Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Many Worlds”

This entry of the Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight shines on a track from Jeff Tweedy, and company’s latest album, Cruel Country. It is the first song to be covered from Wilco’s 12th studio release in this series, so this serves as a preview of its future entry in an updated edition of my book, Wilcopedia:

“Many Worlds” (Jeff Tweedy)

Smack dab in the middle, kicking off the second LP or CD of the Cruel Country album, is this seven minute and 53 second pensive, light piano dirge, which initially recalls Tweedy’s meditations in such songs as “Reservations” and “Solitaire.” A slight crackling static opens the track’s aural synth background (courtesy of Mikael Jorgensen), then the haunting keys to cradle Tweedy’s soft vocals: “When I look at the sky, I think about stars that’ve died.”

It only goes to show that in what the Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber called a “eight-minute-long new-age cryfest,” even Wilco is in on the big multi-verse trend (as evidenced by Marvel movies, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Tik Tok whatnot et al) of the day as Tweedy concludes, “Many worlds collide, none like yours and mine.” Its following the similarly themed and toned track, “The Universe,” on the album makes that case too.

After three and a half minutes of these simple, repeated lines, the strands of this melody fade into the slight crackle as a lone acoustic guitar strums into the mix. Then Glenn Kotche’s drums, John Stirratt’s thudding bass, and more twinkling axe action via Nels Cline, and Pat Sansone joins in, until a rich Grateful Dead-style jam is in full progress. It flourishes, and fleshes out the tune for several minutes until wearily winding down into silence, the crackling having fully passed.

Technically, Wilco has only performed “Many Worlds” once in full when it was premiered at their Solid Sound Music Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, on May 27, 2022, but its instrumental coda as the outro to “Via Chicago,” has been performed around 20 times at every show following its debut.

Watch the live premiere of “Many Worlds” at Solid Sound (distant but still decent quality):

And witness the song’s coda as added to the Wilco classic, “Via Chicago,” at the Budweiser Stage in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on August 18, 2022:

It will be interesting to see if the lyrical section of the song will return to performances of the song in the future. The first half of the song before the jam seems a shoo-in for Tweedy solo gigs so it’s likely we haven’t heard the last of our vocalist’s lament about the stars on a live stage yet.

Until then, “Via Chicago” gets enhanced by a lush outro that casts a lovely spell over Wilco’s current concerts. Whether it’s a permanent addition of a new trick to an old dog is yet to be seen.

 

More later...