There’s a lot of Tweedy around here these days, between our Southern Songs & Stories podcast on Jeff (found here), his certain influence on the new Autumn Defense release from two of his Wilco bandmates, his son Spencer providing drums on the latest recording from Case Oats, and now this big new release from Jeff himself. Twilight Override is an intentional, sprawling three-disc album, a testament to creativity in the face of overwhelming darkness. Recorded and self-produced at his Chicago studio, The Loft, Twilight Override features Chicago-based friends and family: James Elkington, Sima Cunningham, Macie Stewart, Liam Kazar, and Tweedy’s children Spencer and Sammy. The three chapters of Twilight Override stand alone, but together, they tell a story of the past, present, and future. In his words, “When you choose to do creative things, you align yourself with something that other people call God. And when you align yourself with creation, you inherently take a side against destruction. You’re on the side of creation. And that does a lot to quell the impulse to destroy. Creativity eats darkness. Sort of an endless buffet these days—a bottomless basket of rock bottom. Which is, I guess, why I’ve been making so much stuff lately. That sense of decline is hard to ignore, and it must be at least a part of the shroud I’m trying to unwrap. The twilight of an empire seems like a good enough jumping-off point when one is jumping into the abyss. Twilight sure is a pretty word, though. And the world is full of happy people in former empires, so maybe that’s not the only source of this dissonance. Whatever it is out there (or in there), squeezing this ennui into my day, it’s fucking overwhelming. It’s difficult to ignore. Twilight Override is my effort to overwhelm it right back. Here are the songs and sounds and voices and guitars and words that are an effort to let go of some of the heaviness and up the wattage on my own light. My effort to engulf this encroaching nighttime (nightmare) of the soul.”
Monday 9/29: Jeff Tweedy – Twilight Override
