Jeff Tweedy’s forthcoming solo albums isn’t just a departure from Wilco. It’s a departure from the concept of solo albums: He started out, it seems, working alone but before long his collaborations with son Spencer, an 18-year-old drummer, made it clear that a stand-alone side project was coming together.
And thus we have Tweedy, a duo recording of a solo album called Sukierae, due September 16, 2014 via Wilco’s dBpm imprint.
Its rangy advance single, the layered, propulsive “I’ll Sing It,” sets the stage nicely — with a crepuscular vocal, so full of quiet portent, and a descending cadence that only adds to the drama. The sense of familial connection runs just as deep as the song’s darker complexities, to the point where even a deliriously happy yeah-yeah-yeah chorus can’t break the spell.
Then a tangled guitar kicks off what promises to be an anthemic conclusion, only it gives way to the most intriguing of conclusions: “I’ll Sing It” slowly, slowly, ever so slowly devolves down into a ruminative stop. By going it alone — but with someone he trusts so implicitly — Jeff Tweedy seems freed of conceptual binds, and in so doing, he’s created something truly new for himself.
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