Jeff Tweedy has confirmed a week-long run of solo tour dates for December, including short residencies in San Francisco and L.A. Check out the details below, right alongside a 90-minute acoustic set from 2005 and the handful of stops Wilco is making in Austin next month... more »
By Andrew Perry, eMusic Contributor[To celebrate his receiving the Outstanding Contribution to Music Award from the Association of Independent Music, we invited Billy Bragg to take control of eMusic's editorial for a week. This is our exclusive interview with… more »
By Michael Tedder, eMusic ContributorLater this month, the legendary underground rock icons/heart-rending poets/drunken screw-ups the Replacements will play their first shows since breaking up onstage in Chicago 22 years ago. (Well, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson and some other… more »
By Barry Walters, eMusic ContributorDecades after her 1969 solo debut and a whopping 63 years since she joined her family in the Staple Singers, septuagenarian Mavis Staples is once again doing work that eclipses records of singers a third… more »
By Laura Leebove, Deputy EditorLow's albums have followed a fascinatingly diverse arc during their tenure on Sub Pop: The life-affirming electric bombast of 2005's The Great Destroyer, their first for the label, was followed by the moodier, tightly-wound and… more »
By Sam Adams, eMusic ContributorThe measured tempos and fragile harmonies of the Duluth, Minnesota, trio Low — core couple Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker plus bassist Steve Garrington, who joined in 2008 — have often concealed turmoil beneath their… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorWhat to make of Wilco with an established lineup? The Whole Love marks three straight albums on which original members Jeff Tweedy and John Stirratt and 10-year veteran drummer Glenn Kotche have teamed with multi-instrumentalist… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorWhat to make of Wilco with an established lineup? The Whole Love marks three straight albums on which original members Jeff Tweedy and John Stirratt and 10-year veteran drummer Glenn Kotche have teamed with multi-instrumentalist… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorIt's a tribute to leader Jeff Tweedy's enduring commitment to artistic rebirth and reinvention that one could listen to Wilco's 1995 debut A.M. and its Grammy-winning 2004 album A Ghost Is Born back to back… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorIn the wake of their popular and artistic breakthrough on 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco headed even further into uncharted territory on A Ghost Is Born, largely eschewing conventional songcraft in favor of conceptual expressionism.… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorWhere to go once you've gone off the deep end, and won a Grammy for it? For Wilco, the answer was a measured but brilliant retreat. Unlike its 2004 predecessor A Ghost Is Born, the… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorThe Wilco catalogue breaks down fairly cleanly into before-and-after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot segments. Such is the landmark nature of this album, which attained mythical status after it was initially rejected by the band's label; when… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorMost great artists in contemporary popular music have taken a sharp turn against the grain at some point, showing themselves to possess a range and depth which allows them to escape shorthand categorization. Here is… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorIn retrospect, it seems unlikely that so many musical stories would be launched by this unassuming if impressive 1990 debut by a Midwestern trio of friends in their early 20s. Uncle Tupelo was, at its… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorAfter a decade of recording in either their home base of Chicago or the nexus of Manhattan, Wilco had earned a working vacation, and so the excitingly titled Wilco (The Album) was recorded halfway around… more »
By Peter Blackstock, eMusic ContributorA Midwest supergroup of sorts including the Jayhawks 'Gary Louris, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Soul Asylum's Dan Murphy, Golden Smog sound surprisingly cohesive on this roots-y pop disc. more »
By Barry Walters, eMusic ContributorLet's not mince words: Former Staple Singers vocalist and soul/gospel queen Mavis Staples has one of the greatest voices of any living singer regardless of gender or genre, and the extraordinary expressiveness of that voice… more »
By Barry Walters, eMusic ContributorFew singers bridge the gospel/pop-soul divide with as much grace and down-home feeling as the former lead vocalist of the Staple Singers. In this remarkable collaboration with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, 71-year-old Mavis Staples inhabits a… more »