At earlier times in Wilco’s long-spanning, impressive career, you might have thought Jeff Tweedy would have some sparring words to dish back at the Wilco Internet haters of the world. But now, he’s the ringleader of a band who called their last album Wilco (The Album) and makes jokes and smiles and stuff. Weird, huh?
Anyway, The A.V. Club gave Tweedy an open forum to respond to some hand-selected comments on the band, and he comes across as basically a pretty chill, but sage dude that’d be just dandy to grab a beer with. His response to a dude that called them “MOR dad rock” that’s not threatening in any fashion might serve as the highlight.
Tweedy: Well, the goal of all art is to be threatening in some fashion. [Laughs.] Obviously we’ve threatened this guy’s view of whatever it is he’s supposed to allow himself to like. If that’s not threatening, I don’t know what is, because he’s obviously being challenged. People really think narrowly when it comes to those types of challenges, and the idea that something has to be aggressive or avant grade, or atonal, even, to be a challenge. I’ve found it to be the exact opposite. We literally put 15 minutes of noise on a record that did not raise an eyebrow, but if you make a pop song with Feist on it, people are going to cry like the sky’s falling. It’s really going to hurt somebody. Our goal is to make some shit that we fucking like to play and feel good about, with the knowledge that that doesn’t hurt anybody. You’re basically doing something that you love to do, and you’re not really hurting anybody.
(Via: A.V. Club)
Related:
October 19th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
What really bugs me is that his response to criticism is invariably the same thing: no one is cool enough to dig our current trip. At no point have I ever seen him acknowledge the thought that people might just think Wilco’s last two albums are pretty bad on their own merits without having some sort of weird hipster snob agenda. His defensiveness makes me even less inclined to like either Sky Blue Sky or Wilco (The Album), and I say that as someone who owns both albums and has tried numerous times to like them. They’re just not very good.