“I just think that Wilco doesn’t seem to have a desire to be that disciplined about what we choose to present,’’ Tweedy says on the phone from rural Michigan, where he’s vacationing with his family prior to a tour that stops for a sold-out date at the Citi Wang Theatre on Tuesday. “Either that or we have an inability to focus,’’ he adds with a laugh.
“But mostly I think we just enjoy a lot of different approaches to music making. If we really try to narrow it down and focus on one type, the target keeps moving,’’ Tweedy says. “Somehow a song that we think is starting out as an [aggressive] rock song turns into an orchestrated pop song. It’s like the longer we look at something, the more it shape-shifts.’’
There is plenty of shape-shifting on the group’s forthcoming album, “The Whole Love,’’ due out Sept. 27.
The opening “Art of Almost’’ oscillates between peaks of nervy guitar and valleys of fuzzy keys. The hushed acoustic warmth of “Black Moon,’’ replete with woozy strings and lap steel, conjures visions of insomnia. “Capitol City’’ is a jazzy little ditty that sounds like it comes from a whole other record.
Which, in a way, it turns out it does, as the remnant of an earlier songwriting session. “There was something kind of fun about just throwing curveballs into the mix here and there,’’ Tweedy says. “We had that one in our back pocket. It ended up fitting on the record somehow in our twisted logic.’’
But no matter how twisted the approach, to the band’s credit “The Whole Love’’ never feels like it’s lurching from sound to sound, but more like the group pouring its gifts into each style. It is all topped by Tweedy’s often abstract lyrics.
