With the band Uncle Tupelo, Jeff Tweedy helped invent a strand of rogue Americana known, unsatisfyingly, as alt country. The group he formed afterwards – Wilco – have spent nearly 30 years expanding away from that brief, combining searching songwriting with restless experimentation.
But the tumult of recent history has sent Wilco back into a room to record live for the first time since 2007’s Sky Blue Sky. The result is a double album of self-declared country songs that process the state of the nation and the condition of Tweedy’s insides. It’s a timely return to a genre that knows trouble inside and out.
