After taking a week or so to mourn the official passing of R.E.M., I have been getting into Wilco's latest release The Whole Love big time. Like R.E.M. from the early 80s to the mid-90s, Wilco is on a seemingly endless run of great albums, each with a distinct personality, each showing growth from the previous effert, and The Whole Love shows the band putting on a dazzling display.
If you have not ordered The Whole Love yet, I strongly suggest you spend a couple extra bucks on the Deluxe Edition, which contains four extra songs. It's worth it alone for their cover of Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label," a tune from Lowe's classic first LP Jesus of Cool.
The tune has special meaning for the band. Like many big acts whose major label conglomerate contracts have expired, Wilco has started their own label dBpm records. I think it stands for "decibels per minute" which is some sort of music-geek joke. I'm laughing on the inside.
Here's the band recording "I Love My Label" in their Chicago loft studio, quite possibly the greatest man-cave in North America.
Lowe opened for Wilco on their most recent tour, and has become something of an elder-statesman among singer-songwriter types. A recent profile of Lowe in the New York Times mentioned that Lowe had been in pretty dire financial straits in the early 1990s until a cover of his song "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding" was featured on the soundtrack to the 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner film The Bodyguard. The soundtrack wound up selling 40 million copies and Lowe made a life-changing pile o' quid as a result. I like it when the good guys win.
Here's Lowe doing a countrified version of his musical 401(k) on Jimmy Kimmel's show.
And here's a vintage clip of Lowe and his great band Rockpile (featuring Dave Edmunds) doing his classic "And So It Goes" (also from Jesus of Cool) on The Midnight Special in 1978. Hmmm.... sounds a lot like Wilco.
Buy on iTunes:
Wilco, The Whole Love (Deluxe Edition)
Nick Lowe, Jesus of Cool
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