Wilco (The Album), Wilco’s dad-rocking new record, is pretty good, we guess, even if it’s way less adventurous than the band’s previous four. The New York Times, though — probably thinking we’d all be too busy battling Fourth of July hangovers to notice — thought it was good enough to warrant not one but two separate interviews with Jeff Tweedy in yesterday’s paper. For a front-page “Arts & Leisure†profile, David Carr went all the way to Los Angeles to talk to the front man about music, his family, and the recent death of former band member Jay Bennett. But Times Magazine interrogator (and Wilco superfan, apparently) Deborah Solomon would not be denied her own chance to quiz Tweedy about those very same topics in her “Questions for†column. Both pieces find the singer a mellower presence than the guy who famously used to battle demons and punch dudes onstage. Which is lucky, since the old Jeff Tweedy might’ve pointed out how weird it was to be asked about the same things twice by the same newspaper.
Torture-Free but Still a Rock Star [NYT]
Rock of Ages [NYT]