Wilco recently announced their new EP Hot Sun Cool Shroud will be released on June 28.
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The latest release coincides with the Chicago band’s Solid Sound Festival, and frontman Jeff Tweedy described the new music on Wilco’s website: “This year, we’re putting out an EP with a summertime-after-dark kind of feeling. It starts off pretty hot, like heat during the day, has some instrumentals on it that are a little agitated and uncomfortable, and ends with a cooling breeze. There are tracks on Hot Sun Cool Shroud that are more aggressive and angular than anything we’ve put out in a while, and a song about love melting you like ice cream into a puddle of sugary soup. All the pieces of summer, including the broody cicadas.”
For this playlist, the focus is summer songs through the lens of Wilco. While some tracks share fond memories, others are anxious and sad. At times, those things are interwoven. The songs here aren’t explicitly sunny, but they do share a sentiment for connection.
Apologies if this summery playlist is too blue, but Wilco has never hidden the fact that they are trying to break your heart.
“How to Fight Loneliness” from Summerteeth (1999)
Consider this to be Wilco’s instruction manual for fighting solitude. The song is weary and sarcastic. Though it hints at bitterness, the outcome is acceptance. Tweedy was too young to accept the nihilism of Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, but by his early 30s, it may not have been dark yet, but it was getting there. (Tweedy has shared publicly his struggles with addiction, anxiety, and depression.) Meanwhile, Jay Bennett’s weepy organ sounds like gravity pulling against Tweedy’s cynical guidebook.
Drag your blanket blindly
Fill your heart with smoke
And the first thing that you want
Will be the last thing you ever need
That’s how you fight it
“Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” from Ode to Joy (2019)
Wilco has a cheeky history with album titles. They’ve named albums after Star Wars, Nilsson Schmilsson, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” appears on Ode to Joy, resulting from Tweedy’s anxiety following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He felt uplifted by the Women’s March but wasn’t sure it would be enough to make the changes people hoped for. Still, he sounds fairly optimistic, and the cascading guitars of Nels Cline and Pat Sansone give the song its buoyancy.
So tangled in the wild
Seeing myself as something more mean
Out in the country
Sadness wants me
Further away from the scene
“If I Ever Was a Child” from Schmilco (2016)
Schmilco is full of autumnal songs, and “If I Ever Was a Child” sounds like the end of summer before the leaves change. Tweedy’s lyrics don’t always connect the dots, but the narrator hopes they won’t “ever want to touch your heart too much.” They wonder if they’ll ever change. The seasons, however, don’t have this problem.
I was tied up like a boat
On a button like a coat
Set free for the wild
I’d jump to jolt my clumsy blood
While my white, green eyes
Cry like a windowpane
Can my cold heart change
Even out of spite?
“Sky Blue Sky” from Sky Blue Sky (2007)
Tweedy once found himself stuck in a parade in his hometown of Belleville, Illinois, and wrote about the experience in the title track to Wilco’s sixth studio album. Returning home from St. Louis (20 miles away), Tweedy couldn’t avoid an ongoing parade on Main Street. “Sky Blue Sky” describes the small-town scene before acknowledging he must leave this place for a different kind of life.
Oh, the band marched on in formation
The brass was phasing, tunes I couldn’t place
Windows open and raining in
Maroon, yellow, blue, gold and gray
“Heavy Metal Drummer” from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001)
Decades ago, St. Louis’ Laclede’s Landing was a vibrant place to see bands. Jeff Tweedy’s former band, Uncle Tupelo, originated from just across the Mississippi River in Belleville, Ill., and came of age playing in St. Louis clubs like Cicero’s and Mississippi Nights (on the Landing). In “Heavy Metal Drummer,” Tweedy glimpses his childhood and summertime heavy metal concerts and lost innocence.
Oh, I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands
I used to go see on the Landing in the summer
She fell in love with the drummer
She fell in love with the drummer
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Photo by Kevin Winter/WireImage
