Sky Blue Sky

Wilco's first studio album in three years, Sky Blue Sky, has been perhaps the most ardently awaited release of '07. Eager fans had taken to shouting out pleas for information to bandleader Jeff Tweedy during his recent solo acoustic tour, and the web chatter has been virtually deafening. Critic Katie Toms of London's The Observer addressed fan speculation in an advance review, declaring, with unalloyed delight: "Boy, was it worth the wait... Simple and soothing, yet rich and rewarding, this is an album you unknowingly yearn for, like a cool hand on a hot forehead." A great album from a band in their prime, Sky Blue Sky is as eloquently straightforward as Wilco's last studio recording, the Grammy-winning A Ghost Is Born, was daringly experimental. Tweedy's lyrics deal forthrightly with romantic separation and reconciliation, their bittersweet quality giving way, as the album progresses, to a more uplifting, redemptive mood. Tweedy quite literally banishes the darkness on the penultimate track, the inspiring, gospel-tinged "What Light" – the album's first single – and concludes with a deeply affecting, 'til-death-do-us-part lullaby, "On and On and On." There are hints of early-seventies Southern California folk-rock sweetness in the harmonies throughout the band-produced Sky Blue Sky, a bluesy Allman Brothers feel to the guitar/keyboard interplay,