WILCO - Twilight Override

I wanna dance right into the light

But there’s no point beating the drum

Who knows what hides in the rhythm?

Mom, look what they’ve done to my song

What were the last twenty-five years? Everything and its opposite. Whether you take them the other way round, as the first quarter-century of the new millennium, matters little, given the sheer mass of significant events that overturned certainties, raised walls, fed anxieties and generally busted everyone's balls.

Well, Jeff Tweedy somehow tries to get to the bottom of it. Not so much to pass judgment on the many facets of modern life, but to frame, or at least attempt to decode, a widespread state of mind, particularly at the heart of those who have lived through this first quarter-century first as young people and finally as adults. And he does it with a triple album the likes of which haven't been seen in ages, thus not giving a damn about market rules or the supersonic pace that warps the way we listen, feeding superficiality and God, or whoever's in charge, only knows how many other things.

Five years have nonetheless passed since the last solo effort by the Wilco frontman. The Chicago-based singer-songwriter starts again from the ground, from the sidewalks where grass gathers and grows through the cracks of the world, immediately turning into metaphor a desire to escape banality and immerse himself in the greatness of small things, in the open-air miracles that lie before the eyes of all "the living", even just by walking down the street.

Tweedy sings in utter solitude, set apart from those around him. It happens in the lines of "Parking Lot": "There's a version of me that wanders around parking lots. In my brain or in my subconscious. [...] Talking to other mes I don't recognize". Words whispered like a desperate crooner chasing after salvation, a new galaxy.

Stylistically, however, the folk-rock excursions typical of Wilco are still part of Tweedy's repertoire, as shown by the airier moments, like "Forever Never Ends", or the luminous plunges into the abyss, amid worn-out chords and sudden bursts of light, of the splendid "Mirror".

You are a mirror and a face

You and i are the same

Your mind goes blind

We arе erased

You will be thе person digging your grave

Tweedy journeys through his soul aboard a beat-up Ford Taunus, which also serves as the perfect metaphor for reconnecting with his approach halfway between country and old-school rock songwriting. Because "Twilight Override" is an album of pure craftsmanship. So much so that it was recorded at Tweedy's Chicago studio, the Loft, with crucial contributions from James Elkington, Sima Cunningham, Liam Kazar and Macie Stewart. Jeff's sons, Spencer and Sammy, are also part of it, brought in by their father after listening to "Sandinista!" from start to finish during a car ride, as he told the New York Times.

Tweedy also states that the album is an attempt to once again overcome boredom by consuming darkness. An explanation that implies a private ambition, light years away from any hypothetical aspiration to produce the definitive triple album, or the triple album of his life. It's no coincidence, after all, that everything flows without any particular strain or struggle. And between a western ballad ("Throwaway Lines") and Uncle Tupelo-style trots ("Out In The Dark"), the ride is always a pleasant one. Sure, the lyrics often lay bare a heart on fire that refuses to give way to a cruel age and a corrupt, spoiled, obscenely repetitive society. But it's a constant shadow that ends up casting its spell all the same.

Alone in the temple

Asking my heart to beat

I’m setting an example

By tapping my feet

And in the crescendo

Notes I cannot reach

A world without windows

No method to teach

Nor could the usual religiosity be missing, omnipresent since the days of “A Ghost Is Born”, well expressed for instance in “No One’s Move On”, a song in which Tweedy reckons with God and faces his ghosts, accepting them once and for all. In this all-encompassing journey, there's no shortage of tributes to the usual idols either, chief among them the thoroughly charming nod to Lou Reed in “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter”, a song written as if Tweedy had travelled aboard a DeLorean to find himself playing as a session man for Reed on “New York”. And then there's pacifism that truly matters, the Indian kind of “Amar Bharati”, (in)toned with just a few chords and a wonder that is also a kind of bliss.

Young death (“Ain’t It A Shame”), drugs as an unchanging memory (“Too Real”), love fading away as the days go by and the mind ponders ever more generic whys (“Enough”) are “only” the last flashes of light cast into the deepest dark by a musician who has never been so self-assured and, at the same time, in a state of perpetual restlessness. God bless, now and always, people like Jeff Tweedy.

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13/10/2025