Wilco

If you prefer songcraft to sonic exploration, you'll fall for Wilco's sixth LP like you did for Being There. They wrote it in the studio as a band, and like any good album, the magic unfolds with repeated listens. In moments where Wilco settle back into the subtlety of their Americana roots, guitar phenomenon Nels Cline lets loose with something jazzy and proggy, but tasteful. "Either Way" is a simple, sunny song that sets the tone with a warm George Harrison feel. Doubled leads on "Impossible Germany" recall '70s soft-rock obscurities like the cosmic, countrified rock of Sand.

Have Wilco ever come up with a better song than "Impossible Germany"? For the first three
minutes, it's a mysterious soft-rock ballad with jazzy chords filtered through
stoner-country guitar licks, like some lost outtake from Steely Dan's Katy Lied. Jeff Tweedy
mumbles about isolation in his most beaten-up-by-life voice. Then, in the final three
minutes, it builds into a twin-guitar epic, with Tweedy in the left speaker reinve... More >