You wait for years for a Tweedy album – then two come at once, kind of. Having worked with everyone from gospel legend Mavis Staples to garage punks White Denim since 2011’s The Whole Love, Wilco frontman, Jeff, with his 18-year-old son, Spencer on drums, releases a double album of 20 tracks that veer from raucous folk ‘n’ roll (‘Please Don’t Let Me Be So Understood’) to more typical laid-back alt. country fare (‘Desert Bell’).
The album is named after their pet name for Jeff’s wife and Spencer’s mother, Susan, who battles Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, not that you’d necessarily garner that from the lyrics, as Tweedy steadfastly steers towards the oblique. The exception that perhaps proves Tweedy’s rule is the heart-breaking ‘Where My Love’ (“I wanna watch you growing old and dumb/ I wanna see what you and I become”).
Several tracks are fleshed out by Lucius’ co-vocalists Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe, along with erstwhile REM collaborator Scott McCaughey on keyboards. On disc one, The Lucius ladies add luscious harmonies to ‘Wait For Love’, bring some soul to the cascading rock of ‘I’ll Sing It’ and contribute to the best sigh in a pop song on the wonderful ‘Low Key’. Meanwhile, the stunningly brooding ‘Diamond Light Pt 1’, with its staccato beats and dramatic bursts of discordant piano, would be at home amid the experimental delights of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, when Wilco felt like a countrified Radiohead.
The second disc has less bells and whistles, but is no less beautiful, from the mid-paced melancholy of ‘Summer Noon’ to the chug-a-lug country rock of ‘Flowering’. Tweedy experiments with an old time waltz on the hugely affecting ‘New Moon’ (“When you fall asleep, let me be what you’re dreaming for”) and the bass-driven dream of ‘Down From Above’.
Thoroughly enjoyable without consistently hitting the heights, Sukierae feels like Tweedy’s limbering up rather than really going for gold. That said, Tweedy’s warm-ups are better than most songwriters’ personal best.
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