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Sky Blue Sky may find Wilco dipping their toes into roots rock again, but this doesn't feel like a step back so much as another fresh path for one of America's most consistently interesting bands.
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Alternative PressIt's apparent it takes deft skill to sound this simple. [Jun 2007, p.159]
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It's certainly the group's most cohesive album in ages.
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If Sky Blue Sky is the product of Wilco's newfound clarity and cohesiveness, the album's paralytic ambiguity suggests they're also still in desperate search of a purposeful vision.
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BillboardOn first listen, it might seem too derivative, even dull, but Jeff Tweedy's intricate vocal melodies and Nels Cline's ferocious guitar work keep things interesting. [19 May 2007]
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BlenderSky Blue Sky often feels like the Dead's American Beauty if Jerry Garcia had taken Paxil instead of acid. [Jun 2007, p.103]
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Wilco hasn't forsaken its experimental streak, and the group uses it in the service of darkness -- or rather the threat of darkness.
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Sky Blue Sky’s only ambition is to capture the warm tones of the early '70s rock FM they grew up on and clearly love. The execution is flawless. One can’t help but ask, however, “What’s the point?”
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Whilst the nostalgia-soaked Sky Blue Sky will cause consternation amongst those who backed Wilco’s brave efforts to bend the staidness of plaid-shirted alt. rock, it’s still arguably one of the most charmingly-effortless records Jeff Tweedy has ever spearheaded.
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Thoroughly boring.
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This may be the best Eagles album the Eagles never made.
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Wilco has constructed their most straightforward release in recent memory, which relies heavily on the inspired intricacies of a full-hearted band.
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"Sky Blue Sky" feels more collaborative than the past few Wilco records... The dozen tunes here reflect the more organic sound of a band playing in a room, with musicians turning ideas into grooves, which in turn become songs.
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It’s just too ‘nice’.
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The most musically direct and down to earth of the band's six-album career.
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It may seem disappointing to those looking for further progress in one of the best American bands of recent times, but in the end it all comes down to the songs, and most of the ones here are little gems, perfect for a summer morning.
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MojoMany longtime listeners... are sure to be disappointed with the radio-friendly production and sheer innocuousness of [the] lyrics. [Jun 2007, p.104]
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'Sky Blue Sky' returns to the original formula with which they made their name.
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Sky Blue Sky shows his restlessness as an artist, his need to keep moving - not always forward, but never merely standing still, and certainly not dipping into the back catalogue for an idea or two.
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Wilco has come up with 50% of a classic album and 50% of a merely decent one. Buy it for the moments you simply won’t hear anywhere else.
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All those self-consciously avant bits of the two previous albums have been ditched along with Jeff Tweedy's laughable lyrical abstractions in favour of tuneful, direct songs that at least seem to carry some emotional weight.
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The closer you listen to the jazzy guitars, Beatles touches and easy, shuffling rhythms ... the more it transpires that Tweedy is simply allowing the songs sufficient room to speak up for themselves.
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With Sky Blue Sky, [Tweedy] reclaims the pop-rock potential he ?ashed on Being There and Summerteeth.
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An album of unapologetic straightforwardness, Sky Blue Sky nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise.
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If 2004's 'A Ghost Is Born' was an experimental step too far then 'Sky Blue Sky' finds a band regressing tamely in to Dad-rock. Wilco need to rediscover that middle ground that suits them so well.
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A soulful, sad, yet ultimately hopeful document largely about putting a brave face in the midst of a dissolving relationship, indulging influences from Bill Fay to Charles Wright to Steve Miller, Sky Blue Sky is the rare, mature album where said maturity is seldom compromised by banality.
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Sky Blue Sky is Wilco's first step toward aging well, but it transcends transition and is an album that sounds right in its place and time.
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Sky Blue Sky is understated, erratic, often beautiful, disarmingly simple music; it really sounds like six guys playing in a room, and no doubt that's how they wanted it.
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This is mature, considered, powerfully expressed stuff, anti-hipster in its refusal to draw explicit attention to itself, commercially questionable in its lack of instant-gratification melodies and structures. What a breath of fresh air that is.
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Though it may not fit comfortably alongside any other albums in Wilco's catalogue, Sky Blue Sky is further confirmation that, even at their most retro, they're among contemporary pop music's most vital acts.
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SpinA near-perfect album by a band that seems, finally, to have found their identity. [Jun 2007, p.89]
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Just about everything on Sky Blue Sky, even soft-shoe skiffles like the title track, will likely sound better live.
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It's an album of shiny surfaces and great depths.
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On its own terms, Sky Blue Sky succeeds: it's tender, poignant and sumptuously textured, occasionally jolted into fiery life by flaring guitar passages redolent of Neil Young or Television.
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The production is straightforward, but the song structures aren’t; that’s where Wilco’s idiosyncrasies still hide out.
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While the elders will rejoice this sober, satisfied, and craftily subdued effort, the younglings of the bunch, with their abbreviated attention spans, iPod shuffles, and demand for instant gratification, will declare the album a boring and lethargic affair.
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UncutA slight disappointment. [Jun 2007, p.88]
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Under The RadarA very professional but almost inconsequential set... flat and ultimately uninspired. [#17, p.88]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 177 out of 213
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Mixed: 25 out of 213
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Negative: 11 out of 213
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Jul 26, 2019
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Jan 8, 2015
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Sep 22, 2011