Jeff Tweedy - Warm

Bandcamp Daily

On “WARM,” Tweedy offers his most honest and direct songwriting to date.

Pitchfork 83

On his first ever collection of original solo songs—a companion piece to his recent memoir—the Wilco leader uncovers himself like never before.

The Guardian 80

(dBm Records)

This is the 18th album Jeff Tweedy has made as a principal player – with Uncle Tupelo, with Wilco, with his elder son (as Tweedy) and solo. It is a testament to his restless creativity that he’s still making worthwhile music, still twisting familiar elements into appealing shapes. The perfectionism and obsession of the middle Wilco years are a thing of the past. These days, Tweedy simply turns up to shows with his acoustic guitar and plays songs. Warm takes the same model, adding only drums, bass and electric guitar (usually to shade in the songs, rather than carry them). In a new autobiography, Tweedy writes about how uncertain he was about his voice in the early days of Uncle Tupelo, in comparison to his bandmate Jay Farrar’s, but that voice is at one with the music he’s making: a little ragged and frayed and – per the album’s title – warm.

The Guardian 80

(dBpm)

Perhaps inspired by the process of writing his recent memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), Uncle Tupelo and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics on Warm appear to have taken a turn for the personal. There’s certainly a greater directness on his first solo album proper (last year’s Together at Last found him rerecording highlights from his back catalogue, while 2014’s Sukierae was a collaboration with his drummer son, Spencer), with a willingness to tackle subjects such as death, ageing and, in Bombs Above, the art of songwriting itself: “I leave behind a trail of songs/ From the darkest gloom to the brightest sun.”

Standout track Don’t Forget might be as breezily lovely as Sukierae’s Summer Noon, but scratch beneath the surface and it becomes clear that it’s about the events surrounding the death of Tweedy’s father last year. On the irresistibly singalong Let’s Go Rain, meanwhile, he hopes for a biblical flood to wash away the ills of the world, while I Know What It’s Like showcases his gift for a winning melody. But for every upbeat arrangement, there’s a more introspective counterpart, the closing How Will I Find You being particularly skeletal. Thirty years into his career, Warm shows that Tweedy is as absorbing as ever.

Drowned In Sound 80

It’s a record that feels appropriate in its timing, a musical partner to Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), Tweedy’s autobiography released earlier this month that lays bare his battle with addiction and depression. His first solo album of entirely new material that follows on the heels of last year’s solo acoustic collection of Wilco staples, Together at Last. These are 11 sincerely personal songs of pain and healing. The ghosts of his diverse songwriting past are well and truly still on the haunt - these are unmistakable Tweedy songs - but are far from Wilco songs as the minimal instrumentation around his croaked voice and gentle strums ensure the honesty is what remains. From the restrained strummed chords and slide guitar that carefully prop up opener ‘Bombs Above’ to the jangling ironic gospel of ‘Let’s Go Rain’, front and centre are Tweedy and his words with nary a squealing guitar solo or fuzzed out feedback session in sight.

For what else would we be here for but Tweedy’s words? His brutal honesty woven into clever wordplay and murky metaphors. He draws constant parallels between his personal struggles and the global struggles of our current times. ‘Bombs Above’ is candid in its admission of privileged guilt in the travails of the poor and war-torn, Tweedy battling with the relative personal struggles of people across the world. “I’ve lost my way”, he sings, “but it’s hard to say what I’ve been through should matter to you”, having admitted the part he’s played in “the bombs above the ones you love”. The interconnectedness of humans and their suffering is hard on his mind, a theme continued as he asks “is it my fault the countrysides are so full of suicide?” on ‘Some Birds’ before returning to the harsh truths he’s laid bare on the likes of ‘Via Chicago’ and ‘Misunderstood’ with his refrain, “I’d love to take you down and leave you there”.

These are ultimately, however, personal stories that are elevated by their universal nature. ‘Let’s Go Rain’ plays out like any Sunday School song we may have sung as kids, but the story of Noah’s flood finds a fair dose of Tweedy’s ironic sense of humour. “Once upon a time I was a Christian, I didn’t know I didn’t need to know,” he sings before calling for more rain, destruction as an “act of love”. Dual personalities battle as a twin in the mirror makes several cameos, while the soft and ponderous strum of ‘How Hard It Is For A Desert To Die’ and ‘Having Been Is No Way To Be’ provide some of the best moments, the beautiful lines of their titles expanded with the gentle sincerity of lines like “hearing your laugh in my laughter” and “when I watch you sleep I wonder how much freedom we can dream, how much freedom we need.” It’s a record full of small wisdoms and it’s these moments that make you realise why Wilco garnered the fame they did. There’s an honesty to the words that shines in the work of Warm as well; something that settles in our chests and invokes memories and thoughts we never thought we needed to confront. It plays into what makes us all human, the beauty in the diversity of our shared experiences. As Tweedy puts it so well in his opening song, “suffering is the same for everyone, he was right but I was wrong to agree.”