Review Summary: You were right about the stars, each one is a setting sun
Cruel Country, Wilco’s twelfth studio album, came attached to weighty expectations. That’s to be expected when a revered band not only announces a sprawling twenty-one song record late in their career, while also vows an unexpected turn back to country music. All this news led this reviewer (and probably the reader as well) to expect an ambitious album possibly tackling the current state of America, as hinted at in the release title, as well as a significant sonic about-face (after all, despite Wilco’s alt-country origins, they haven’t been generally country in any significant sense since perhaps 1996’s
Being There).
As it turns out, though,
Cruel Country doesn’t really live up to either of these dramatic predictions. While the album is certainly a more complex organism than its objectively slight recent predecessors (
Cruel Country holds up a sprawling runtime of seventy-seven minutes), it remains a mellow affair content with avoiding concept-album conceits. And while this record absolutely contains country music (trigger warning required), the genre’s influence isn’t nearly as pervasive as might be assumed, instead melding with other influences to form a warm blanket of sound.
The last paragraph shouldn’t be misconstrued as criticizing this album.
Cruel Country might not be quite the beast which one might expect from pre-release press, but on its own terms this is an excellent record. Despite its length, Wilco have crafted something approachable here which rarely (if ever) loses momentum. And the quality of the tunes presented is quite high, keeping the album in contention for the coveted title of “best Wilco release since
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, even if it doesn’t decisively seize that crown.
The opening trio of songs suggest that
Cruel Country might indeed be Wilco’s attempt to explore the current unsettled state of their homeland’s society and politics (plenty to discuss, after all). Indeed, opener “I Am My Mother” includes the line “dangerous dreams have been detected, streaming across the southern border” early on, closely followed by the title track, which opines “I love my country, stupid and cruel”. The latter’s lyrics are unusually simple and blunt, but they work, laying out the ambiguous feelings most Americans have about their country at this point, especially given recent weeks have provided ample evidence of just such stupidity and cruelty. That said, after the third song, “Hints”, which sardonically references “an empty continent” in apparent mockery of the longstanding practice of ignoring North America’s original peoples,
Cruel Country largely moves away from sociopolitical commentary. This isn’t to say that current zeitgeist doesn’t inform the songs at all, but later tunes predominantly focus on themes which link the personal and the universal, like the night-sky meditations of “Many Worlds”, which echo the quoted lyrics from “Jesus, Etc.” in the review summary, and the pondering of the inevitability of death in “A Lifetime To Find”.
While the lyrics on
Cruel Country, regardless of subject matter, are heavily downcast, the musical accompaniment is quite bright and inviting. There is some sonic connection to Wilco’s last overtly alt-country outing, the adventurous
Being There, but to this reviewer’s ear, two other influences are more relevant. The first would be the soft touch of recent Wilco efforts, like 2019’s (firmly underrated)
Ode To Joy and (perhaps even more) Jeff Tweedy solo efforts like 2020’s
Love Is The King. The second would be late 60’s-early 70’s sound of artists like The Byrds (later-era) and Gram Parsons, a particular brand of country-rock sometimes described as “cosmic Americana”. In short, Wilco here have mostly skipped the punk-derived energy which dominated much of the 90’s alt-country movement which they originally arose from and was still evident on their (unfairly maligned) debut
A.M.. Instead, they’re looking further back for their country inspirations, and the genre’s inclusion is mostly of a subtle sort. Perhaps contrary to expectations, only a few tunes here are overtly country-ish, notably “Falling Apart (Right Now)” and the aforementioned “A Lifetime To Find”.
Cruel Country might get a little sleepy at times, but it’s a rather impressively compelling listen, even given its intimidating length. There’s a lot of beauty and feeling to be unearthed here, and the album greatly rewards further listening. Every song is solid (none serving as obvious filler), even if far from all are highlights. The highlights, though, like the catchy “Tired Of Taking It Out On You”, “Many Worlds”, with its rich guitar solo, and the magical “Country Song Upside-Down”, are well-positioned to sit alongside past greats from the expansive Wilco catalog. Satisfyingly, the band also fades out their grandest effort in a while with another clear-cut stunner: “The Plains”. A fittingly bittersweet but appealingly melodic track, it’s the perfect closer, and I’ll leave the reader with the album’s final lines, as their wistful, melancholy beauty fit this album to a tee.
“There isn’t any point in being free, when there’s nowhere else you’d rather be”
