Jeff Tweedy can’t stop, won’t stop. Since releasing 2016's Schmilco with his venerable Chicago rock outfit, the songwriter dropped two solo albums of original material and a memoir—he’ll also appear on an upcoming episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Now, he and Wilco are back with Ode To Joy, a decidedly optimistic collection of new tunes he describes as “really big, big folk songs, these monolithic, brutal structures that these delicate feelings are hung on.”
Accompanying its announcement is a new song, “Love Is Everywhere,” a rich, guitar-driven folk song expressing the kind of soul-warming sentiments that don’t emerge much in 2019. “There MUST be more love than hate. Right?!” Tweedy said in a statement. “I’m not always positive we can be so sure. In any case, I’m starting to feel like being confident in that equation isn’t always the best motivation for me to be my best self—it can kind of let me off the hook a little bit when I think I should be striving to contribute more love outside of my comfortable sphere of family and friends. So…I guess the song is sort of a warning to myself that YES, Love IS EVERYWHERE, but also BEWARE! I can’t let that feeling absolve me of my duty to create more.”
Hear it below.
Ode To Joy, the band’s 11th LP, drops on October 4 via dBpm Records. Pre-order it here and see a robust list of their upcoming North American tour dates here.