[rating=8.00]
During my first listen to Jeff Tweedy’s new solo single, “I’ll Sing It,” my thoughts paraphrased Jeff Spicolli: people on ludes should not record solo albums. Tweedy’s pace is so achingly slow, it’s completely unsurprising when the track lurches to a complete stop. What is surprising is that the song yet lumbers on.
But that’s Jeff Tweedy, right? His debilitating conditions and infamous acts of self-destruction regularly knock him on his ass, but he somehow gets back up to sing us his songs. That’s what this deceptively simple tune is all about. Tweedy’s strained vocals (Stop smoking, Jeff!), drums that thump and stutter simultaneously, Townshend-esque primitive guitar strumming, and background chorus of “YeahYeahYeah” convey a wounded warrior’s resilience. Gradually, the song builds to an affirmative, if not triumphant, conclusion.
Tweedy fans will also discover avant-sounds typical of his work with Wilco. At the two-minute mark, his acoustic guitar is backed by what I think is someone strumming piano strings hooked up to a feeding-back amp. Further on, Tweedy bends parts of the song (not just individual notes) as he did on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s “Ashes of American Flags.” A knotty guitar fill periodically rings out, and if you listen closely, you can bob to a groovy bassline.
Hopefully, Tweedy doesn’t plod through his entire album like this. Four minutes of this sludge-folk is a nice reflective pause, but after hitting repeat a bunch of times, I was hungering for the simmering anarchy Tweedy conjures up behind him on Wilco’s “Art of Almost.”
Oddly enough, the ending of the song sounds like it could lead into Phish’s “Waiting All Night,” which can mean only one of two things: Either everything on Sound Cloud sounds the same when played through my computer’s speakers or I need to get out of the house more.
