Exactly what you'd expect from two weirdos and their buddy.
Much like Wilco's albums came to sound after he stepped in, this record sounds much like Jim O'Rourke's solo albums on the Drag City label: relatively traditional musical backdrops and weird, isolated lyrics examining human interaction. Also like O'Rourke's albums, the songs have the potential to evolve so subtly and fairly quickly into these weird, not so traditional anymore sound collages that still retain the song's main themes, but are bigger, louder and much more complicated and intricate. "So Long" is a perfect example. It starts with no clear rhythm and many random clangs and crashes amidst guitar noises and only one steady acoustic. It developes itself to reveal one of Jim O'Rourke's most outright pop singalongs ever. O'Rourke and Tweedy share vocal duties throughout the album except on the instrumental track "Liquidation Totale." Their lyrics cover similar territories of stream of conscious narratives and strange social situations. The opening lines of "Elegant Transaction" tell it all: "Be careful when you take a call from someone else; not a smart way to begin; and get embroiled in someone else's life; you don't know where that phone's been." The highlight of the whole affair is the anti-socialite's anthem "Laminated Cat" which finds the boys embarking on an pulsing seven minute sound adventure that reveals something like Brian Eno, circa Before and Afer Science. Most of the songs follow suit, with only one of the album's six songs staying under five minutes in length. It's actually quite good, despite fans of the members' other projects being the only ones that will probably "get it." It's the single weirdest musical thing that Jeff Tweedy or any other member of Wilco has ever contributed to.
~Austin
Supergroup? Don't you have to be super in the first place to merit such a title?
