Sky Blue Sky
Wilco
Score:71
Reviewer: Justin Pearsall
Label: Nonesuch (USA, UK & Australia)
Reviewed: Apr 30th '07, Released:2007
It’s true, Sky Blue Sky is not Wilco’s best album. And yes, it has a very mellow adult contemporary sound. But is it really half as good as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as some are claiming? Is Sky Blue Sky truly surpassed by Nelly Furtado’s Loose and Gwen Stefani’s The Sweet Escape? Is it a steaming pile of horse crap as some would lead you to believe? No, it’s not.
More than anything these reviews are the prime example of people judging a band negatively because of the brilliance of their past work. But, just because Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was an amazing album, it should not mean that Wilco are judged on this precedent. Like any band they should be classed on the current standard of what’s around, their past albums a factor, not a sole criterion, in this judgement.
Anyway, the point of all this is that Sky Blue Sky is far better than a mid-fifties score. While it does have moments where Wilco sound diluted or uninspired, the majority of the album is enjoyable and interesting. A couple of tracks are even amongst the band’s best.
The opening suite of Sky Blue Sky, ‘Either Way’, ‘You Are My Face’ and ‘Impossible Germany’ all work together to establish Wilco’s intentions early on. Atmospheric and restrained, the climaxes of the song are no longer carried by Tweedy’s voice or the grand soundscapes of recent times, but are driven by the guitar work of Nels Cline. His jazz-inspired virtuosity is one of the main reasons for the divided opinion about the album. Undoubtedly, Sky Blue Sky is guitar heavy, the highlight of this direction being the three-pronged, near three-minute guitar conclusion to ‘Impossibly Germany’ that some will find fitting and others will view as needless.
However, it is also true that there are some really weak moments on Sky Blue Sky. ‘Walken’, ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Hate It Here’ are three prime examples. All suffer from the album’s intentions to be simpler. Simple is fine, but it’s the lack of real melody or progression in the songs that makes them bad. While these moments don’t ruin Sky Blue Sky, they don’t allow the album the unity that most would expect from a band like Wilco and ultimately they let the record down.
Rarely, if ever, has a band continually outgrown themselves with each album and whether it be Radiohead, The Shins or Death Cab, there is a common trend in recent times for good bands to release albums that simply do not stack up to their past work. Sky Blue Sky is certainly an album that falls into line with this trend, but, like these other releases, it is still a good album, and one that has been unfairly written off.
