Critic's Corner
Wilco, Cousin
If you’d have asked me about Wilco a couple of months ago, I would have told you that I liked the band just fine. They even made it onto the “light” section of my curated playlist in County Highway’s Issue #2. After listening to the band’s new album, I would probably say the same thing: I like Wilco. The reason why I like them has changed, though.
Cousin is probably the band’s most inspired work since 2016’s Shmilco and 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The albums in-between those two bookends have been largely unremarkable, mostly due to the repetitive song structure and lack of experimentation. The main reason that good-enough bands, like Wilco, get so popular is because they are seen as “good” and “acceptable” by the general listener. Then they stay popular by doing slightly different versions of the same thing over and over and over …
Crime Blotter
Audreya Jacobson was out trick or treating in Sioux City, Iowa with her children for Halloween when she realized that she forgot half of her brain at home. After driving her 2012 Mitsubishi Outlander back home to pick up the other half of her brain, i.e. her phone, the mom of two came back outside to find that her car, which she had purchased a day earlier with help from her co-workers, was gone — along with her IDs, credit cards, her children’s car seats, and a wheelchair. I guess Christmas sure came early this year.
Speaking of car thieves, the sales team at Northtown Auto Sales in Spokane, Washington led by Sales Manager Johnny Arrotta got a surprise when they came into work and found eight front-line vehicles missing from their lot, including three BMWs and two Mercedes Benzs. When employees checked the security footage, they saw what Arrotta described as “a guy in a straw hat” and a companion in a …
Cut Worms
Indie rock abandons the snooty northern campuses and lakes for the dazed desert landscapes of the Southwest
’The cut worm forgives the plough’ — Wm. Blake
Arizona takes the L train
The latest self-titled record from the Brooklyn-based, Ohio-born band Cut Worms opens with an ending. “Don’t Fade Out,” the instant classic which starts the album, sounds like the track that plays as the credits roll on a movie about summer love: “Don’t fade out / Don’t fade out on me / Stay right here where / Love will always be.” The track might just have easily served as the closer to a record suffused with pop songs that seemingly have no agenda to hide, but here it is right at the start. It’s another telling sign that front-man Max Clarke, who named his project after a line from William Blake (“the cut worm forgives the plow”), is up to something other than blowing bubbles and selling pop with his apple-pie voice.
Originally a native of Strongsville OH, Clarke made his way from bagging groceries at Mark’s to having Wilco and Norah Jones cover his songs. He signed with indie-royalty label Jagjaguwar — …
