WILCO Cruel Country DBPM 9/10
AFTER the amiable twang of their 1995 debut and the more ambitiously conceptual rock’n’roll of 1996’s , Wilco went straight-up pop on 1998’s , trading the pedal steel for an orchestra and treating The Beach Boys as their new Gram Parsons. Country, even alt. country, was far too restrictive, too conservative both musically and culturally, for many bands identified with that movement, and some of the biggest acts – The Old 97s, Joe Henry, The Jayhawks – were toying with power pop and art rock. Few, however, went as far or as hard as Wilco, who by the 2000s were embracing noise and krautrock to capture something essential about America at the turn of the century.
