WILCO

Listen to Wilco:

About Wilco:

Wilco is an American alternative rock band based in Chicago, Illinois. The band was formed in 1994 by the remaining members of alternative country group Uncle Tupelo following singer Jay Farrar‘s departure. Wilco’s lineup changed frequently during its first decade, with only singer Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt remaining from the original incarnation. Since early 2004, the lineup has been unchanged, consisting of Tweedy, Stirratt, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen, and drummer Glenn Kotche. Wilco has released eleven studio albums, a live double album, and four collaborations: three with Billy Bragg and one with The Minus 5.

Wilco’s music has been inspired by a wide variety of artists and styles, including Bill Fay, The Beatles and Television, and has in turn influenced music by a number of modern alternative rock acts. The band continued in the alternative country style of Uncle Tupelo on its debut album A.M. (1995), but has since introduced more experimental aspects to their music, including elements of alternative rock and classic pop. Wilco’s musical style has evolved from a 1990s country rock sound to a current “eclectic indie rock collective that touches on many eras and genres.”^[6]

Wilco garnered media attention for their fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001), and the controversy surrounding it. After the recording sessions were complete, Reprise Records rejected the album and dismissed Wilco from the label. As part of a buy-out deal, Reprise gave Wilco the rights to the album for free. After streaming Foxtrot on its website, Wilco sold the album to Nonesuch Records in 2002. Both record labels are subsidiaries of Warner Music Group, leading one critic to say the album showed “how screwed up the music business is in the early twenty-first century.”^[7] Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is Wilco’s most successful release to date, selling over 670,000 copies. Wilco won two Grammy Awards for their fifth studio album, 2004’s A Ghost Is Born, including Best Alternative Music Album. Wilco released their eleventh studio album, Ode to Joy, in October 2019.

Listen to Sleater-Kinney

About Sleater-Kinney:

“How does brokenness walk? Or move through the world?” says guitarist/vocalist Carrie Brownstein about The Center Won’t Hold, Sleater-Kinney’s tenth studio album. “We’re always mixing the personal and the political but on this record, despite obviously thinking so much about politics, we were really thinking about the person – ourselves or versions of ourselves or iterations of depression or loneliness – in the middle of the chaos.”

The Center Won’t Hold is Sleater-Kinney’s midnight record on the doomsday clock. After twenty-five years of legendary collaboration, rock’n’roll giants Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker rise to meet the moment by digging deeper and sounding bigger than we’ve heard them yet. Here are intimate battle cries. Here are shattered songs for the shattered survivors. “The Center Won’t Hold drops you into the world of catastrophe that touches on the election,” says guitarist/vocalist Tucker of the title track. “We’re not taking it easy on the audience. That song is meant to be really heavy and dark. And almost like a mission statement, at the end of that song, it’s like we’re finding our way out of that space by becoming a rock band.”