You don’t get much hotter than Jeff Tweedy is right now. Dating back to ’95 and Wilco’s tentative but solid country-rock debut, the unassuming Illinoian and ex-Uncle Tupelo kid brother has seen every musical project he’s had a finger in turn to gold. Wilco’s sprawling sophomore outing, Being There, found Tweedy brimming with ambition, bristling at No Depression pigeonholing, and spiking his spare, jaunty tunes with deeply personal lyrics and equally involving guitar noise. He went on to write the highlights of both Golden Smog albums and spend ’98 awash in praise for his deft interpretative skills on the Woody Guthrie reinvention project Mermaid Avenue.
Summer Teeth is the culmination of Tweedy and band’s recent musical development, a lush, turbulent, borderline disturbing pop record that gracefully mixes melancholic soul-searching with na-na fun and often blurs the lines so effectively that you don’t know whether to bop along or shudder.
Most of Summer Teeth’s songs share the theme of relationships, related in a snapshot list of images that can take you as close as the bedroom ("A Shot In The Arm") or place you years and miles away ("ELT"). "My Darling", a Lennonesque love letter to Tweedy’s son, the graceful life-rumination "When You Wake Up Feeling Old" (which would seem to feature a solo by something called a tiple), the bitterly sarcastic "How To Fight Loneliness" and the rollicking, synthy "I’m Always In Love" continually find fresh ways to convey love, hurt and confusion, both as specific and vague as needed.
Tracks one through three, the chunky "Can’t Stand It", the sweeping, resigned "She’s A Jar" and the dense, driving "A Shot In The Arm" find Tweedy at the height of his inspiration, employing beautiful strings and a swarming nest of keyboard sounds (courtesy of gifted multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett) to build classic frameworks around his worn, expressive scratch of a voice. Those who know Wilco as a "y’allternative" outfit will likely scratch their heads when the beat breaks down completely on the chilling "Via Chicago" (which opens with the quotable statement "I dreamed about killing you again last night") or when "Pieholden Suite" shifts from wistful balladry to Brian Wilson-inflected symphonic swing layered with horns and banjos. The wracked spectre of Big Star’s 3rd/Sister Lovers also looms heavily, especially on the wrenching ballad "We’re Just Friends", which whines like Chilton at his best.
Summer Teeth also proves Wilco to be capable of pure pop bliss. "Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway(again)", I’m Always In Love", "ELT", and hidden-track blastoff "Candyfloss" take the proven Wilco rocker format (think "Monday") and infuse it with a whole new sensibility of ‘60s melodicism and aural gingerbread. "Summer Teeth" pulls off the most perverse trick in a disc full of ‘em, setting a totally heartbreaking lyric ("One summer a suicide/another autumn a traveler’s guide/he hits snooze twice before he dies/and every evening when he gets home to make his supper and eat it alone/his black shirt cries while his shoes get cold") to a soundtrack of breezy, arpeggioed whimsy replete with baroque keyboards and chirping birds. Then the chorus blows the whole thing off ("It’s just a dream he keeps having/but it doesn’t seem to mean anything").
In many ways, Summer Teeth is an example of exactly what’s great about music in ’99: the way bands are looking to a rich, nook-and-cranny rock past, using unconventional instruments and playful production values to rekindle the enigma and eclecticism of the classics, without losing the essence of their music as it began. In Wilco’s case, it’s a heartland rootsiness that is now implied rather outwardly displayed. Even if Tweedy is no longer standing in a cornfield musically or literally, that matter-of-fact grit still shows through even as his muse rockets off elsewhere. If they stay true to this brave path, Wilco look better than almost anyone else headed into the millennium, and are destined for a satisfying career.
--Lane Hewitt