When people usually announce an album as being ‘like Pet Sounds and Brian Wilson’ they usually only mean one of two things: a) it’s taken an imponderably long time to create or b) it’s played by already semi-skilled musicians not playing their primary instrument and having less than a measure of success with it. If the truth were known they seldom mean it’s an album of such soaring melodic genius that you could hang a pair of trousers on it and call it a kite. Add to that the fact that the albums often fail to verify multi-layered tier-cake of sounds and threads that characterise anything like ‘Pet Sounds’ – and you might be inclined to say they often don’t know what they’re talking about.
Where ‘Down With Wilco’ differs from the usual comparisons to greatness is in the area defined by the album’s tickling-ly good tunes and imagination. It is also chooses not to announce the unlikely association in the first place – which makes it all the more remarkable.
Produced and ably assisted by the less than compromising, Jeff Tweedy of fellow pop-pranksters, Wilco, The Minus Five – are very quickly turning into one of the most audacious (if bookish) alt-indie supergroups. Get this if you will: Scott McCaughey of The Young Fresh Fellows, REM’s Peter Buck and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, with special guests Rebecca Gates and Sean O’ Hagan amongst others.
Recorded at Soma Studios in Chicago, the album lunges drunkenly from the nostalgic and the tender (‘Days of Wine and Booze’) to the breezy and charmingly insane (‘Retrieval of You’, ‘The Town That Lost It’s Groove Supply’) and even through moments of pure psychedelic brilliance (‘The Family Gardener’, ‘What I Don’t Believe’) and tearful laments to the sacrificial heart (‘Life Left Him There’). Bit like ‘Prefab Sprout sans the dodgy bird and evenly sprinkled with much the same lyrical magic.
What also sets it apart from orderly queau of ‘Pet Sounds’ wannabees is the fact it really does use instruments in ways they weren’t strictly designed for. It was the mark of greatness for Brian, it’s the mark of greatness here.
That Scott can do an uncanny George Harrision impression, is obvious. What isn’t so obvious is the fact that for all its iconic Wilsonisms and Beatle whiskers, ‘Down With Wilco’ is about as playful and original as you’re likely to get this side of ‘Revolver’ or ‘Head’. Pick it up, play with it, see what it looks like down your trousers. The Minus 5 are not in the business of disappointing. Neither should your trousers.