Wilco, Summerteeth

Annnnd we have a new favorite.  

How I hadn't listened to this album in a long time escapes me.  I will listen to it often now.  

I love Wilco — Jeff Tweedy has one of the five singing voices I'd like to have (Martin Sexton, Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, and Mel Tormé are the others) — but I fell in love with them first through Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  This album is different, and — well, we'll see — might be better.  It sits somewhere between the sometimes desolate lyrics that Tweedy provides and the joyous, alt-country band that sprung out of Uncle Tupelo.  

Wilco songs are like how I want to write whatever I write — books, short stories, essays.  They're full of energy, but they're restrained and thoughtful at the same time.  Even the songs that I don't remember hearing before — "Pieholden Suite," for example — felt familiar.  It was easy to let myself like them.

The one blemish on this record is the entirely unnecessary remix of "A Shot in the Arm."  If it's not obvious what's been changed on the remix, it probably wasn't worth including on the album.