Jeff Tweedy Brings Twilight Override to Union Transfer

“I think he is going through something… but I think it’s good,” is what I say to my partner over Sunday dinner when she rightly inquires why the new Jeff Tweedy record is a triple album. Anyone would be right to ask. What is a triple album, in an age where some people can’t even listen to a single song straight through, let alone a sit-down-and-get-into-this album, other than a provocation?

I feel I am in a unique position to speak to this, having been in, for decades now, both a parasocial relationship with Jeff Tweedy and a Kafka-lite type of situation in which I am his local doppelganger; every time I perform music outside of my home, I’m told I look and/or sound like him. Thank God I’m a fan.

These days, I am completely tied up with the Tweedy solo albums of the last 7 years; I’ve had enough Wilco and been enough Wilco in my life that I increasingly find I need to go straight to the source. I need the purest essence, and these Tweedy solo LPs (especially Love Is The King), with their warm, woody intimacy and hard lean into poetics, have permanent real estate in my mind. Twilight Override is looking to turn that apartment into a duplex.

It’s nice work if you can get it, and our man here is doing a lot these days. There’s the triple album; there are the books, which have a kind of “Thought Leader” vibe; there’s Wilco; and there’s the solo band. Oh, right, and they also do an annual festival and, like, some group trip to Mexico thing every year.

But this sold-out, sprawling show does not feel, not one bit, like the slipshod work of a chronic multitasker. In fact, while they are playing, this delightful, 360-degree-interesting, cool, and tremendously talented six-piece band feels like it is the only ball in the air in all the world. It is made up of Tweedy, his sons Sammy and Spencer, Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart of Finom, and Liam Kazar. They’re a family band, and I’m pretty sure they came to stop time. To which the crowd assembled seemed to say: Please. Yes.

When you have a family band, one of the really nice things you get is family voices. All six people on stage sing and play a multitude of instruments, and as the show goes on, those voices jump from singing choruses to kind of being a Greek chorus in the dramatic sense. Across a wide swath of the tunes from Twilight Override, there are parts where Tweedy’s voice isn’t present, and the other voices sing back to the narrator of these songs. Those voices really soar in “Stray Cats In Spain” and “Ain’t It A Shame,” but truly, they were a joy throughout.

Instrumentally, there’s just as much going on, including trace elements of things Cate Le Bon gave to Wilco when she produced Cousin for them, notably lots of chorus/phaser-laden 12-string electric guitar and a plucky bass guitar sound and vibe that Cunningham seems to have picked up and improved upon. Her bass playing and Spencer Tweedy’s highly stylized, low-key-virtuoso drum style made this my favorite rhythm section I have seen in a good long minute.

The set spooled out and made itself comfortable the same way the album itself does; the twin reminiscences of “Forever Never Ends” and “Parking Lot” (the latter especially) somehow summoned an ancient R.E.M. vibe without sounding like them. “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” was fully rousing with its mantra-like shout, “The dead don’t die!” They even covered “We Are Family,” which has got to merit a second shout-out to Cunningham, who carried that vocal, smooth and clear and from the gut, like a champion. And, reader, when they played “Feel Free,” I cried a little bit. I was in a room full of men my own age, a crumpled Bitburger can in hand. I don’t know if I felt free, exactly, but I definitely felt something.

But feelings aren’t answers, and my partner still deserves one as to the why of it all: Why a triple album? On one hand, he is playing the long game; he is hoping this is literature, and I am hoping that, too. But as the audience, I think I know it is.

But what is that literature about? I think I can tell you in the form of an anecdote:

About two-thirds of the way through the show, someone in the audience suffered a medical emergency. This was brought to our attention by a flurry of phone flashlights from many of those nearby, which went up as a signal to security and, ultimately, to the band as well. They stopped playing mid-song. The building, for a moment, fell completely silent as the person was tended to. Somewhere in this, a woman’s voice pierced the silence: “Do you need a doctor?” Someone said yes. The person was carried out and cared for. The band, a little shaken just like everyone else, ultimately and carefully resumed the song.

A few minutes later, between songs, Tweedy reflected a little. “Good job, everybody,” he said. “That was really sweet. We can be nice to each other, right?” The crowd erupted.

I am coming to believe that Tweedy’s work is going to a place where its central concern may well be kindness. Empathy. Understanding. It’s not Thought Leadership; it’s… Emotional Leadership, maybe. These songs — “Feel Free” and “Enough” being prime examples — ask the big questions at the same time they’re rolling all over the carpet with the day-to-day-ness of it all. They’re doing what great writers tend to do — they notice things. But where the rubber hits the road with this show, this album, this band, this night, is that they’re saying that you are right to ask these questions; it is proper; and you deserve to ask these questions, and that the best you or anyone may do is to benefit from simply asking them. The fact that you are even asking says that you’re on the right path. In fact, let’s try it right now, together, and leave it the way Tweedy, his children, their friends, and a crowd full of close friends left it last night:

Is your heart still tryin’?
Is your heart still alive?
Is your heart still fightin’
To get out of your mind?

On behalf of my lovely doppelganger, I bid you peace, and no answers. That’s not the point.