Wilco announce new album with lead single "Falling Apart (Right Now)"

"Falling Apart (Right Now)" is the first taster of Wilco's 12th studio album, which will feature 21 songs all written by Jeff Tweedy, and is largely made up of live takes recorded with all six members at their Chicago rehearsal space The Loft, marking the first time they've approached an album this way since 2007's Sky Blue Sky.

The new song is teamed with a video made up of studio footage that was shot by Jamie Fleischel.

Tweedy says of their upcoming double album, "There have been elements of country music in everything we’ve ever done. We’ve never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition, the idea that I was making country music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making country."

"It’s a style of recording that forces a band to surrender control and learn to trust each other, along with each others’ imperfections, musical and otherwise," Tweedy says of the recording process. "But when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, it feels like gathering around some wild collective instrument, one that requires six sets of hands to play."

He adds of the album, "It isn’t always direct and easy to spot, but there are flashes of clarity. It’s all mixed up and mixed in, the way my personal feelings about America are often woven with all of our deep collective myths. Simply put, people come and problems emerge. Worlds collide. It’s beautiful. And cruel. The specifics of an American identity begin to blur for me as the record moves toward the light and opens itself up to more cosmic solutions—coping with fear, without belonging to any nation or group other than humanity itself."

Cruel Country will follow Wilco's 2019 album Ode to Joy.

Tracklist:

1. I Am My Mother
2. Cruel Country
3. Hints
4. Ambulance
5. The Empty Condor
6. Tonight’s The Day
7. All Across The World
8. Darkness Is Cheap
9. Bird Without A Tail / Base Of My Skull
10. Tired Of Taking It Out On You
11. The Universe
12. Many Worlds
13. Hearts Hard To Find
14. Falling Apart (Right Now)
15. Please Be Wrong
16. Story To Tell
17. A Lifetime To Find
18. Country Song Upside-down
19. Mystery Binds
20. Sad Kind Of Way
21. The Plains