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keeper avg .467
Though this noteworthy collaboration took place just a year before Wilco's acclaimed "Summer Teeth"(1999), they hadn't evolved out of the folk/alt-country style just yet. The raucous drunken country sing-along "Walt Whitman's Niece"**** and the buoyant folk rock of "California Stars"**** give the album a straightforward, rocking start, while "At My Window Sad and Lonely" and "Hesitating Beauty" are exactly what I'd expect to hear on a Wilco or Golden Smog album. Guthrie's lines about fascists and "organizing" in Bragg's "She Came Along to Me"**** seem weird in the context of some song about a girl (though the sentiment is distressingly resonant today), but Jay Bennett's stunning slide guitar lines obliterate any quibbles about the song. And as before, Tweedy brings some of the aw-shucks I'm a bumpkin to the leftie-folk "Christ for President" and the goofy 60's pop of "Hoodoo Voodoo."
Both Bragg and Jeff Tweedy also put the amps away and provide a handful of ballads. Bragg's "Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key" and "Birds and Ships" both feature Natalie Merchant, while "Ingrid Bergman"**** and the celtic-flavored "Eisler on the Go"**** are especially understated. Mixed bag "Another Man's Done Gone" (music by Bragg, piano by Jay Bennett, vocal by Tweedy) sounds like a total Neil Young piano song. Wilco has never sounded so refined before or since as they do on Tweedy's dreamily swinging "One by One"**** and Bragg's wistful country waltz "The Unwelcome Guest"****, which ends the album in stately fashion. Maybe it's Bragg's influence or maybe it was the mileage, but like The Band before them Wilco has turned into a practiced, confident Americana machine. Maybe reaching the limits of this style was the reason for Wilco's subsequent reinvention as the Pet Sounds band on "Summer Teeth."
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