A funny thing happened to singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy on the way to cult stardom. As a member of Uncle Tupelo, a band of Midwestern small-town teens that initially took its cue from '80s punk, he discovered Merle Haggard, the Louvin Brothers, Hank Williams Sr. and Gram Parsons, the patron saints of roots rock, country division.
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And with the zeal of a true disciple, Tweedy – together with Tupelo's co-founder, singer/songwriter Jay Farrar – strived to create a musical language as earthy, honest and personal as that of his heroes. When Tweedy and Farrar split, in 1994, leaving Tupelo in ruins, they left behind four rustic-flavored albums and a rabid following that bowed to the boys from Belleville, Ill., and hailed them as visionaries.
Posthumously, Uncle Tupelo have acquired a mythic status that far out-strips their meager record sales. The title of the group's first album, No Depression, has become the all-purpose moniker for a nationally prominent fanzine, a boisterously active Internet folder and a new school of country-minded rock bands, including Tweedy's post-Tupelo outfit, Wilco, and Farrar's band, Son Volt.
Wilco and Son Volt both put out debut discs last year, and the loyalists are still jousting over which group is the true keeper of the No Depression flame. But with Being There, the follow-up to Wilco's 1995 release, A.M., Tweedy and his band break free from the confines of the narrow Tupelo legacy by exploring the nuances of noise and atmosphere.
The 19 tracks on Being There are spread across two CDs – a sound aesthetic decision. Each disc functions as a self-contained entity digestible in a single 40-minute sitting. Together, both halves aspire to the nervy sprawl of such double-album predecessors as London Calling and Exile on Main Street, records that forged unified personal statements out of a bewildering variety of styles. Being There is a product of ambitious versatility, particularly in the string-band textures conjured by multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston and the pliant rhythms of bassist John Stirratt and drummer Ken Coomer. Wilco explore the clavinetfueled funk of the Band on "Kingpin" and crank up the Sun Sessions-style reverb on "Someday Soon." The band also bounces like the Beatles in a dance hall on "Why Would You Wanna Live" and evokes an air of desert mystery in "Hotel Arizona."
Wilco announce their ambitions in the opening bars of "Misunderstood" with a feedback-drenched assault that should clear the room of any Carter Family purists. The cacophony gives way to a plaintive acoustic dirge as Tweedy inserts a quote from "Amphetamine," by the late Pere Ubu guitarist Peter Laughner: "Take the guitar player for a ride/See, he ain't never been satisfied/He thinks he owes some kind of debt/Be years before he gets over it." The lines are apt; Wilco identify strongly with Laughner's tortured romanticism. In the next s
