Let’s talk about Harry Nilsson. The American Beatle. The pop-rock star of an era when pop and rock were all but synonymous. That Midnight Cowboy voice echoing ever westward on the only version of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” you’ve ever heard. The figure who stands dazed and unshaven, slouched lazily in a bathrobe and grasping a pipe, on the cover of the 1971 LP that would define his career, Nilsson Schmilsson. Schmilsson’s 10 tracks are jovial, temporal, and hooky as all hell, earning their author four Grammy nominations and holding fast to their prime Billboard spots even after Schmilsson’s successor, Son of Schmilsson was released a year later.
Which brings us to Wilco. The American Radiohead. Alt-rock stars of an era when rock is dead and alt garners neither fame nor fortune. And, most pertinently, progenitors of Schmilco, the lulziest tip-of-the-hat to the late, great Nilsson the music world may ever see. But irreverent titling is just about where the tribute ends. Schmilco comes at a different point in Wilco’s career than Schmilsson did in Nilsson’s: Schmilsson was a breakthrough, whereas Wilco, with nine avant-Schmilco full-lengths, six of which were Grammy-nominated, is a band already broken-in. Schmilco won’t define Wilco’s career.
As with any band with a catalogue so hallowed as Wilco’s, critics have greeted their latest album with a reflexive but ultimately apathetic reverence; Schmilco is good (what else is new?), but not genre-bending or politically uplifting enough to slap on more than the usual adjectives—introspective, understated, warm, personal. But since when does every release from our favorite bands have to gaze nobly toward the future for it to matter? In fact, it is Schmilco’s retrospection that, to my ear, earns it a spot among Wilco’s finest and most sensitive works.
Before I move on, let’s be clear about one thing: I am a Wilco superfan. Every time I write about Wilco, I pose the following question about critical journalistic integrity: “How do you write about your favorite band?” It’s tough when the following things are true: I have seen more Wilco concerts (it’s a figure upwards of 50 at this point) than I have any other band; I own somewhere between 20 and 30 Wilco t-shirts and their entire discography on vinyl (an accolade Wilco shares with Radiohead alone); I have made a mixtape entirely of Wilco love songs (which you should do if, and only if, your significant other is as maniacal a Wilco fan as you); my parents attended a Wilco concert on Valentine’s Day, 1997, just two months before I was born. If frontman Jeff Tweedy “was tamed by rock and roll,” as he sings on “Sunken Treasure” (Being There), then I was tamed by Wilco.
My favorite Wilco record? A Ghost Is Born. It’s not my favorite because it won the Grammy, nor am I fetishistically intrigued by its focus, a period of Tweedy’s life marred by anxiety, drug addiction, and, eventually, rehab. I love A Ghost Is Born because it represents Tweedy at his most honest—he takes all of the album’s guitar solos, one of which he described as a “musical transcription” of a panic attack—and a band that had begun to find its sound (the tour following its release was the first to feature Wilco’s current lineup). Schmilco too owes its identity more to Tweedy (the man) than it does to Wilco (the band); in this way, it recalls the intimacy of A Ghost Is Born. Gone are drummer Glen Kotche’s bold beats and Nels Cline’s cochlea-melting guitar solos, and in their place is a half-wry uneasiness sculpted, no doubt, by Wilco as an ensemble, but born of Tweedy’s mind alone.
“Normal American Kids” kicks off the record with the sound of a weathered acoustic guitar played in a bedroom, small and far away, soon joined by the trembling voice of a Tweedy steeped deep in his thoughts. He recalls a childhood of isolation and languor, and a hatred of “normal,” while an electric guitar meanders nervously through the changes. Schmilco brims with these sorts of musings on youth. On “If I Ever Was A Child,” Tweedy laments, “I hunt for the kind of pain I can take / I never was alone / Long enough to know / If I ever was a child.” The music itself reminds me of the quaint buoyancy of Wilco’s Being There and Summerteeth days, but the Tweedy who was then an alt-country up-and-comer sings now from the perspective of an artist once agonized, now revered.
That melancholy is directed at Tweedy’s late mother, JoAnn, on songs like “Happiness”: “I know the dead still listen / She sings a part of every refrain,” and later, “So sad it’s nothing / Happiness depends on who you blame.” The next track, “Quarters,” is even more of an elegy. “The tavern where you worked / Was cold and dark as a cavern,” Tweedy sings. “They’d ask you, ‘Who’s he?’ / Behind a glass without a glance / ‘My daughter’s boy,’ you would say.”
But not all of Schmilco is reminiscent. “Locator” is a song distinctly of the 21st century: satellites! internet privacy! synthesizers! Its soundscape—coupled with “Common Sense,” on which dissonant lead guitar tones rub up against each other like broken bones on rough metal — recalls the same nagging anxiety heard on Tweedy’s A Ghost Is Born guitar solos. Other tracks are downright referential; no Wilco album would be complete without a nod to the assertive guitar lines of Big Star, as heard on “Someone to Lose,” or to the bubbly strut of George Harrison’s solo work that informs Schmilco’s cheekiest tune, “Nope.”
Schmilco feels spontaneous. On most tracks, Tweedy’s distant guitar and timid vocals are joined, hesitantly at first, by the rest of the band, as if they’re playing the music for the first time and recording hastily to tape, leaving the sound of the room untouched. Tweedy & co. are playing sad songs indeed, but with tongues in cheeks and thumbs on noses.
Schmilco’s essence is encapsulated by its cover art, designed by celebrated Spanish cartoonist Joan Cornellà. It’s a comic strip depicting a man in a suit and tie using his body to conduct electricity to a turntable as a young girl dances. Both wear wide, unsettling smiles as smoke gushes from the man’s hair, and blood from his nose. Schmilco is like those uncanny grins: merry, even dance-worthy, at first encounter, but underscored by a dark, burning anguish.