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Wilco had no problem taking the blame on their recent single “Evicted,” and they found a home for it on stage at Jimmy Kimmel Live. The band performed the song from their latest album, Cousin, which is colored with eccentric production from celebrated Welsh musician Cate Le Bon.
“I guess I was trying to write from the point of view of someone struggling to make an argument for themself in the face of overwhelming evidence that they deserve to be locked out of someone’s heart,” frontman Jeff Tweedy explained when the record was first released. “Self-inflicted wounds still hurt and in my experience they’re almost impossible to fully recover from.”
Cousin marked the first time since 2007’s Sky Blue Sky that Wilco worked with a producer outside of their usual circle of collaborators. Still, after more than a dozen albums, the band has a strong enough musical identity to hold it down in a live space without too much change. Le Bon’s primary contribution to the record was the expansion of their sound through the addition of saxophone, cheap Japanese guitars, and a New Wave-style drum machine.
“The amazing thing about Wilco is they can be anything,” Le Bon shared in a statement. “They’re so mercurial, and there’s this thread of authenticity that flows through everything they do, whatever the genre, whatever the feel of the record. There aren’t many bands who are able to do, this deep into a successful career, successfully change things up.”
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Tweedy opened up about the best piece of advice he’s been given — and it linked directly back to the way he’s learned how to present himself as a performer. “I was rehearsing, and Rick Danko stepped up onstage behind me, out of the blue, and said, ‘You sound desperate. You should always sound desperate. Don’t lose that,’” he explained. “It’s a weird way of saying something that I totally agree with. I think what he meant is people have to hear that you care — not that you’re desperate in your life, but that you’re desperate to communicate, desperate to connect. That’s why we sing.”
