Wilco
Summer Teeth
»
Wilco
Summer Teeth
Reprise, 1999
RiYL: Beach Boys, Built To Spill, Neil Young |
Let's be honest, these guys aren't rocket scientists. They're flannel-wearing scrubs from Middle America, and simplicity suits them best. On its 1995 debut, Wilco played it safe and kept to the basics: simple guitar-based tunes centered around tried and true roots rock themes like drinking, car rides and teary-eyed break-ups. The final product, A.M., turned out just fine.
A year later, frontman Jeff Tweedy led his band into the vinyl annals of rollicking '70s rock and roll, only to return, arms in the air, with the near-perfect Being There. Graced with simple acoustic ballads like "Far, Far Away," gritty straight-ahead rockers such as "Hotel Arizona" and a handful of catchy melodies a la "Monday," the album established the group a notch above alt-country contemporaries Son Volt and the Jayhawks.
After Mermaid Avenue, a one-album collaboration with English melody-maker Billy Bragg, Wilco ditched models like Gram Parsons to saddle up alongside Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney. The result, Summer Teeth, is a mixed work blessed with a gaggle of ready-made classics and cursed with thin pop nuggets wrapped in Nutrasweet melodies.
To be fair, the album is grounded well by the band's ability to make almost anything Tweedy comes up with sound enjoyable. Opener "Can't Stand It" bounces between a strutting Wilson tribute and a twangy Built-to-Spill-esque guitar riff that suit each other well. Not long after, "A Shot In The Arm" squirms its way from an ultra-addictive melody in the verses to an exuberant, electric strings-drenched closing.
The new chord changes and light-hearted hooks are a commendable departure from overly sour and depressed tunes of the past. The smile-inducing sentiment of "I'm Always In Love," which could double as a Turtles cover, and "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)" keeps the listener alert through the more rootsy "Pieholden Suite."
By midway through the album, Tweedy and company hit their stride. The "Sultans Of Swing"-like chord progression of "How To Fight Loneliness" strums perfectly below Tweedy's smooth voice as he sadly sings "Just smile all the time." And as the song rolls gently toward its close, he ever-so-carefully slips in a few "do-doos" for listeners to store happily in their short-term memory banks.
Unfortunately, Summer Teeth's sweet flavor turns bland before the end of the record. The more complex productions, shooting to be finely-orchestrated Beach Boys tunes, fall short and land somewhere in the not-entirely-unbearable abyss of late ELO.
Likewise, Tweedy aims for the melodic genius of the Beatles and ends up with "When You Wake Up Feeling Old," a more shmaltzy remake of Paul McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-Four" (something few thought the world would ever hear). Sometimes, it seems like he's just trying a little too hard for that mythical hook to beat all other radio-friendly hooks.
"ELT" finds the group treading old ground, running in a hell of annoying pop repetition, not unlike Being There's "Kingpin" or Mermaid Avenue's "Hoodoo Voodoo." No, it isn't something you're going to turn off when it comes on the car radio. It's just something you're going to fast-forward through when it comes on your bedroom CD player. The album's coda is an unnecessary flashback to songs that would have had more staying power if they were just left untouched.
The listener is left with a bad taste in the mouth, wondering why even Wilco's best tunes have lost their crunch. Not wanting to suggest the group should move backward toward the naïve melodies of A.M., but convinced they need to steer away from the neighborhood of Top-40 hooks, this critic is sadly lost on suggestions for improvement.
BEN FRENCH | Ben founded NATN in the winter of 1998-1999 with fellow IU alums Troy Carpenter and Jonathan Cohen. During the day time, he's working for Nielsen Business Media, publisher of Billboard. Ben's favorite acts include Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Sonic Youth, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys.