Wilco

About Wilco

Wilco—the Chicago rock band formed by guitarist and songwriter Jeff Tweedy in the mid-1990s—released their seventh studio album, Wilco (the album), on Nonesuch Records in 2009. It follows their Grammy-nominated 2007 recording, Sky Blue Sky (which followed their 2005 double Grammy winner A ghost is born). Recordings were underway at the band’s Chicago studio, The Loft, early in the year, with the band emerging from Chicago’s deep freeze with a completed album released on June 30.

The new offering by the Chicago sextet features, among other things, eleven new songs, a duet with Canadian songwriter/vocalist Leslie Feist and a camel named Alfred as its cover star. The new songs find Tweedy juxtaposing heady, heavy themes like disillusionment (“Country Disappeared”), martyrdom (“I’ll Fight”) and homicide (“Bull Black Nova”) with acceptance (“You Never Know”), love (“You and I”), humor (“Wilco (the song)”) and more. Sonically the album draws on many of the best elements of Wilco's wide-ranging previous work, while incorporating Tweedy's objective to "use the studio as another instrument.” The result is a unique, complex endeavor.

In April 2009, Nonesuch released Ashes of American Flags, a new film presenting the band live in concert during their 2008 tour. Culled from concerts in five quintessentially American venues—Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Tipitina’s in New Orleans, The Mobile Civic Center, The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and the 9:30 Club in Washington DC—the film captures the energy, poignancy and musicality of a Wilco concert and tour.