Love Is the King

Full of delicate folk mopers, lighthearted country romps, and genuinely sweet love songs, as well as his best guitar playing in years. [Dec 2020, p.70]

Love Is The King is weathered and patient, rarely effusive, and entirely demonstrative of its namesake. It’s a warm embrace.

Love Is The King is determined to hold on tight to the good things while keeping a sharp eye on the mirror. [Dec 2020, p.80]

Love Is the King is his very personal reaction to an increasingly difficult time in America's history, and while he doesn't pretend to have answers, this music is his own kind of therapy, recognizing his emotions and working through them before they devour him, and he makes both the process and the challenges well worth hearing.

This albums marries Tweedy's mature emotional outlook to the workaday manners of Uncle Tupelo or the Woody Guthrue project, Mermaid Avenue. [Dec 2020, p.34]

The vibe is folk, rock, country and kind of homespun and laidback but, like early John Lennon records, there is sharpness to the starkness.

Though recorded under lockdown, the songs may be maudlin in spots but don’t directly address the situation at hand. Primarily Love Is the King has the air of what it in fact is: a man comfortable in his own skin recording a set of songs with his talented kids.

Love Is the King is the work of a songwriter with clear eyes and a full heart. Tweedy leans on the two constants in his life, music and family, to find hope in a year where such a thing has too often been absent. In doing so, he’s left behind more than just another solid record to add to his oeuvre, but also some reassurance that maybe things will be okay, so long as we keep sight of what’s important.

The reason the record provides some measure of consolation is due to its modesty. Rather than a concept album about quarantine, it’s a snapshot of a moment in time, one that captures the confusion, longing, and loneliness of a world set back on its heels.