The Whole Release! (Plus Updates and Other Cool Stuff)

It’s been quite a few weeks since the last update, so I figured I’d give you guys a kind of Wilco News Lightning Round (patent pending).

The moment we’ve been waiting for since it was announced almost four months ago has finally come. The result? The Whole Love is pretty awesome.

Many of us were treated to a 24-hour streaming party of the album a few weeks ago, but as many Wilco fans know, every album requires a few listenings to really get into it; now that it’s been out for a couple of weeks, I’m surprised that my vinyl copy of The Whole Love isn’t just a pile of string by now.

I thoroughly dig the new album (it goes without saying), as does almost everyone else, apparently.

• Rolling Stone gives The Whole Love 4 Stars, picking it as the editor’s pick of the week two weeks back.
• Spin gives it an 8/10, saying “Whoever has been dismissing Wilco as “dad rock” must have pretty complicated relationships with their fathers.”
• The LA Times gives The Whole Love 3.5/4 Stars. “Nearly every song contains some tangential surprise, odd hook, sonic back flip or midsong redefinition.”
• Reuters claims that The Whole Love shows shades of Beatles, stating that “[The Whole Love] thoroughly [summarizes] the disparate sides the beloved band has developed over the last 16 years.

Critics’ opinions are always welcome, but what really matters is what the band thinks of the record.

Jeff Tweedy, the Wilco frontman himself, discussed a select few tracks from The Whole Love in a recent interview:

“I Might”— The music that always feels the most like home to me is ’60s garage band music, “Pebbles”- and “Nuggets”-type (garage band compilation albums) of one-hit-wonder garage band music. That’s just the stuff that’s the most deeply ingrained in my DNA and my blood. It’s kind of weird that it doesn’t shine through that much. But it seems like it does on this record. That Farfisa (organ) sound is a pretty major part of that. It wasn’t even directed, actually. Mike (keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen) is just a big fan of that sound too. So that’s what he went for.

Art of Almost”— It was always the first track, from the second we started working on it. It opened the door the widest to the rest of the record. I think it’s the least categorizable song. We’ve had a string of records that have really hammered home this theory that whatever you put first on a record basically becomes the shorthand that that record has to endure critically. “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” would be talked about very differently if “Heavy Metal Drummer” was the first song on that album. “Either Way” was the first song on “Sky Blue Sky,” and of course that’s the “really mellow” record. I thought this was a chance to say, “What is this? You tell me.”

I also thought (it) would be interesting to start a record with hard drives starting up. The way it was described in the studio is the sound of data dying. The record kind of moves from that to the opposite end of the spectrum, to the most organic and pastoral kind of sound that you can put on a record.

“One Sunday Morning (For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)” — “Art of Almost” is a collage, and “One Sunday Morning” is one long performance. We never really played it again. That was just the one time we played it.It really doesn’t have much to do with Jane Smiley. I have met her boyfriend. The best I can do to explain it is I really like the guy, and we had a really poignant conversation for two guys that don’t really know each other. I did my best to reflect what I thought was powerful about that discussion.

You certainly know how to cut to the core of us, Tweedy.

In other Recent Tweedy-related interview news, The AV Club put out an outstanding interview with J. Tweed (I imagine he’d be cool with me calling him “J. Tweed”) last week. In it, he discussed the new record, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Wilco’s success and stability as a band, and the idea of “monoculturism.”

It seems like we have very fractured perceptions of reality. People shop for their own realities to reinforce the way they feel already, politically or—I don’t know. I guess there is a sense that you can kind of use the way the media works now to just build your own little universe. – Jeff Tweedy

Check out the whole interview here.

WilcoTube

Yeah, that’s right. Last week, the boys from Wilco curated YouTube. Just nod and pretend you know what that means.

Basically, the guys picked bunch of cool YouTube videos from around the interweb and put them in a sweet playlist.

Here’s a little taste of the selections:

Os mutantes – Fuga Nº 2

Reggie Watts – Big Ass Purse

Rock Vocals, Part 2 – May

Want to see more? Of course you do! Check out Wilco’s playlist, “Wilco Says: Watch!“

Hipstamatic Cassette Contest

Because vinyl is getting “too mainstream” for most hipsters, Wilco has announced a limited edition cassette release of The Whole Love. In fact, they have partnered with Hipstamatic on a contest to create the cover art for said cassette!

All anyone has to do for this contest is submit photos to Hipstamatic titled with the song from The Whole Love. The top five pictures, selected by members of Wilco themselves, will be on the cover of The Whole Love’s limited edition cassette!

I’m not much of a photog, but I call this one “Art of Almost”

See, because I had to wait a long time for UPS to get here. Never mind. It’s a “think-piece.”

Anyway, to submit a photo, or for more info on the contest, check out Hipstamatic.

Also, if anybody is interested in entering the cassette contest, send me your pictures on Twitter @WilcoNews, and I’ll retweet the best ones!

Other tidbits:

• Didn’t get tickets to see Wilco in concert this year? The good folks at NYCTaper were kind enough to record these incredible quality bootlegs of the New York gigs at Summerstage. Download them here!
• ‘Art of Almost’ one of the (many) standout tracks from The Whole Love has quite a history. Check out the band members’ thoughts on the track here.
• Check out Tweedy and the gang on “Talk Stoop,” just in case for some reason you doubted their talent or wit.
• Here’s another excellent article from The AV Club, discussing Wilco’s label as “The American Radiohead.”   “If anybody wanted to model themselves after us, they better be fucking be patient,” says Tweedy.
• Dig the artwork for The Whole Love? Check out this sweet interview with Joanne Greenbaum, the artist behind the album artwork on wilcoworld.net.

Tour Updates!

Wilco has announced yet another (!) Chicago performance, bringing their grand total to 4 shows at 4 different venues in Chi-Town this year. Tickets for their show at The Metro go on sale at 10 AM this Saturday, October 16th. Get ‘em here!

Another leg of the North American tour has been added: West Coast dates for the  early 2012 have been announced. More info about tickets will be provided as it becomes available. For now, here’s the dates so far:

1/19 Denver, CO – Fillmore

1/21 Tempe, AZ – Gammage

1/22 San Diego, CA – Copley Symph. Hall

1/24 Hollywood, CA – Palladium

1/28 San Jose, CA – Civic Aud

1/29 San Francisco, CA – Warfield

1/31 Oakland, CA – Fox Theatre
2/1 Davis, CA – Mondavi Center

2/3 Eugene, OR – Hult Center

2/5 Vancouver, BC – Orpheum

2/6 Spokane, WA – INB Performing Arts Center

2/7 Seattle, WA – Paramount Theater

2/8 Portland, OR – Schnitzer Theater

2/10 Santa Barbara, CA – Arlington Theater

And the remaining shows for this year:

10-24 Glasgow, Scotland – Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
10-25 Manchester, England – Manchester Academy
10-27 Bristol, England – Colston Hall
10-28-29 London, England – Roundhouse
11-01 Madrid, Spain – Teatro Circo Price
11-02 Barcelona, Spain – Palau Musica Catalana
11-03 San Sebastian, Spain – Kursaal Auditorio
11-04 Vigo, Spain – Pavillon das Travesas
11-07 Basel, Switzerland – Kaserne Basel
11-08 Frankfurt, Germany – Alte Oper
11-09 Munich, Germany – Circus Krone
11-11 Weissenhauser, Germany  - Rolling Stone Weekender
11-12 Berlin, Germany – Tempodrom
11-13 Utrecht, Netherlands – Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn
11-14 Tilburg, Netherlands – 013
11-29 Dallas, TX – The Music Hall at Fair Park
12-01 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater
12-03 Kansas City, MO – The Uptown Theater
12-04 De Moines, IA – Val Air Ballroom
12-06-07 Minneapolis, MN – The State Theatre
12-09 Milwaukee, WI – The Riverside Theater
12-10 Detroit, MI – The Fillmore Detroit
12-12 Chicago, IL – Civic Opera House
12-13 Chicago, IL – Riviera Theatre
12-15 Chicago, IL – The Vic
12-16 Chicago, IL – Metro

Well, that’s enough out of me. I now leave you with this clip of Nels Cline playing Duane Allman’s ’57 Les Paul  during a performance of California Stars on 9/29/11. Enjoy it.

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The Whole…Lot of Updates

Die Rolling Stone Die! That's German for "The Rolling Stone. The," because it's a German Rolling Stone. See how that worked out?

Man. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I apologize for my inconsistencies with updates, but between moving, setting up internet in a new apartment, problems with said internet set up, and starting classes (and the work that goes into them) I haven’t had a whole lot of time to update the site.

Anyways, as many of you probably already know, much has happened in the world of Wilco lately.

• Last Saturday, September 3rd, Tweedy and the boys were cool enough to let all of us stream The Whole Love in its entirety on the WilcoWorld site. General consensus, at least from The Twitter (that’s what the kids are calling it now), is that it’s everything we could have hoped it would be and more. Don’t believe me? Check out these handy Twee-views (whether I made that word up or not, let’s please never use it again.):

I think it’s their White Album. Weird and pop in the best ways. Jeff’s best singing since Ghost. – @MHarrell

What we’ve all been waiting for. Awesome! - @tclarke34

One Sunday Morning (for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend) might be the best song Tweedy has ever written. And by might be I mean is. – @AlexMcCourt19

Listening to new Wilco. It’s nice. Some of it has sort of an OK Computer meets ELO vibe. @CYMBLS_EAT_GTRS  (From Cymbals Eat Guitars – an outstanding new band.)

I’ve listened three times now. No holes in this album. Tweedy & Co. are the non-sports equivalent of Mariano Rivera. – @JoeCheckler

Amazing!! Very solid. I felt like there was a little bit of Jay reincarnated. Can’t wait to hear it live in less than 2 weeks! – @sayumsme

New Wilco is excellent! Awesome. – @rpecknold (Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes)

• Also, not surprisingly, Wilco has announced an extension on their North American tour! After traveling overseas, the boys will be back in the States playing 9 more dates in cities from Dallas to…wait for it…Chicago! It’s a good thing, too; now those of us from Chi-town have time to let our forehead bruises heal from constantly bashing our heads against the wall, cursing our Moms for not letting us hitchhike to St. Louis to see the show at The Pageant. What? Don’t give me that look. Like I’m the weirdo. Anyway, here’s what the late fall is going to look like for Wilco (the band):

29 Nov 2011 / Dallas,TX / The Music Hall at Fair Park   | view details

01 Dec 2011 / Austin, TX / Austin City Limits-The Moody Theater   | view details

03 Dec 2011 / Kansas City, MO / The Uptown Theater  | view details

04 Dec 2011 / W. Des Moines, IA / Val Air Ballroom   | view details

06 Dec 2011 / Minneapolis, MN / The State Theatre   | view details

07 Dec 2011 / Minneapolis, MN / The State Theatre  | view details

09 Dec 2011 / Milwaukee, WI / The Riverside Theater  | view details

10 Dec 2011 / Detroit, MI / The Fillmore Detroit  | view details

12 Dec 2011 / Chicago, IL / Civic Opera House   | view details

Details on tickets and pricing will be posted as they become available. Stay tuned!

• Need to brush up on your Wilco history before the release of The Whole Love? Amazon’s got deals on the the entire Wilco catalog, throughout the entire month of September, with some MP3 albums starting at $5. Check it out here.
• Wilco has joined with Farmer Foodshare, Triangle Local Businesses and Ten Farmers Markets in the “Farmer Foodshare Challenge.” Read about it here.
• Some awesome videos for new tunes have surfaced

Wilco - I Love my Label (Live in Studio)

Jeff Tweedy -  Dawned On Me (Acoustic version of song on The Whole Love)

**UPDATE: NEW MUSIC VIDEO ALERT! In characteristically surprising fashion, the boys have released a video for Born Alone, a track off The Whole Love today. Check it out!

• Also, there’s this. If this video signifies the end of the world, I think I can die happy. Don’t ask, just watch.

Jeff Tweedy - I Gotta Feeling (At Dan Sinker’s “The Fucking Epic Twitter Quest of Mayor Emanuel,”  book launch party, September 6)

What more could one ask for? Jeff Tweedy reciting the lyrics to My Humps, William S. Burroughs-style, you say? Good call.

Jeff Tweedy – My Humps

In case you couldn’t get enough (and who can?) Tweedy-Peas covers, here’s another!

Jeff Tweedy – Rock That Body

Can somebody please get Tweedy to play “TiK ToK” Next? Maybe get Nels to lay down some tasty licks on the Theremin in the background?

• For those of you who missed the stream on Saturday (what were you busy doing, working?), the songs from The Whole Love have been uploaded to YouTube. Check ‘em all out here while you can, before Jeff Tweedy comes to your house and kicks you in the head.

Well, I suppose that about wraps ‘er all up for now. I’ll keep you posted with any new info on tour dates, etc, as they become available.

By the way, does anyone have a favorite song off of The Whole Love so far? For my money (which I spent on the pre-order), Art of Almost is quite an achievement.

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“The Whole Love” Updates

@Paintmeawar designed this promo for The Whole Love. I, for one, can dig it.

(Check out Paint Me A War’s site here, and follow them here.)

OK. Here’s what we know.

1. “I Might”, Wilco’s latest single, is awesome.
2. “I Love My Label”, The B-Side to “I Might”, and cover of a Nick Lowe song, is awesome as well.
3. The Whole Love, Wilco’s forthcoming album, comes out September 27.
4. You can pre-order it and win a chance to get a bunch of awesome stuff.
5. Wilco is touring in North America and overseas this fall.
6. Wilco released this trailer for The Whole Love in which they play a segment from “Almost”, a new track.
7. It is awesome.
8. Nels Cline is wearing a Plastic Ono Band T-shirt (which I only know because @ThisBoyJakeD tweeted it)

For those of you who haven’t checked out the new single, stream it here:

Wilco – I Might

Wilco – I Love My Label

Also, here is another (early acoustic version of a) new tune called “Open Mind”

Jeff Tweedy – Open Mind (Early version of song to be on The Whole Love)

Also, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, the tracklist for The Whole Love is as follows:

The Whole Love

01 Art of Almost
02 I Might
03 Sunloathe
04 Dawned on Me
05 Black Moon
06 Born Alone
07 Open Mind
08 Capitol City
09 Standing O
10 Rising Red Lung
11 Whole Love
12 One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)

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Free Listens: Downloads and Streaming

Looks like even our boy Jeff Tweedy is excited for September. What a rascal!

Man, even as September gets closer, it still feels far away. That sounded like something a very un-wise, very stoned philosopher might say. We’ve got less than two months until the release of The Whole Love and the sub-sequential tour, yet many of us Wilco fans are really in the mood for some new music. Even after listening to the latest single, “I Might”, on the radio, on our iPods, and on our way to court for pirating music, we still can’t get enough new Wilco.

Luckily, after snooping around a bit, I’ve found some more pretty great Wilco and Wilco-related tracks available for downloading and streaming. Consider this Round 2 of the free download post from July.

• From Spin.com – Remember in Cline Time when I mentioned that Nels Cline of Wilco would be collaborating with a band called Tinariwen (“who are, I kid you not, a group of nomadic Tuareg tribesmen who fought in Mali’s civil war”) on an all-acoustic album called Tassili? Well, Spin has got the premiere track from the album, a track called “Imidiwan Ma Tennam” (Hey! That’s my mother’s name!), and it is, as expected, very awesome. According to Spin, “Tinariwen and Cline crafted the song separately on two different continents. The group worked up basic groove in Algeria, while Cline recorded his parts in Wilco’s Chicago Loft studio. Cline’s producer Ian Brennan says the guitarist’s concept was to “be like a UFO landing in the desert.” Curious as to how that sounds? Dig it here.

• From nyctaper.com – This is a lossless download for the entire 6/25/07 Wilco performance at the Hammerstein in New York.

• This is a download of The Autumn Defense (side project of John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of Wilco)’s “Back of My Mind.” It’s fantastic, and if you haven’t listened to their cover of “Paradise” (originally by Mark Mulcahy) on the Ciao My Shining Star album (the entire album is incredible), get to it.  Spotify it, if you have the means.

• From Indieshuffle.com - This is something you may have heard before: it’s Jeff Tweedy’s acoustic rendition of “Yesterday” by a small, little-known band called The Beatles, in honor of Sir Paul McCartney’s recent gig at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

• From OwlandBear.com – Woah. This is the mother-lode. This is a live Wilco archive (compiled by the very cool members of Via Chicago) of almost every live show ever recorded from Wilco, members of Wilco, and other incarnations of the band. From The Autumn Defense to Golden Smog to Seven Worlds Collide, there are enough free downloads here to make you want to strand yourself on a desert island just to listen to all of them.

OwlandBear.com say something on the Wilco Archive page that I think is important to keep in mind when we download stuff for free:

… don’t forget to buy any Wilco-related recordings and merchandise that you can get your hands on; these are great people with big hearts who love to give, so please don’t just take from them.

I believe that many of us do realize this, and that’s why we do things like preorder albums and glow-in-the-dark yo-yos, travel 200 miles to see a show that’s not even in the state we live in, and make our own music videos. We fans that truly appreciate the band and the work it does do not want to see great music thrown into a pile with Ke$ha and Justin Bieber CD’s in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart. We download and listen to these tracks not simply because they’re free, but because we love and enjoy the band’s art so much that we simply can’t get enough of it.

This is not meant to be a guilt trip in any way, just a little ramble on the current issues of music downloading legality.

Anyway, Enjoy!

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I Did Not Know That! Weird, Wilco Schtuff

Jeff Tweedy just saw what you were thinking...and he liked it.

If you type in “Wilco” on your favorite search engine, you’re going to find a lot of information: Tour dates, information on their new album The Whole Love, information on Solid Sound Fest, downloads and….wait. You can find all of that right here! What you can’t find, however, are the weird, interesting Wilco-themed things around the internet that only a dude with unlimited time on his hands could find. Well, now you’re in luck! I killed that guy, assumed his identity and stole his links. Here is a bunch of (as Dana Carvey as Johnny Carson would put it) Weird Wild Schtuff  from around the internet, related to Wilco. Some are strange, some are confusing, some will shake you to the very core of your being. Others will make you say “meh.” Anyway, without further rambling, here is some Weird Wilco Schtuff.

First up is something some of you may have already seen, and others of you may have already tried:

I can't decide if this is ominous or homage-y

Yep. That’s exactly what it looks like: Wilco beer. Though Lagunitas, the brewing company, claims that  Tweedy, Cline and the gang wasn’t  the inspiration for Wilco Tango Foxtrot, I think I speak for all Wilco fans when I say (the sarcasm flowing heavily), “Yeah, OK.”

Reviews for the ale have been surprisingly positive (B+ from Beer Advocate, the only magazine I’d trust to review my hops and barley), especially from a few Wilco News Twitter followers:

“Very, very good. Had a few pints on tap and the bottle as well”  -@TheManOfSeal

“It’s very good! I picked up a bottle this past weekend.”  -@alexhansonman

So if “Wilco Tango Foxtrot Ale” is not a reference to Wilco or their now-classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, what would be? “Beering There”? “Wilco (the ale)”? “What Light (beer)?”

If anyone has any further horrible Wilco beer puns, send them to @WilcoNews on Twitter, and hashtag it #Wilcobeernames. Or you can leave a comment. Either way (see what I did there?).

Speaking of food, drink and puns, here’s the Sky Blue Sky Sandwich Company out of Toronto, Canada:

Naming sandwiches after Wilco songs; that's not so much weird as it is awesome.

The Sky Blue Sky Sandwich Company (openly referencing Sky Blue Sky; say what you will about Canadians – at least they’re honest) aptly names each if its food items after Wilco songs. I know what you’re thinking. “Does this mean that if I order the Less Than You Think I’ll have to listen to ten minutes of guitar feedback?” I would assume not, though I’ve never eaten at the place. You can, however, experience Outtasite (Outta Mind) and She’s A Jar in a way that you (probably) never have: with a pickle.

"How To Fight Loneliness" consists of contains slices of chicken, apple and bacon all on "toasty naan-like bread."

Has this piqued your curiosity? It’s definitely piqued mine-though I am a sucker for rock n’ roll-themed food.  You can check their menu out here for the latest on Wilco-titled sandwiches from One Wing to Hoodoo Voodoo. As if you needed another reason to envy Canada. I will say this though. I haven’t been able to stop thinking of other Wilco sandwich names. I know you didn’t ask to hear them, but here they are:

Muzzle of Bees

Honeycomb cereal, bananas and salami all on cold Honey Wheat bread with honey mustard

Sunken Treasure

“It’s like eating a pirate!” Fried starfish, seaweed and pastrami on a pan-fried pair of boxer shorts with honey mustard

Candy Floss

Candy. Floss. Honey mustard.

That name again is Mr. Plow. Er-ah- Sky Blue Sky.

Naming Wilco sandwiches. Is that a career I could corner jump in on? I could do that all day. Though in the interest of your sanity and mine, I won’t. We’ve got to press on to other weird business. I mean that literally; this next guy’s name is Jake Weird:

Tweedy. Gyllenhall. Do I smell a cage match?

Jake has a thing for comparing Jeff Tweedy to actors, apparently. In one post he put up a bunch of pictures comparing the Wilco frontman to Jake Gyllenhall (pictured right), and in a more recent post, compared Tweedy to Emile Hirsch.

I’m not going to speak for everyone when I say this, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying, “Ah. You lost me.” For those of Tweed-Hirsch-llynhall heads who agree with Mr. Weird, check out his site here.

Mr. Tweedy’s all about the diet slush drinks.

Say the first name that pops into your head when you read the following combination of words: “Diet Coke” “Slurpee” “Folk Fest.” If you said “Nelson Mandela,” you’d be wrong. The name that you should have thought of was Jeff Tweedy.

An excerpt from SwerveCalgary.com tells the gripping (kinda) tale of one Folk Fest Volunteer’s at-first disappointing meeting with Wilco’s frontman, while revealing a ‘s strange, possibly short-fused side of Tweedy that many of us would not think exists.

Linden, can you go get Jeff Tweedy?’ ” The request marked Linden Ritchie’s first gig as a ground-transportation volunteer, a coveted position the musician/waste-management consultant says he begged for. “I’m like Forrest Gump,” says Ritchie. “I’ve met some pretty incredible people in my life, and I like that this role is where the common person meets with fame.” So, did his heart skip a beat when Wilco’s front man climbed into his van? “No. I’d never heard of him and anyway, he wasn’t friendly. He sat in the back and focused on his Blackberry for the entire 10-minute ride from his hotel to the Island.” When Ritchie turned on the radio, he says Tweedy glared at him and barked ‘Turn that down!’ “I wasn’t too impressed.”

Weird, right? It gets a bit weirder. Check here for the full story.

Uh-oh. Did you hear that? That sound means it’s time for the lightning round!

• This article from Jew Eat Yet? (which gets my full and undying respect if only for the name) from Danny Miller, brother-in-law of Jeff Tweedy, is a very sweet recount of Tweedy’s 40th birthday in 2007.
• This is a sweet video of Glenn Kotche composing Drum-kit quartets:

• This is a story on Marina City in Chicago, the towers on the cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The AV Club also did a great piece on the “Wilco towers,” as they are now more commonly known.
• This is a chat room for fans of Wilco. You know, like in case you time travel back to 1997 and are 12 years old.

• This isn’t Wilco (the band) at all! Definitely signed up for the wrong mailing list. On the plus side, I’ve now got enough pop rivets to sink a battleship.

• This is a glow-in-the-dark Wilco yo-yo! Yes, you read that correctly.

Finally, to end this week in weird, strange and interesting Wilco News, here are some rejected covers for Wilco’s last full-length album, Wilco (the album). I tried to pick and choose the best and least disturbing ones, but if you’d like to see them all (at your own risk) check out The Hidden Track.

Via Glide Magazine’s The Hidden Track:

Man, that was a lot of stuff! Weirded out enough? If not, check out some odd yet awesome covers of songs by and of Wilco.

And if you haven’t pre-ordered The Whole Love yet, what’samadda you?

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Pre-order The Whole Love Now!

The day of judgement is finally here... because I just spent my last 40 bucks.

Woah. I knew something important was happening today. Was it the Obama/Boehner debate? No, definitely not. Was it the end of the NFL lock-out? Nope, that was yesterday. The moon landing? No, that was 40 years ago.

Actually, today is arguably much more important than all those events combined: Today, July 26th, is the fist official pre-order date for The Whole Love!

I already know the answer to your question; yes, it glows in the dark.

For those of you who are out of the loop, The Whole Love is Wilco’s forthcoming eighth (or ninth, depending on your appreciation of live albums) full-length album, set for a September 27th release.

You can pre-order the album here, in addition to many other goodies and odds-and-ends in bundles. The album is available in 180 gram double gatefold vinyl, cd, deluxe cd box & digital.

For anyone hmm-ing and haw-ing about pre-ordering the album, I have seven words for you, six of which are hyphenated: “Glow-in-the-dark Wilco yo-yo.” Did that get your attention? It should have.

This is a beautiful image to wake up seeing in the morning.

In addition to the album, pre-orderers will also get:

• an instant Mp3 download of the album track I Might
• a free Mp3 download of the entire album on release day (September 27)
• entry to  weekly drawings (including signed albums, a completely restored 1955 single speed bicycle – photos HERE, tickets to sold out shows, a Polaroid camera and photos taken by the band, and more.
• See a full list of prizes HERE
• Also, here’s a glow-in-the-dark Wilco yo-yo

Hurry up, though, you slackers. The sooner you order, the better chance you have to win one of the drawings. Did I mention the glow-in-the-dark Wilco yo-yo? Well it exists. and I’m getting one.

*You can also order directly from Anti- records here: less goodies, but cheaper shipping.

* For you digital nerds (just kidding, c’mon), you can also buy The Whole Love off iTunes here

Can’t wait to hear some of the latest tune-skis? Yes I just used the word “tune-skis.” Deal with it. And listen to Wilco’s latest tunes here. Also, don’t forget to check around the site for free downloads and streaming tracks. Think of it as an Easter egg hunt. For adults. Who don’t care about Easter anymore. And like Wilco.

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Cline Time (Featuring Free Songs!)

You can play the guitar with your teeth you say? Good for you. But can you be Nels Cline and play the guitar with your teeth? Didn't think so.

In the same vein as The Tweedy Feed, I decided to create Cline Time, a source for the latest dirt on our favorite Cline: Nels. It’s kind of like the Frasier to The Tweedy Feed’s Cheers; kind of a spinoff, but very much it’s own thing (though I did try to get that delightful dog to appear in here. He said no.). Actually, it’s a lot more like The Colbert Report to The Daily Show. That’s a much better analogy; I don’t know why I said that other thing. Forget that I did, all right?

In any case, forgetting all sitcom spinoffs, many of us Wilco fans have gotten so caught up in the frenzy of anticipation and anxiety (what, you don’t have anxiety?) for The Whole Love and Wilco’s upcoming tour, we overlooked another major album release earlier this summer: BB&C (Tim Berne, Jim Black and Nels Cline)’s live album, The Veil. To many of us Wilco fans, Nels Cline is the underrated, under-appreciated, incredibly talented guitar god from Wilco; however, what many of us don’t realize is that he is one hell of an experimental free Jazz-rock musician. And he’s out there. Like Sun Ra On Jupiter out there.

Don’t believe me? Take a pull on this: It’s called “Caved-In Heart Blues” from Cline’s 2007 album, Draw Breath. It has come close to replacing Neil Young’s For The Turnstiles as the song I will hear in my head just before I go insane. Which is pretty high praise coming from me.

Did you listen to it? Pretty out there, right? Yet it’s somehow very soothing. It might be the molasses-drippingly slow tempo. Which is kind of a good thing.

Here’s a pretty sweet video of Cline performing with the Les Paul Trio in New York at Iridium last Monday:

Awesome distractions aside, The Veil, the latest from Cline, Black, and Berne (or BB&C, as they’re also known, which I like because you can hold the Shift bar the entire time you type it in) has been getting some pretty great reviews so far, and judging from Railroaded, the free MP3 download from last month, (which you can download here), they all seem justified in their praise. Here are some reviews for the record so far:

The Veil is a rapturous performance from three of New York City’s most electrifying talents at the last vestige for improvisational music left standing in Manhattan following the Blue Condo-ization of the Lower East Side.

-Jambands.com

Cover from The Veil. Anybody else getting a Tom Waits-y vibe?

From the opening passages you can tell that these are masters at work. Behind the doors of their industrial space, they are wrapping Waterford crystals in sheet-metal and playing catch. They are sprinkling machine nuts in the gears watching it sputter and spit out twisted scraps and unanticipated treasures.

-Allaboutjazz.com

… [The Veil performances were]  mostly two continuous improvised performances from musicians who have no fear of going into simultaneous improvisation that might scare other musicians back to law school. The kind of meeting of minds that both jazz and bands like Wilco need.

-BuffaloNews.com

The combination of the three, which for a time went under the name Sons of Champignon, makes for an alchemical fusing of explosive out-jazz and apocalyptic rock punctuated by moments of delicate beauty.

-JazzTimes.com

This is Tinariwen. They are going to make beautiful music with Nels Cline. I'm going to buy it. Probably.

As if all this wasn’t enough for Nels, he’s also recorded an all-acoustic album called Tassili with a band called Tinariwen (here’s a little taste), who are, I kid you not, a group of nomadic Tuareg tribesmen who fought in Mali’s civil war. Also featured on the album are Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio and the horn players of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Is it cool if I speak for everyone on this one? Well I’m going to: “If I don’t get to hear this soon, I’m going to do something drastic. Like cancel my Spotify subscription. Which I don’t have.”

You’ve got time for one more awesome video before you go to bed, or work, or some other website, right? Good. Because this one’s pretty wild. I will end this edition of Cline Time with a video of Nels Cline playing the (kickass) solo to “Impossible Germany,” which so far is the frontrunner for this week’s poll. Please enjoy:

Nels Cline with Wilco – Impossible Germany

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