The artist: Wilco

The album: Wilco (the Album) (Nonesuch)

The spin: Jeff Tweedy’s career thrives on twists. He changes up like a major-league pitcher, sometimes slow (there wasn’t too much aesthetic space between the end of Uncle Tupelo and the beginning of Wilco), sometimes faster (the transition from Being There to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was quite a leap).

Wilco (the Album) (which opens with “Wilco (the Song)”) is the former and probably the better for it.

The past few Wilco albums have had the smell of Big Statement about them. This has been an issue for the band since NPR fans turned Yankee Hotel Foxtrot into Sgt. Pepper for people who remember where they were when the second plane hit the World Trade Center. A Ghost is Born got artier and oddly heavier, that live album just smoked and Sky Blue Sky had folks looking up Steely Dan clips on YouTube. The title of this new one is fitting: It’s the first Wilco record in a long time that sounds exactly like a Wilco album.

Opener “Wilco (the Song)” rewrites the riff from the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For the Man” and assures you that Wilco will love you (don’t think we don’t appreciate it champ).

“Deeper Down” feels like creepy ’60s L.A. kitchen-sink pop — you keep expecting Dennis Hopper to wander past with a 17-year-old gal in tow. “You and I,” a nuanced duet between Tweedy and Canadian singer/”Sesame Street” guest Feist, shimmers and “You Never Know” splits the difference between country-rock and Cheap Trick.

The secret weapon, of course, is still guitarist Nels Cline, who can move from crafty interplay to noise rock heckler-spray in the same song (“Bull Black Noir”) and figure out a way to rectify the Stones idea of country with the Kinks’ in “Sunny Feeling.”

Dear Wilco fans, they still love you.

The grade: B+

– Joe Gross

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• Wilco @ The Wiltern, 6/23/09 (laist.com)
• LAist Interview: Wilco Guitartist Nels Cline (laist.com)
• Talking to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy (time.com)