When Wilco takes the stage tomorrow night at Massey Hall, fans will get a preview of the Chicago alt-country-pop-rock band's next studio album.
"We'll definitely be playing some new material," said Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy during a recent teleconference interview with music writers from across Canada.
"We try not to play too many new songs in one show, but probably like three of four new songs a night."
Tweedy said recording has been going really well and the band probably has about 30 songs "in various stages of completion."
But it's the sound of the next record, not expected to be released until next spring, that may surprise some people.
"The weirdest thing about it is that it's not weird at all," said Tweedy. "We're on this, like, Brill Building bent -- everything seems to be really organic but at the same time pretty arranged. I think that people would most likely hear this music and describe it as being very classic in the way it's put together, (in terms of) types of arrangements, and very traditional and natural-feeling for us."
Wilco, who formed in 1994 out of the ashes of roots rockers Uncle Tupelo, has gone through numerous personnel changes over the years with Tweedy remaining the band's main creative force.
But he calls the latest incarnation "the defining lineup," and said the songwriting dynamic has changed with the most recent additions to the band -- guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, who joined to tour in support of Wilco's last studio album, 2004's A Ghost Is Born.
"We sit around in a circle in the studio with no headphones and as close together as we can be and play music together," said Tweedy. "The communication that has been going on is as uninhibited and as direct as anything I've ever experienced with one person, much less six people. So I don't really want to jinx it or anything, but I couldn't ask for anything more.
"A lot of it is that Pat and Nels are such wonderful musicians and are so quick to grasp ideas and parts and come up with things. The communication stays fresh, and we really can focus on a song for a long, long time before anybody gets bored or tired."
Wilco has definitely expanded its sound over the years, marrying "the beautiful with the ugly and the melodic with the noisy," as one journalist described it.
Tweedy said the evolution of Wilco's sound has been a personal one.
"I've always admired people who make music that is very focused and very coherent," he said. "But I think over the years I have gravitated towards people like Neil Young or Bob Dylan, who seem to wrap themselves up in a much broader emotional range."
The last Wilco album was 2005's double live disc, Kicking Television, a release that saw Tweedy embark on a solo acoustic tour of the west coast, and which will be released as a DVD before the new album comes out.
In the meantime, Wilco is in the midst of a major Canadian tour, perhaps their most extensive ever, as they hit smaller centres as well as larger cities.
"To be honest, we haven't played anywhere in Canada in a long time, other than the big urban centres -- Toronto and Vancouver predominantly," said Tweedy. But they do try to play a new place every time they go out. "For a long time now, we've been longing to get back to Canada and do it in a way that we can spend time there and play places that we've never seen before. I would really hate to just play L.A., Chicago and New York, you know, all the big cities once every two years and then call it a day."
Tweedy says his health has been "never better" since he overcame an addiction to painkillers in 2004, which he had used to fight migraine headaches.
"Actually, I feel like I'm in better shape than I've ever been," said Tweedy. "I've been running five or six miles every day and I'm thinking about some races this summer. I was never able to do that, even in high school, so I'm doing good. I haven't had a migraine in almost two years and I haven't had a cigarette in over a year, so all kinds of things are changing for me. And I'm not exaggerating. I don't think I've ever felt better."
