Wilco
Summer Teeth (Reprise)
by Marc Hirsh
Wilco
Summer Teeth (Reprise)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 1999
It comes 35 seconds into Summer Teeth, the underlying theme of the album: "Your prayers will never be answered again." A messy and beautiful agglomeration of despair, resignation and the terrifying thrill of complete emotional freefall, Summer Teeth is informed by Jeff Tweedy's abiding love for hopeless causes. It makes, in a profoundly subtle manner, the astonishing declaration that salvation is far less important than the desire for it. For Wilco, if you can't find happiness, then perhaps transcendence will have to do.
That's a theme common to the best country music, and it's about all that Wilco takes from the genre that birthed it. They're certainly no longer country in sound or approach (the album's secondary theme could be the fadeout mantra of "A Shot In The Arm": "What you once were isn't what you want to be anymore"). Summer Teeth is a densely layered album, with odd production touches (such as the bits-and-scraps approach to "Via Chicago" and the almost literal piano-theremin breakdown in "Summer Teeth") that create a bed of supreme melancholy. Imagine a "Wouldn't It Be Nice" that focused on how bleak things were now, rather than how wonderful they could be, and you've got the general picture.
That pessimism runs through every single song, regardless of what the words actually say. On paper, "I'm Always In Love, " "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)" and the unlisted fifteenth track (one of several bonus cuts) appear celebratory (when you can make it through the dense and lovely imagery). The songs and performances they're attached to tell a different story, though; the lyrics spin around until they come across more as naively optimistic than actually happy. Any possible contentment is in the future tense and highly uncertain.
The rest of the songs are dark as hell. Before "Via Chicago" starts to fall apart (the drums refuse to synch up with the rest of the song at one point), Tweedy declares, "I dreamt about killing you again last night and it felt alright to me." "She's A Jar" is quiet, downbeat and callous enough to toss in some nonchalant spousal abuse. Even the otherwise peppy-sounding "ELT" (which in some respects resembles the much-more-chipper "I Must Be High" from their debut A.M.) bears an incredibly bleak undercurrent and the refrain, "Every little thing's gonna tear you apart." The album's centerpiece, "A Shot In The Arm," is seen here in two different (and, to an extent, bookending) takes and chronicles what is seems to be the sad, slow realization that an important part of life has ended for good. When Tweedy sings, downcast, "You've changed," his voice doesn't register anger or confusion, just reluctant acceptance that this is the way things are and are going to be.
If Tweedy's sorrows and muted grief give the album its vision, then the rest of the band gives the music flesh, bone and sinew. Multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett is going to get all of the secondary credit (and it would certainly be well-deserved, considering the wildly varying sounds and styles he uses to flesh out the songs), which is only a shame because it ignores the rhythm section completely. John Stirratt's bass and Ken Coomer's drums are so tight and on the money that you barely notice as the music goes straight to your gut; the opening "Can't Stand It" won me over on pure groove before I bothered listening closer to its other equally magnificent but less tangible strengths. Above everything else, Summer Teeth is a towering group effort that demands the acknowledgement of Wilco as America's most vital rock band as of right now, the closest thing we've got to Big Pink-era Band. It is an album that gets deeper and deeper every time I listen to it, and it's a sure bet to be considered one of the best albums of 1999. So far, I haven't heard a better one.