So, VW announced a new arrangement with Wilco, which is great. Moments before I heard about it, my wife sent me a link to this Wilco footage from their new CD, Sky Blue Sky, a tune called You are My Face:

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It rocks. Really. I mean, Wilco has been great for years, but I have to confess my own wishes for more drama in their music. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was fantastic, but I pretty much gravitate to “Poor Places” so I can hear the distortion at the end, and, you know, “Yankee..Hotel…Foxtrot; Yankee…Hotel…Foxtrot…” etc.

But this tune has drama. My first impression was not fair, really. I heard the intro, listened to the bass and thought, “Oh no. It’s a Van Morrison cover.” When the vocals come in, “We were born before the wind” and you’ll know what I mean.

But as soon as the bridge happened, that’s the part with the distorted guitar, I was hooked. The clean sounding guitar line leading up to it has this nice diminished sort of sound, and the changes leading back to the vox (that means, “the chords” leading back…) have that nice V7/II | V7/bII7 | V7 sort of thing. Gotta love it.

Really nice.

Rick