Schmilco! – Wilco’s 10th Studio Album Famous since the 90s for their well-known indie alternative sound and managing to outlast and evolve in an ever-music industry, Chicago-based band Wilco returns this week with 10th studio album Schmilco.
Earlier this year, Wilcofrontman Jeff Tweedy hinted that the band would be releasing another album following their 9th studio album released just over a year earlier. Running just over half an hour, their previous album, titled Star Wars, was self-released on their own record label, dBpm. A year after its release, the band released a new single, titled “If I Ever Was a Child” with announcement of new album Schmilco.
In comparison, Star Wars turned out to be an album with a looser, more upbeat sound, yet in some ways it did not live up to the legacy of more of the band’s previous work; whereas Schmilcois said to be more relaxed, back-to-basics sound, with primarily acoustic sound.
Wilco’s first single released for the album is titled “Locator,” and was released on the first anniversary of the release of Star Wars. This song is rather upbeat, but carries on the simple notion that the band had planned this album to have, with not much more complexity than harmonization of Tweedy’s voice in certain parts. The song builds up in the middle to have an explosive bat of guitar. Tweedy ends the song by singing “I tell locator everything he wants to know.”
Their second single release for Schmilco, titled “If I Ever Was a Child,” features Tweedy singing with simple acoustic guitar and easy rhythm, leading further to add organ into the mix, and that is as complex as it get.
This time around, Tweedy and company worked on songs for Schmilco alongside the songs they created for Star Wars. Only this time, the Schmilco songs came from a different place than those for Star Wars, which the band kept in mind as they created these more laid-back songs, and put them on the backburner for the time being. The creation of this collection is what prompted the release of so quickly released Schmilco.
The members of the band seem to be the most cohesive as a group as they ever have been; after working together for more than a decade, the remaining members, which include frontman Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Glenn Kotche, and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone are the ones that have proven they can stand the pressures of an industry that never stops changing and can continue to work together in order to create music that is dynamic and intriguing in so many different ways.
It is with this synchronization and cohesion that the band will continue to succeed as they have since the 90s, changing and tweaking their sound as much as they feel necessary and bringing it from an honest place that has come from so many years of experience.