Posted on Jun 6, 2022
Wilco releases an out-and-out country music double album with 'Cruel Country'
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https://www.npr.org/2022/06/04/ [login to see] /wilco-releases-an-out-and-out-country-music-double-album-with-cruel-country
Wilco has long been hailed as "alt-country," a label they're still a little bit uncomfortable with. But with their latest double album Cruel Country, they now seem to embrace the moniker.
NPR's Scott Simon was invited to the band's recording studio known as the "Wilco Loft," which occupies the third floor of a squat brick industrial building on the North Side of Chicago. "It's a tough place to do a tour of because it's just one big room and you can kind of stand in the middle and just turn around and look and see everything almost," Wilco's Jeff Tweedy says, who calls the studio an "extension of his home space."
The room was filled with everything and then some: microphones and amps, hundreds of guitars, a collection of ceramic white cats, concert posters and about a six-foot-tall, animatronic gorilla wearing a shirt that "gets changed every year on my birthday" to reflect his age, Tweedy says.
Wilco has long been hailed as "alt-country," a label they're still a little bit uncomfortable with. But with their latest double album Cruel Country, they now seem to embrace the moniker.
NPR's Scott Simon was invited to the band's recording studio known as the "Wilco Loft," which occupies the third floor of a squat brick industrial building on the North Side of Chicago. "It's a tough place to do a tour of because it's just one big room and you can kind of stand in the middle and just turn around and look and see everything almost," Wilco's Jeff Tweedy says, who calls the studio an "extension of his home space."
The room was filled with everything and then some: microphones and amps, hundreds of guitars, a collection of ceramic white cats, concert posters and about a six-foot-tall, animatronic gorilla wearing a shirt that "gets changed every year on my birthday" to reflect his age, Tweedy says.
Wilco releases an out-and-out country music double album with 'Cruel Country'
Posted from npr.orgPosted in these groups: 
Country Music
Music
Country Music Music
Posted 2 y ago
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IMHO they have a country vibe, I'll have to listen a bit more. TY for the share.
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Scott Simon, Weekend Edition: So tell us please about Cruel Country. What made you decide to finally put your arms around country?
Jeff Tweedy: I still bristle at it a little bit because I'm not a big believer in genre. But at this moment in time, it felt like having sturdy shapes and song shapes to project my own uncertainty on to felt like an easier target. And these simpler shapes and forms, that's really all I'm referring to as "country." Some of the country music aficionados might think it's not country. I think a lot of people might think it's not country, but I also think that the music that people made when country music was forming its identity didn't think of what they were making as country music. I think that they were expressing themselves however best they could with whatever they could get their hands on."...
..."Scott Simon, Weekend Edition: So tell us please about Cruel Country. What made you decide to finally put your arms around country?
Jeff Tweedy: I still bristle at it a little bit because I'm not a big believer in genre. But at this moment in time, it felt like having sturdy shapes and song shapes to project my own uncertainty on to felt like an easier target. And these simpler shapes and forms, that's really all I'm referring to as "country." Some of the country music aficionados might think it's not country. I think a lot of people might think it's not country, but I also think that the music that people made when country music was forming its identity didn't think of what they were making as country music. I think that they were expressing themselves however best they could with whatever they could get their hands on."...
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