A bit more than a week ago I got an email announcing a sneak preview streaming of Wilco’s forthcoming album, Sky Blue Sky on their website. I couldn’t get the plugins to make Quicktime work with Firefox on Ubuntu and didn’t have enough time to make it work just to listen at that time.
Then they announced they would be doing it again last Sunday. Thinking that it’d be great to get a full two months of listening before the album comes out I made sure to get set up to record it.
I ended up not figuring out a simple way to do it in Ubuntu. Had I spent more time I’m sure there is a way, but I’m just much more familiar with my soundcard options and audio functionality within Windows, so I rebooted into Windows for the first time in many weeks.
I did get the entire album saved in the mono version that was streamed. All in all I must say I’m happy with it.
Now, the title of this post has nothing to do with the Soul Coughing song I took the line from, but simply serves as a way for me to talk about the various ways I’ve listened to this new Wilco album.
First I listened to it as it was streaming on my computer and then once or twice at my computer after that. I don’t feel like I focused on it because I’m always doing other tasks at the same time. The only thing I remember that stuck out to me was the guitar work on “Impossible Germany”. I also seemed to discern some sort of coherent influence on the album. I don’t feel like I know enough about musicology to place it or anything, but the whole thing feels like it goes well together and that it came from somewhere.
The next day I listened to it while I walked to and from class. With nothing to do but listen and walk I picked up a lot more detail in the songs. I began to get more of a feel of them. I would have to say my impression is that Sky Blue Sky is a very relaxed album. It doesn’t have the seriousness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or A Ghost Is Born. None of the songs are really emotionally intense, which is not a criticism. It’s a good collection of songs. The album feels to me like Wilco wrote a bunch of songs and gave them to us saying: here, we wrote these, have a listen sometime.
I then tried the album in my car as I was driving. Usually I get the most out of music when I’m driving because I really pay attention. Maybe I was distracted, but the album didn’t engage me as much in the car as it did when I was walking. Maybe it’s a walking album, just as some albums are driving albums.
In any case, I do like it. I’m sure I will even grow to like it more. First impressions always must be reviewed after listening to an album for months and interpretations change. I also look forward to picking up the CD and hearing the stereo version and having the artwork in my hands.
I downloaded the song “What Light” from Wilco’s MySpace page and put it up on my Vox page.
technorati tags: wilco, sky blue sky, listening
