Loose Fur - Born Again inthe USA

Tue 21st Mar, 2006 in Music Reviews

Born Again in the USA is the second coming for Loose Fur - a band consisting of Jeff Tweedy, Jim O’Rourke and drummer Glenn Kotche, all significant players in the Wilco line-up.

Wilco’s last two albums have shifted, sometimes radically, from their alt-county origins. The Gram Parsons influenced Americana that defined One A.M, their first record, is sometimes hard to hear as the band experiments with their sound. Their recent albums have featured meandering loops, drones and dramatic squalls of unexpected intensity, due in part to the changes in the band’s line-up. While preparing the follow up to the Summer Teeth album Wilco’s lead singer and songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, invited the experimental musician and producer Jim O’Rourke to play a gig with him. O’Rourke brought drummer Glenn Kotche to the rehearsal and soon they both joined Wilco in the studio recording Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — a move which upset Wilco’s other guitarist and song writer Jay Bennett, who soon left the band.

The collaboration between Tweedy, O’Rourke and Kotch has since fueled two brilliant Wilco albums, Y.H.F and its follow up, A Ghost is Born. Wilco also provided back up on to the acidic lyrics on O’Rourke’s Insignificance album. Between 2000 and 2005 the multi-instrumentalist O’Rourke was a member of Sonic Youth; he’s left New York’s enduring art rockers largely to pursue film work, though he continues to work as a musician and producer. Recently he’s been at work on Beth Orton’s Comfort of Strangers, playing bass, piano, and marimba as well producing the album. He’s also worked in the past as a producer/guest musician with Stereolab and Smog.

Born Again in the USA is the second album from the trinity of Tweedy, O’Rourke and Kotche, but unlike Wilco’s increasing experimentation the new Loose Fur album is a more accessible and song based collection than their first, a self titled album released in 2003. Loose Fur, the album, was a meandering series of jams that pushed toward the eight minute mark — for the most part interesting in the same way as listening to the demo recordings of your favourite band. Its series of loose jams sounded like the rough notes for their work with Wilco, leaving a ‘for-fans-only’ vibe hanging over the much of the project. Born Again in the USA is a far more accessible collection of songs; a tighter, brighter ‘New Testament’ collection in comparison to the sprawling, sometimes impenetrable, sounds of its ‘Old Testament’ predecessor. Like the Josh Homme helmed Desert Sessions albums much of USA shows off a countrified boogie sound- clearly the sound of choice for American musicians in all-star side project mode.

On A Ghost is Born Tweedy murmured ‘that theologians don’t know nothing bout my soul’ and he and O’Rourke seem to use this idea to dive the lyrics of much of the USA album. Don’t be mistaken, this is not a collection of Christian rock — that strange non-sequitar of a genre — these lyrics would probably give Pat Robertson cause to pause from praying for the death of Latin American presidents long enough to sputter out some sort of condemnation. Many of the song titles and lyrics carry through on the religious mockery that’s so obviously there in the album title, as well as the bands name — a punning version of Lucifer.

Peter O’Toole played a British Lord convinced that he’s Jesus in the film The Ruling Class; while over the backporch guitar and whistling of the Loose Fur song that shares the same title Tweedy sings a tale of the second coming. Apparently Christ ‘got tired of hanging around’ so ‘He’s having supper with the upper management of the new regime,’ while Apostolic has the Wilco frontman closing the by declaring that he’s good at preaching. Even the album’s piano driven instrumental is given a religious title — An Ecumenical Matter. Amongst all this religious joking it’s easy to hear O’Rourke as the voice of Jesus on the cross on Stupid As The Sun.

Let me down,
I’m resigning now,
I got an offer from the other guy,
That starting to look good right now.

Thou Shalt Wilt takes on the Ten Commandments in reverse with lines that would proudly take their place on a Tenacious D album.

Now gather round and check this shit out,
I’ve found a simple way to keep us all devout…
Look at number eight,
What better way to procreate…
Number four is such a pain,
The Sabbath thing is so arcane,
I don’t wanna desecrate,
My only day to sleep in late…

It all comes to a rousing concussion as O’Rourke declares that ‘you shall have no other God but me.’ There’s something in those commandments about false gods, but it’s time to build golden statues in honour of Loose Fur. Not to do so would be a sin.