2004 departure of Leroy Bach, and their resulting influence is an airy, mellow ramble that marks the conclusion of the experimental-indie phase consisting of the landmark Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the lesser A Ghost Is Born. Sky’s restless, late-afternoon glow not only hearkens back to the band’s own Being There and Summerteeth, but Americana/folk and ’70s psych-rock as well, particularly in the windblown, mountaintop guitar solos of “Impossible Germany” and “Side With the Seeds.”
The sounds are sparse, yet the collection is remarkably dense. Here the band that once digi-droned like a bad video-game theme for Ghost’s 11-minute “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” makes every second of even the smallest-sounding songs—“Either Way,” the title track—speak volumes. Loneliness and optimism are dominant themes, which, seemingly incompatible at first, indeed follow suit for Tweedy, who in the past few years has gone from shouldering burdens of record-label letdowns and prescription-pill dependencies to writing Sky with—get this—his bandmates! In the same room and everything! When Tweedy repeats, “I’m gonna shake it off,” midway through, there’s an inclination to believe him. Sonically it may appear to take one step back, but in terms of promise, Sky takes two purposeful strides forward.