Jon Pareles likes the new Wilco more than most:
The production is straightforward, but the song structures aren’t; that’s where Wilco’s idiosyncrasies still hide out. The tunes amble into instrumental interludes that stack riffs into steely patterns or let Wilco’s lead guitarist, Nels Cline, slice through the calm surfaces. Wilco’s new music is contemplative, stripping away past distractions, but it’s far from placid.
I'm still willing to give this one a chance, but the prospects seem slim, and more than a few diehard Wilco fans have already sworn off the new direction Tweedy's taken the band.
Meanwhile, Nate Chinen revels in the new Rufus Wainwright:
Who else but Mr. Wainwright could come up with a peppy lament for a former paramour with the title “Between My Legs”? Who else would have the British actress Sian Phillips rasp a villainous recitation on that track, over a chromatic horn part lifted from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” theme? And who else would memorialize a brief meeting with a fellow singer (Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of the Killers) by composing a waltz with lines like “Your face has the Marlon Brando Club calling”?
If the answers are obvious, the music somehow isn’t. Remarkably, Mr. Wainwright infuses “Release the Stars” with enough honest emotion to overcome the grandiosity, or at least undercut it a bit.
I've just listened to Release the Stars and it is indeed a surprising and exuberant piece of music. All of the best parts of Poses and the Want records show up in unexpected new incarnations with no filler.
