Wilco – Cousin – Album Review
by Killian Laher

Fresh from wowing their fans on their recent tour, Wilco are back with their 13th album, the Cate le Bon produced Cousin.  After the excellent and very ‘country’ Cruel Country, this one has been billed as their art-rock album.

After a bit of distortion, Infinite Surprise opens as a gentle, slightly odd shuffle, before the band welcome in the weirdness after three and a half minutes or so, with some gorgeous scratchiness – ending up with what sounds almost like a geiger counter.  It’s followed up by moody ballad Ten Dead, the kind of downbeat plod they do very well, with a clanging guitar thrown in for the last minute or so.  The gems keep coming on this album – When The Levee is Fake is again a ‘slightly off in a good way’ strum, within this framework the band deliver a gorgeous guitar jangle.  Evicted is something of a red herring, an amiable country strum that sounds like a leftover from Cruel Country.

Songs like Sunlight Ends and A Bowl And A Pudding sound like mid-paced, sunlit guitar rock with some offbeat noodly bits, while the title track adds twitchy percussion.  A late highlight on the album is the funereal plod of slow grind Pittsburgh, all moody guitar picking punctuated by stabs of synthesizer, and a downbeat slide guitar solo midway through.  The whole thing ends with the valedictory Meant To Be.

This album will both pull in fans who miss their more avant garde albums while also bringing along those who enjoyed their more recent, relatively straightforward albums.  Which is no mean feat.  While some may be snooty about Wilco, it’s simply excellent music.  One of the GREAT bands in guitar rock.

Cousin