So, tomorrow is the planned excursion up to Asheville for MastaG and I to see Of Montreal
And, of course, today Pigpen had a temp of 99.3 under the arm. Not totally alarming, but not exactly the circumstances in which I’m eager to be three hours away from him. Frankly, I haven’t told the in-laws about it yet, but I reckon I’ll need to. We had a big day today, with walks at the riverfront and Time-Out Deli (since we missed Monday’s visit). He hasn’t hurled, and he’s acting fine. In fact, I followed up on an early morning promise to take them bowling if they cleaned up some, and he did just fine.
And of course, like the Ghost Rider incident a few weeks ago, MastaG is damn near literally beside himself with anticipation to see the show. He loves the new record, and has been telling me which song will be his favorite to see live (its different every time, like a Magic 8 Ball).
We’re going to play by ear, and see how it goes. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with what Pigpen told me, as he looked so seriously at me across the little bowling table, sipping on his cup of water:
A few weeks ago Bos clued me into a super secret email he got from the Wilco fan club thing, talking about a super secret listening party for their as-yet-unreleased album Sky Blue Sky. Unfortunately, the listening party was at 10 PM CST on a Saturday Night, and Bos, Eaves, and myself are evidently too old to stay up that late for records.Alas.
However, some enterprising soul was able to stay up late enough, and also had the presence of mind to press the ‘record’ button on his computer, and put the album on the internet. Long story short, I have it.
Now, I’ve been pushing it on everybody over the past month or so, because the record jumps out and speaks to me like few records do. The responses I have gotten were all over the place. Bos loved it. Eaves didn’t immediately like it. Daco reportedly has listened to it a dozen times in 48 hours. Evan felt it didn’t have the power of their most recent records, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. Joel and Catherine don’t count, because they’re backwards and don’t like Wilco.
Why does it speak to me? Well, its a break up record, not unlike another recent favorite, Of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, which may be part of it, because songs about how you try to live your life when she’s never coming back tends to hit a particular chord with me (apparently, I’m moving from Emo to whiskey soaked Merle). Musically, though, Evan’s right. Its a bit of a step backwards, into territory the band covered on AM and Being There, but they’ve added a certain punch to it. A swagger, for lack of a better word, similar to the swagger that the Stones put into their records in the late 60s and early 70s (I have long maintained that Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street are the best run of records found in rock and roll to date). Bos and I sat around and tried to pick out what the songs seem reminiscent of, sometimes we’d hear some southern rock sounding stuff, sometimes we’d hear something like Wings, sometimes it’d be something entirely different. Its got a bounce that Wilco hasn’t had before, and it makes for some damn good music.
Sure, it doesn’t have a song that just completely stands out from the others, like their previous albums, but it would seem this is because its a record full of excellent songs.
This brought me into Spring Break, and kinda was the soundtrack, for me, of the winter ending.
