Together At Last
by Jeff Tweedy
  • Record Label: Anti-
  • Release Date: Jun 23, 2017
User Score
6.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 11 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 11
  3. Negative: 2 out of 11
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  1. yannbgiraud
    Jun 26, 2017
    5
    I didn't expect much from this record to be honest. Tweedy's acoustic reworking of nine Wilco songs plus two songs from his side projects (Loose Fur and Golden Smog) seemed a bit redundant, considering the excellent Sunken Treasures that was released some ten years ago. Yet, in some ways, Together At Last managed to disappoint me a bit. Not only are most of these songs less interestingI didn't expect much from this record to be honest. Tweedy's acoustic reworking of nine Wilco songs plus two songs from his side projects (Loose Fur and Golden Smog) seemed a bit redundant, considering the excellent Sunken Treasures that was released some ten years ago. Yet, in some ways, Together At Last managed to disappoint me a bit. Not only are most of these songs less interesting than their fully arranged counterparts but in addition, there exist better acoustic renditions of some of them. One example is "I Am Trying to Break your Heart" which is better in its live version in Sunken Treasures. Granted, what's fine with this album is Jeff's voice. I had become slightly tired of his muddy and dark mumblings on the past two Wilco records, Star Wars and Wilco. Here I find him a bit clearer and I find some of the emotion he could produce on his best albums, from, say, Being There to Sky Blue Sky. But apart from this, I found very little gems on this record. What's the point of rerecording "Sky Blue Sky" in a version that's so close to the original? What's the point of stripping songs such as "Ashes of American Flags" and "Muzzle of Bees" of what used to render them mysterious? Of all the good things in Wilco, what I missed the most, here, is Stiratt's always excellent backing vocals. They are sadly needed on "Via Chicago", which looses its momentum when Tweedy sings "I rest my head on a pillowy star / And a cracked door moon / That says I havent gone too far". Here we have a more tender version but it's kind of sleepy, and ultimately boring. Tweedy fares better on "Laminated Cat" and "Lost Love", maybe because they were not tied to specific arrangements in the first place. The rockers like "Dawned on Me" and "I'm Always in Love" now sound like casual folk songs but they lack depth. And "Hummingbird" seems definitely half baked, Tweedy's whistling would have been funny in a live situation but here it's just a bit cheesy. At least the album ends on a higher note with a beautiful version of "In a Future Age", although this is no improvement on the original either. To sum it up, while quite enjoyable at times, this is a pretty useless record, which just makes me long for Wilco's next Parisian concert.… Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
74

Generally favorable reviews - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 18
  3. Negative: 0 out of 18
  1. Magnet
    Jul 18, 2017
    80
    Nothing truly "new" but still revealing surprises and delights for the initiated. [No. 144, p.61]
  2. Prefix Magazine
    Jul 6, 2017
    70
    For Wilco fans, the songs here won’t surprise. But the effectiveness of these performances, the intimacy of the quiet, and the small, new lights they shed on tunes they’ve long known all makes this a worthwhile record. It’s a record of execution over ambition.
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  3. The Quietus
    Jun 27, 2017
    80
    What this amounts to is a collection that’s a good way in to the work of a songwriter whose output is three decades strong and a welcome addition to Tweedy’s discography in its own right.
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