Album: Wilco

Sky Blue Sky, Nonesuch

Here Jeff Tweedy revisits territory already well-covered on Wilco albums such as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born, picking at his emotional scars in the manner of a confessional singer-songwriter. In song after song on Sky Blue Sky he confronts the struggle between romance and the competing desire for solitude, acknowledging how absence really can make the heart grow fonder - and vice-versa. As he explains in "Please Be Patient With Me", "I'm this apple, this happening stone, when I'm alone/Oh, but my blessings get so blurred at the sound of your words". In "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)" he suggests a spirit of camaraderie as being the way forward for a relationship between two melancholy people: "I'm somebody just like you/Content with being blue". The arrangements draw on early Seventies influences, abandoning the exploratory tone of recent Wilco albums for more straightforward country-rock settings which recall the likes of Little Feat, Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt and The Allman Brothers Band. It's a pleasant enough ride.