Wilco’S ‘Summerteeth’ Finest Release To Date

Mon., Aug. 7, 2000

Lisa Hough, Lewis

“Summerteeth,” the third album to be written, produced and performed by Wilco, is their most stunning record released to date. Each song led by Jeff Tweedy’s angst-filled voice fits together perfectly. The album never gets drab or monotonous. MTV notes that the album is “surprisingly upbeat … and never reduced to cliched melancholia,” while Rolling Stone writes that songs that “begin in an air of choking claustrophobia end up on the rooftop, gazing at the stars.”

It was the song “How to Fight Loneliness” on the “Girl, Interrupted” soundtrack that first attracted me to Wilco. The depressing but truthful lyrics (How to fight loneliness/Just smile all the time/Shine your teeth til meaningless/Sharpen them with lies) gave me the impression the group was just another angst-rock band whose members complain about their lives. But that’s just glancing at the surface. With closer attention, you’ll hear the glimmer of hope in Tweedy’s voice and in the poppy instruments of choice, such as toy harps, bells, synthesizers and tambourines, and new ones to me, such as timpani, moog and tiple.

This album proves that Wilco won’t be a band in the shadows forever. The only thing I can’t understand is why the group hasn’t become as popular as it deserves.

Grade: A

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