Tweedy - Sukierae (Jeff Tweedy and son)

http://cdn3.pitchfork.com/news/55858/fe457d61.jpg

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and his teen son Spencer are about to release a new album together. The record is called Sukierae, out September 23, 2014 on ANTI Records.

Disc: 1

1. Please Don't Let Me Be So Understood - 1:33
2. High As Hello - 3:56
3. World Away - 3:31
4. Diamond Light Pt. 1 - 6:12
5. Wait For Love - 3:07
6. Low Key - 3:15
7. Pigeons - 3:08
8. Slow Love - 5:32
9. Nobody Dies Anymore - 4:57
10. I'll Sing It - 4:01

Disc: 2

1. Flowering - 2:54
2. Desert Bell - 3:17
3. Summer Noon - 3:32
4. Honey Combed - 2:41
5. New Moon - 3:39
6. Down From Above - 4:25
7. Where My Love - 3:42
8. Fake Fur Coat - 2:23
9. Hazel - 2:36
10. I'll Never Know - 3:12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyO2EY38YcA

dad rock

Anybody hear this yet?

yeah, anyone?

Boring as fuck

The problem with recording an album that's just yourself, or yourself and your son, is that if the results aren't up to snuff it's pretty hard to fire the band and try again.

ha, it's funny i brought this up and Pitchfork reviewed it today. a 7.3 sounds high for something like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29YGcuRk3mM&feature=youtu.be

Summer Noon is lovely

Privelege-rock

huh?

Have Michael Moore and Jeff Tweedy been spotted in the same room together at all?

Has Michael Moore been spotted lately anywhere?

new jeff tweedy triple album twilight override is very solid despite its length, it's somehow got enough ideas to keep things getting too repetitive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y544eu6Ldk

"no one's moving on" is one of the highlights, it's wonderful to hear him play his skronky lead guitar again

You had me at "triple album", UFO, and again at "very solid"... will listen.

He's the best guitarist in Wilco.

Nothing Wilco has done lately has left much of an impression on me, and earlier this summer they were a total snooze live, which was disappointing. But this Tweedy triple is pretty fun and compelling!

cruel country and cousin were both pretty good and this feels in line with those

i think if he'd made this album with wilco i'd be calling it their best since yankee hotel foxtrot. it's not quite there and there's no moment as great as say, "bird without a tail" from cruel country, but it's still really good

I agree that it might have made a striking Wilco album. So why do you think this collection of songs is better or more interesting than those?

i think the songs here are generally pretty strong (in line with cruel country), and the variety would have made for a great wilco album

it's also basically the sort of thing i'd wanted from wilco for a while now. a long, sprawling album with a lot of stylistic variety seems like a great fit for where they're at lately

Yeah, I think that's my take. I love the diversity. As I posted in the Wilco thread, their summer hometown show here was a real snooze. It's so disappointing that they have a couple of hot shit players, and Tweedy is capable of writing great songs, but the band seems to play it so safe. Like, no one buys records anyway, get weird, guys!

the playing here is still good (and again i can always use more of tweedy's lead guitar) but i would have loved to hear what the rest of wilco could bring to these songs because they're all such wonderful musicians.

i think the problem with their studio output is that they haven't really leaned into their strengths very much. they've been a phenomenal live band for over 20 years now (the show i saw last year is probably the best i've ever seen from anyone) but they've rarely all been in the same room when recording since sky blue sky - i think cruel country is the only one since then they've recorded that way and that was really good but is also mostly committed to a single style. they also haven't really committed to studio experimentation that much either - "art of almost" was a career highlight on a mostly weak album, ode to joy was definitely a studio-focused album but is pretty sleepy overall (i only really rate "quiet amplifier"), and cousin was pretty decent but felt a lot like a ghost is born 2 and similarly suffers from feeling relatively restrained. both cruel country and cousin were steps in the right direction in different ways

“Everyone Hides” and “Love is Everywhere (Beware)” are the other ones from Ode to Joy that I like

i think if he'd made this album with wilco i'd be calling it their best since yankee hotel foxtrot. it's not quite there and there's no moment as great as say, "bird without a tail" from cruel country, but it's still really good

― ufo, Saturday, October 4, 2025 6:36 AM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

As a fan of a lot of stuff since they've done since YHF, this felt like it couldn't possibly be true, but actually, no, it's perfectly defensible. Quite a striking late career statement.

earlier this summer they were a total snooze live, which was disappointing. But this Tweedy triple is pretty fun and compelling!

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, September 29, 2025 5:21 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

dang I saw them in Houston early this summer and they were on fire, super skronked out, guitar duels all over the place...i suppose they are getting into that Grateful Dead territory where it just depends on the night you catch them.

They did cover the Dead ...

This album is pushing all of my buttons. Wonder if he was inspired by New Warm Dragon? It could be a cousin to that record (no pun intended).

I'm really enjoying the sporadic presence of female backing vocals on this. Reminds me a bit of the softening The National's Matt Berninger got out of the same tactic a few years ago. Aside from the duet with Feist...I can't think of any other Tweedy/Wilco songs with female vocals. Can that be true?

Also a lot of nice fiddle on this.

And the number of short vignettes, songs 2-3 min long, really help break up the sameness that people have been complaining about for years.

Honestly this album has no business being this good!

Syd Straw showed up on a few early b-sides/benefit album tracks, but I can't think of anything other than the Feist song that wound up on a proper album.

I quit listening to Tweedy much this past decade or longer but I gave this album a whirl. Twilight Override is out-of-sight bonkers! I might write more about it later but it would be a shame not to keep it at the top of the ILM feed a little longer.

Damn, y'all are going to get me to listen to this.

imo anyone who likes this and hasn't heard the last two wilco albums should really check those out, they're very solid too and well worth a listen, especially "bird without a tail/base of my skull" which is a second "impossible germany"

Wonder if he was inspired by New Warm Dragon?

i'd be surprised if he wasn't at least thinking about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdqUPUtJQk4

Saw Jeff Tweedy and band - his sons Sammy (keyboard & backing vocals) and Spencer (drums), Sima Cunningham (bass & backing vocals) and Macie Stewart of Finom (violin, keyboards, guitar, bass, backing vocals), and Liam Kazar(guitar).

They did mostly songs from the new album but a few older ones. Every time I was prepared to write songs off as formula tuneful but easy listening Jeff Tweedy, either the band and Tweedy got noisy or they added gorgeous harmonies.

Macie Stewart was a great part of the band

Macie Stewart is opening for Tweedy tonight Monday in DC as well as playing in the band. Last night she accompanied Sima Cunningham who opened for the gig I saw. Sima has a good voice and can play bass and guitar, but her opening set felt mostly too typical folk rock to me.

Jeff Tweedy referenced 2 songs last night as being about "Dad, grandpa " as he turned towards his sons. Also other song titles "This is how it ends" and "Forever Never Ends"

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/jeff-tweedy/2025/lincoln-theatre-washington-dc-7b42aaf4.html

Each night of the tour, Tweedy is doing 1 song in the 4 song encore that is only being played at that location.

We got the Loose Fur song "Ruling Class," while his next night at other dc venue 930 Club got 2 covers in the encore -

You Are Not Alone
(Mavis Staples cover)

What's Going On
(Marvin Gaye cover)

Gonna try to hit the show on Saturday.

Ok the new album is pretty stunning
Best thing he's done in...decades?

I'm not sure I'd go back quite that far, but it really is something special.

I thought about it a bit and can't quite figure out what is different. As principal songwriter of Wilco with all these talented collaborators, he's just been kind of mid/good enough for many years, then blammo, triple album, all pretty great, or at least noticeably better, imo. Wilco is good enough that it really shouldn't feel like the band is holding him back, but, well ...

I've believed there's some sort of fairly minor flaw with regard to Wilco's studio output for 15 years now. Some combination of too comfortable, too much studio access, not enough editing ... maybe something about how the road (and the bobbleheads, socks, etc) is the money-maker, their fans are gonna show up no matter what, so there's not a lot of pressure on the albums. Never mind the fact that the albums pretty much always get praised by everyone no matter how good/bad/boring they are!

I haven't listened to the new Tweedy album yet, but I think it's an interesting thing to think about why it feels different.

I thought about it a bit and can't quite figure out what is different. As principal songwriter of Wilco with all these talented collaborators, he's just been kind of mid/good enough for many years, then blammo, triple album, all pretty great, or at least noticeably better, imo. Wilco is good enough that it really shouldn't feel like the band is holding him back, but, well ...

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 25, 2025 12:13 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah it's hard to put your finger on, at least for me, why this lands so much better. and, it's not like any of these songs couldn't have been Wilco songs, it's great but not some huge stylistic detour or anything

I think a lot of it comes down to having a (partially) all new band inspiring him. Obviously he's worked with his son before, but having musicians like James Elkington and both members of Finom (formerly Ohmme) who have released some really good albums themselves seems to have lit a new fire in him.

oh wow I didn't know Elkington played on it, he's amazing

I think he's been working with Elkington for almost a decade, but I guess this is the first of his solo albums to rope in all of them?

A bit of talk about this stuff here:

https://www.insidehook.com/music/jeff-tweedy-solo-band

all of 'em are pushing him in good, weird directions, it seems. FINOM is great.

Liam Kazar is part of the crew, too. basically, he has turned his sons and their friends into his band.

i wonder how much he might credit COVID isolation forcing him to stay home and play family shows on IG with all of this.

Going by the first graf of that article, I think the seeds were planted earlier:

In November of 2017, it was announced that Wilco would be going on hiatus through 2018. For the first time since forming in 1995, the band, led by Jeff Tweedy, would go a full year without touring. Drummer Glen Kotche’s wife had received a Fulbright scholarship in bioengineering to work and study in Finland, and rather than forcing him to send his family abroad on their own or, on the other hand, finding some way to continue touring without him, Tweedy famously decided it would be a “lovely idea” to take some time off from Wilco.

It was in that span that Tweedy released his first solo album of new original material, iirc.

Ah. Good job clicking the link!