#45 Wilco – Summerteeth
Summerteeth is Jay Bennett’s creation. Consider the background for Wilco, the splitoff from an alternative country band Uncle Tupelo after one of the members (Another Jay by the name of Mr. Farrar) is upset that Mr. Tweedy is taking too much of the limelight and he creates Son Volt. Jeff Tweedy’s first release with his makeshift band is ok. In retrospect A.M. is not a great record but Jay Bennett does join the band in mid-94 and we start to see the morphing of Wilco’s sound. By 1998, we hear so many of Bennett’s beautiful arrangement’s combined with Tweedy’s tortured lyrics and this is the album you can hear his influence coming through strong.
The album also abandon’s much of their “Alt-Country” roots on this album. While local shows at the time would allow for Tweedy to present this material in a more stripped down manner, the albums are pushing into something far greater. The beginning of ‘I’m Always In Love’ is reminiscent of the Velvet Underground with it’s keyboard intro. ‘How to Fight Lonliness’ has this almost sneaky keyboard work in the back that just softens the song that it give’s it a bit of heart. In fact the more you listen to the work, and listen to the contributions that Jay Bennett makes on the album you realize just how important he is to the final sound on the album.
The reason why this album did not have more commercial success than this still defies logic. On the surface this is a perfect mixture of pop and folk and tragedy. There were instant singles such as ‘Candyfloss’, ‘Shot in the Arm’, ‘I’m Always In Love’ and ‘Can’t Stand It’ combined with the solemn “She’s a Jar” and the haunting “Via Chicago”. Mixed in-between are plenty of classics like “How to Fight Lonliness” and “In a Future Age”. What we truly see is a songwriting duo in Tweedy and Bennett using their strengths, Tweedy with his folksy lyrics and Bennett with his pop backgrounds to write some of the most beautiful and frightening songs that you would ever hear.
Consider the lyrics “I dreamed about killing you again last night and it felt alright to me,” is not a line that you might consider a relatively adjusted male might write about. Obviously Tweedy has had his share of health issues over the years and might yell at you if you are sitting and talking during a show but he would never seem unfriendly nor would appear to be a killer.
There have always been some favorite Wilco moments for me but one of them was hearing the song “Future Age” at a Jeff Tweedy solo show over 10 years ago. Tweedy had added some pedal effects and the delicate song had this newfound beauty.
Tweedy’s subjects over they years have typically been about relationships and or personal matters rather than subjects that are external such as politics, social issues and even religion (although he did touch on the subject matter briefly with both Uncle Tupelo as well as on the Mermaid Avenue project where he wrote songs based on selected lyrics from Woody Guthrie.) This was one of those personal albums that the dug a little deeper for a pop album and that was definitely why it always appealed to me so.