Wilco - Wilco (The Album)

Rating: * * * *

I'm still of the mind that 2007's Blue Sky Blue was the Great Wilco Album. Its predecessors Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born got more attention and better reviews, mainly for their back story (the band's major label battles) and sense of experimentation (alt-country band goes Krautrock).

But I've rarely gone back to them, whereas BSB is still on personal high-rotate for its disarming, funny, touching songs and its frequent guitar fireworks.

That one did take a while to sink in.

I suspect this one may have some absorbing to do, too, because initially it feels a little slight - there's the friendly fuzz-happy title track; there's the duet country-strummer with guest female voice, there's the big sweet ballad to end on ...

On first unchallenging impressions, it can sound like bits of earlier Wilco instalments re-combined. There are some echoes of early albums A.M., summerteeth and Being There here.

If it's sounding like the good old days, maybe it's because Tweedy and co are happier - the current Wilco line-up is the first to have lasted two albums, though the band curse has raised its head again with the recent death of former member Jay Bennett, who weeks earlier had announced his intent to sue Tweedy for unpaid royalties.

Soon enough though, this album reveals itself as a spread of what Wilco do best: write great songs and fill them with intriguing detail.

Which means some rustic knockabouts, a few heart-bruised pop anthems and a few chances (though less than last time) for resident guitar whiz Nels Cline to set off his fretboard rockets again.

They are at their brightest on the album's most unnerving moment, Bull Black Nova, which sets Tweedy's noirish blood-soaked lyrics to the sort of twitchy staccato guitars last heard on Television's classic Marquee Moon.

That this album awakes from that nightmare track and heads into its sweetest moment - You and I featuring Feist as Tweedy's singing partner - is but one of the collection's more disarming mood swings.

Elsewhere, it shifts between pastoral folk (Solitaire), 60s-kissed baroque pop psychedelia (Deeper Down) and rollicking Beatle-rock (You Never Know), all showing the band's easy versatility and economy of approach.

But the most affecting songs are when Tweedy's wracked voice is thrown into relief. That's whether it's the dreamy One Wing, his Dylanesque anthem to chivalry I'll Fight or that aforementioned big sweet ballad Everlasting which nicely bookends the equally heartfelt On and On and On from the end of Blue Sky Blue.

It's also a fine finale to something that's not quite the Next Great Wilco Album. But it's the sort of record that many a great enduring band have to do now and then - the consolidation set.

Russell Baillie