Wilco
Sky Blue Sky

After the intense experimentalism of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot", the wonderful noise oases of "Kicking Television", and the excellent "A Ghost Is Born", Wilco are once again engaging with tradition, not in a sterile imitation, but by combining different styles, meticulously handling each track, avoiding an unnecessary display of virtuosity: dry, light, and maniacally linear songs, at times almost schematic.

Nels Cline's guitar provides a significant contribution to the album, the subtle sound penetrates the melodies without altering them, floating convincingly, sometimes with typically jazz-inspired motifs, sometimes tentatively echoing Jerry Garcia's style. Jeff Tweedy's sulfurous voice has acquired a less mottled tone and lost the lethargy of its beginnings. The sophisticated pop of "Summerteeth" has given way to a more deliberate lyricism, less immediate and spontaneous. With "Sky Blue Sky," the Chicago band seems to have achieved a remarkable expressive serenity, the anxieties and conflicts, that were artistically prolific and conditioned previous works, have almost disappeared. When I first listened to it, I was traveling. It was evening, the sun set without finding reflections in the gray asphalt, the highway lamp lights were still shy, yet it seemed to me that in the static landscape outside the window, openings had appeared, that the car was suddenly heading towards unknown destinations and that the music was complicit in that illusory throbbing that accompanies us in the escape. The lamp lights had stopped flickering, the glow was more vivid and intense. Listening to it again a few days later, I noticed that it no longer summoned that sense of ecstatic melancholy, but pleasantly evoked in me the memory of that evening, of that grotesque, imaginative, and assumed escape.

The album opens with "Either Way": just a delicate guitar arpeggio, a subtle Hammond tapestry, and Tweedy's restrained voice in a sparse and essential melody. "You Are In My Face" is a folk song in which the tempo noticeably increases, the guitars reach more rock-like sounds and the leader’s vocal timbre at times resembles that of the early Rod Stewart. "Impossible Germany" is intriguing and seductive: a text of difficult interpretation, a tenuous and plaintive flow, through which the acute tones of Cline's impeccable guitar filter. It is followed by the track that gives its title to the album, where once again, Cline's minimalist and jazz-like taste dominates. "Side With Seeds" develops in a progressive crescendo that culminates and concludes in an excellent solo. "Shake it Off" has a wavering tone, sometimes even cloying and repetitive, and materializes in the search for a rhythmic and hypnotic cadence. "Please Be Patient With Me" is a wonderful song, a jewel in which the guitars intertwine softly, a whisper veiled by a subtle vein of melancholy. "Hate It Here" seems like a piece by the "Faces", both for the sharp and tense timbre of the voice and for the peculiarly rock style. "Leave me (like you found me)" is a soft, intimate ballad, in which the piano and voice converge admirably. A ringing piano theme opens "Walken", in which Cline's slide guitar evokes the pulsating blues of the "Almann Brothers". In "What Light" the voice increases in intensity only to become tremulous and deliberately uncertain at the end. "On And On And On" is wonderfully dreamlike, nocturnal, and tormented, the bass beats and the piano obsessively repeats the same melody.

"Sky Blue Sky" is a less eccentric, less tormented album, lacking that disheartening coldness, the restlessness, that sense of bewilderment, of tentativeness. It is a measured album, meticulously crafted in every detail, at times almost irritating in its minimalism. Yet it is beautiful. Sometimes it is difficult to find motivations in the muted tones that dissimulate the predetermined order. Each song mimics our escapes, supports our need for evasion, helps us to maintain that fragile balance within which we are often forced to take refuge; it is a comfort as instantaneous as it is evanescent. But evanescence is better than monotone daily certainties: there are no criteria that allow us to distinguish real knowledge from that of a dream.