Today, Wilco announced they'll release their new album, Cruel Country on May 27 via dBpm Records. Along with the album announcement, the indie rock icons shared the lead single off the project "Falling Apart (Right Now)." The record will release the same weekend as Wilco's Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, Mass. during which they will perform the album live for the first time.
Cruel Country is an exploratory and substantial two-disc project and is composed almost entirely of live takes, with minimal overdubs. It was recorded at The Loft in Chicago with all the band members – Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone and Nels Cline – live and in person. According to a press release, Cruel Country was captured in a way Wilco hasn't used since 2007's Sky Blue Sky.
“It’s a style of recording that forces a band to surrender control and learn to trust each other, along with each others’ imperfections, musical and otherwise,” said Tweedy in a press release. “But when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, it feels like gathering around some wild collective instrument, one that requires six sets of hands to play.”
After coming out of Uncle Tupelo, many felt that Wilco was a Country band, or at least like Uncle Tupelo an alternative Country band, but according to Tweedy, they had trouble accepting that definition. With Cruel Country, they accept the definition and lean into it embracing the limitation and using it to paint a portrait of the United States.
“More than any other genre, Country music, to me, a white kid from middle-class middle America, has always been the ideal place to comment on what most troubles my mind—which for more than a little while now has been the country where I was born, these United States," said Tweedy. "And because it is the country I love, and because it’s Country music that I love, I feel a responsibility to investigate their mirrored problematic natures. I believe it’s important to challenge our affections for things that are flawed. Country music is simply designed to aim squarely at the low-hanging fruit of the truth. If someone can sing it, and it’s given a voice… well, then it becomes very hard not to see. We’re looking at it. It’s a cruel country, and it’s also beautiful. Love it or leave it. Or if you can’t love it, maybe you’ve already left.”
Listen to "Falling Apart (Right Now)" below:
