Twilight Override is constructed to be immersive relatively than visceral. We’re alongside for the journey, however cautious of the thrills. Fuel, grass or ass. A lot of cries, plenty of laughs. The vogue for Freudian remedy—the as soon as per week, lay on the sofa, dig into your childhood stuff—has lengthy since fallen out of favor with the broader psychoanalytic neighborhood, changed by usually sooner, inexpensive, extra efficacious approaches like CBT. Based mostly on the proof offered by Twilight Override, nobody has knowledgeable Jeff Tweedy. On the contrary, we’re in for the lengthy model—he has felt clean, he has eaten wedding ceremony cake, he has seen the expansive Western sky at nightfall—the world is an excessive amount of with him, late and shortly. However there may be a lot splendor too. On the swelling, string-driven “Stray Cats in Spain,” he sees stray cats in Spain, or probably, rockabilly revivalists the Stray Cats. In both case, it’s an epiphany bordering on a non secular expertise: “Oh what a wonderful day,” Tweedy sings, summoning the quivering awe of his “Ashes of American Flags” tenor. He’s more and more attuned to the static-y emotional frequencies of Robert Hunter, the place the overlap between bone-deep fatigue, determined craving, and the potential for ecstatic deliverance bind collectively in a gloriously wobbly existential dance. Like Hunter, he perceives the chic within the prosaic. When Tweedy sings: “Stray cats in 2019, rocking on the street,” his question-mark vocals counsel one who can’t fairly imagine he’s witnessed one thing so transportingly magnificent.
He gained’t be your mirror, however he’ll present you the place to look. Twilight Override is often humorous, as on the jaunty “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter,” the place he sings strains like “I would like you to blow smoke in my eyes” with Lou-worthy lasciviousness, a worthy replace to Jonathan Richman’s positively good tribute. “KC Rain (No Surprise)” sounds a little bit like Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman subjected to shock remedy. The beguilingly bizarre chamber-pop of “Love Is for Love” evokes the 1970 traditional Classic Violence, as if John Cale had been his babysitter too. On the Sister/Lovers-like “Too Actual,” Tweedy lays naked his deepest anxieties behind a tremulous wall of delay paying homage to the good 4-track recordings of F.M. Cornog’s East River Pipe and Jack Logan’s Bulk. Thus born, the ghosts are all over the place. Infamously, cruelly, Dylan as soon as instructed Phil Ochs: “You’re not a people singer, you’re a journalist.” Or was it so merciless? Tweedy is a journalist of the soul, all the time looking down these sad-ashtray leads.
