WILCO - COUSIN

Released: 29/09/23

In Wilco's mercurial leader, singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, we have one of the most singular frontmen ever to have strapped on a Gibson SG, being as he is a heady mix of traditional rock frontman, philosopher, and litterateur. Quietly-spoken and thoughtful, with a bookish mien, Lux Interior Tweedy may not be, but under his leadership Wilco have been making some of the best alt-rock/country, with frequent forays into experimentalism, of the last three decades. 

Wilco’s 13th studio album, Cousin, recorded in the band’s legendary Chicago studio The Loft over a period of two years, and co-produced by the wonderful Cate Le Bon (the first time an ‘outsider’ has been actively involved in a Wilco recording session for over a decade), is yet another example of Tweedy’s remarkable ability to never write a bad song. And so, with tracks from Cousin like the lovely ‘Evicted’, with its echoes of Elliott Smith-ennui and My Morning Jacket-esque ecstatic alt-country, I listen and think, ‘this might now be my favourite Wilco song’ – even better than, for example, ‘Jesus, Etc’, from the feted Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2022) – followed quickly by another thought: ‘Thank goodness for Jeff Tweedy’.