You can stream Wilco's forthcoming album, Wilco (The Album) right now at the band's web site. The album is due June 30 from Nonesuch. What follows are my first impressions of the 11 tracks. Spoiler alert: I like it quite a bit. Read on to find out why.

1. Wilco (The Song): Debuted on "The Colbert Report," the song seemed like a goofy lark destined for a B-side. Here, leading off the album, it feels like the past several years never happened, as if Wilco (The Album) was following Summerteeth, not Sky Blue Sky. It's a chugging rocker with its tongue stuck firmly in its cheek. "Wilco love you, baby."

2. Deeper Down: The album shifts gears here, with a sweet, quiet tune with some nice pedal steel from Nels Cline and some burbling background noise from Mikael Jorgensen. During the instrumental passages, this sounds like the kind of ornate, precious tune Wes Anderson would use to soundtrack one of his films.

3. One Wing: A competent track that doesn't do a lot for me. It'd be a standout on a latter-day Ryan Adams disc, but there's little in the way of an immediate hook. Tweedy's vocal and lyric are average, and the song is fairly pedestrian instrumentally, at least by Wilco standards.

4. Bull Black Nova: This is more like it. Pounding keyboards that give way to some interesting guitar lines while Tweedy sings with some nervous urgency. This is the first song on the album that feels as if the band is taking full advantage of its strengths and quirks at the same time, and the first that lets Cline air things out a bit. Most interestingly, it seems that Tweedy is talking about the car, not the celestial phenomenon.

5. You and I: A quiet, acoustic song built on a sweet melody from Tweedy in duet with Feist. It's a straightforward love song, the kind of thing Tweedy would typical twist with a thrown punch, a missed communication or some other romantic foible. Instead, he plays it straight here, and the results are gorgeous.

6. You Never Know: A soaring pop tune with piano tinkling, a full-time strummed acoustic guitar and solid hooks. "Every generation thinks it's the last, thinks it's the end of the world." The vocal harmonies here are pristine, giving this a classic pop feel. A real standout.

7. Country Disappeared: Another tempo downshift, with a tune that would be at home on either of Wilco's last two albums. So much so, in fact, that it feels in a way like a pastiche of past moves. That's not a bad thing, but it seems like a placeholder of sorts. Then again, with a placeholder of this quality, the band can be forgiven for taking a bit of a break on this track.

8. Solitaire: Starts with some nice finger-picked guitar augmented by spacey keyboards... and double-tracked vocals! That's a strange element from Tweedy. Real stripped down, pretty. Fitting, given the title. Some nice images lyrically, too: "I was cold as gasoline." Cline's pedal steel returns here to give the song a spooky yet warm vibe. The arrangement and production on this is fantastic.

9. I'll Fight: Maintains the quiet, acoustic feel of "Solitaire" at the outset, but launches rather quickly into a full-band arrangement. "I"ll go for you... I'll fight... I'll die for you, I will," Tweedy sings. Another laid-back song musically speaking. Shares much of its melody with Sky Blue Sky closer "On and On and On." Wouldn't put it past Tweedy to consider this a sequel of sorts. There, Tweedy pledged that he and his love would "stay together yet." Here, he goes a step further.

10. Sonny Feeling: When I first saw a tracklist for the album, I read this as "Sonny Liston," likely coaxed by the preceding "I'll Fight" and "lasting" part of the following "Everlasting Everything" to make the mistake. I was wrong, of course, and the song certainly suggests nothing of the sort. It's a, well, sunny track that reprises a bit of the stomp of the opener. Cline gets another chance to show off here to nice effect. This is the only real upbeat song on the latter half of the album.

11. Everlasting Everything: This feels like an album closer. It's a slow-building big statement with a big chorus. "Everything alive must die, every building built to the sky will fall." Swelling strings nicely undergird Tweedy's sentiment. Rather than continue to build to a crashing crescendo, the band pulls back, letting Cline noodle around a bit while the other instruments fade out. It's a great way to end a solid album.

Overall, the disc stands well with the rest of the band's catalog. While it is the sound of a band standing in place a bit, the strength of its songs more than makes up for that. This is what Wilco sounds like -- remarkably, Tweedy has had the same band for two albums straight! -- and that's a good thing.

Labels: first listen, music