JEFF TWEEDY : TWILIGHT OVERRIDE

JEFF TWEEDY : TWILIGHT OVERRIDE

Disc One (39:28)

One Tiny Flower
Caught Up In The Past
Parking Lot
Forever Never Ends
Love Is For Love
Mirror
Secret Door
Betrayed
Sign Of Life
Throwaway Lines

Disc Two (35:46)

KC Rain (No Wonder)
Out In The Dark
Better Song
New Orleans
Over My Head (Everything Goes)
Western Clear Skies
Blank Baby
No One's Moving On
Feel Free

Disc Three (36:32)

Lou Reed Was My Babysitter
Amar Bharati
Wedding Cake
Stray Cats In Spain
Ain't It A Shame
Twilight Override
Too Real
This Is How It Ends
Saddest Eyes
Cry Baby Cry
Enough

Label : dBpm Records

Release Date : September 26, 2025

Review (AllMusic) : The troubling state of American life since the rise of the alt-right and Donald Trump's transformation into a polarizing political figure has become Jeff Tweedy's dominant theme since the mid-2010s, coloring his work from 2018's Warm onward. A cheery outlook has never been Tweedy's stock-in-trade, but the undertow of his writing has been a troubled response to a world going mad, and in the essay that accompanies his 2025 album, Twilight Override, he sums up the tenor of American life as "a bottomless basket of rock bottoms." So what to do? In Tweedy's case, the answer is to make music, lots of it, and Twilight Override is an epic-scale response to prevailing malaise. Twilight Override contains 30 songs spread over three vinyl LPs, and was recorded with a cast of players who've been part of his solo road band for a while: Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart from the band Finom, Liam Kazar of Kids These Days, James Elkington of Brokeback and Eleventh Dream Day, and his sons Spencer Tweedy and Sammy Tweedy. While occasional bursts of electric skronk and languid electric jangle punctuate some of the songs, for the most part this music is dominated by acoustic instruments, and it's not just his biggest solo effort to date, it's the most fully formed. Compared to his previous solo releases, Twilight Override suggests Wilco's 1996 breakthrough effort Being There, where he consciously tore down the sonic frameworks he'd worked with since co-founding Uncle Tupelo. Twilight Override is not an exercise in musical reinvention like Being There, but it finds Tweedy and his collaborators embracing a fresh willingness to throw different ideas at the wall -- the duel between acoustic and distorted electric guitars in "New Orleans," the spiky report of "Lou Reed Was My Babysitter," and the washes of atonality in "Wedding Cake" as examples. As for the lyrics, Tweedy doesn't contribute any direct commentary on the events of American Life in 2025, opting instead to offer thoughtful introspection on his own philosophies, observations on his past and present, musings about the simple mysteries of living, and friendly advice -- seven whole minutes of the latter in "Feel Free," and when he suggests "Make a record with your friends," it's nice to know he practices what he preaches. Though Twilight Override covers a lot of ground in terms of both ideas and sheer bulk, it never sounds forced or as if Tweedy and his musicians are straining for effect. This music sounds natural and spontaneous, and even when the tracks are clearly layered with various elements, the feel is organic and meshes beautifully with the melodies. Twilight Override was created out of Tweedy's belief that "Creativity eats darkness," and while these songs rarely sound like they're brimming with joy, they act as an affirmation of life and hope even as they acknowledge the shadows, and it's his best and most rewarding solo album to date.

Review (Written In Music) : Jeff Tweedy’s nieuwe album Twilight Override is zijn meest ambitieuze soloproject tot nu toe. Het is een drie-dubbelalbum met dertig nummers dat qua schaal en diepgang duidelijk uitstijgt boven zijn eerdere vier soloalbums. Het album is een overvloedige uiting van creativiteit waarin Tweedy zich niet laat beperken door radioformats of commerciële druk. De soms experimentele Americana en alt-rock van deze in Belleville, Illinois geboren zanger-gitarist is intiem, technisch sterk en vaak emotioneel geladen. Deze zomer was hij nog te bewonderen op Best Kept Secret, samen met zijn Wilco-kompanen. Twilight Override is een luistermarathon die varieert van korte, intieme songs tot meer uitgesponnen, experimentele stukken. De nummers zijn verdeeld over drie delen, elk met een eigen sfeer, maar verbonden door Tweedy’s kenmerkende stem, melancholische ondertoon en speelse muzikaliteit. Sommige tracks duren slechts anderhalve minuut, andere nemen ruim de tijd om te ademen en te groeien, en dat doen ze met overtuiging. Met deze artistieke eruptie schaart Tweedy zich in het rijtje van illustere drie-dubbelalbums die bij hun release niet altijd werden begrepen, maar des te memorabeler bleken. Denk aan het muzikaal rijke All Things Must Pass van George Harrison, de genre-overschrijdende rebellie van The Clash op Sandinista en de virtuoze, grensverleggende composities van Frank Zappa op Joe’s Garage Acts I, II & III uit 1979. De lat ligt hoog, en Tweedy haalt hem. Met een totale speelduur van ongeveer tweeënhalf uur is Twilight Override zijn langste soloproject tot nu toe. Waar eerdere soloalbums vaak als zijprojecten aanvoelden, is deze plaat een volwaardige, Wilco-waardige release die zich kan meten met zijn beste werk. Sinds hun doorbraak in de jaren negentig heeft Wilco een reputatie opgebouwd als een artistiek gedurfde, muzikaal veelzijdige en tekstueel gelaagde band. Toch is Wilco bij uitstek een groep die vooral wordt gewaardeerd door critici, journalisten en collega-muzikanten. Albums als Yankee Hotel Foxtrot uit 2002 en A Ghost Is Born uit 2004 worden vaak genoemd in lijstjes van de beste albums van hun decennium. In dezelfde ademteug horen ook de twee albums die Wilco samen met de Engelse muzikant Billy Bragg opnam als eerbetoon aan folkzanger Woody Guthrie: Mermaid Avenue volume één en twee. Het nieuwe materiaal is extroverter, rijk gearrangeerd en doorspekt met invloeden van glamrock, dreampop en Velvet Underground. Vergeleken met het folk-georiënteerde Love Is King uit 2020 heeft Twilight Override een meer eclectisch geluid. Jeff’s zonen Spencer op drums en Sammy Tweedy als achtergrondzanger zijn al jarenlang betrokken bij zijn soloprojecten en ook actief in Wilco-gerelateerde projecten. Het duo Sima Cunningham en Macie Stewart van de experimentele band Finom voegt gelaagde vocalen en texturen toe, terwijl gitarist James Elkington, bekend van zijn werk met Richard Thompson, tekent voor de productie. Op dit drieluik vallen meerdere nummers op als artistieke hoogtepunten, zowel qua tekst, sfeer als muzikale aanpak. Twee van de meest besproken tracks zijn Twilight Override en Lou Reed Was My Babysitter, elk met hun eigen karakter en betekenis. In het titelnummer klinkt de regel “It’s not the end of the world, it’s just the override”, waarin hij mentale ruis en creatieve helderheid tegenover elkaar zet. Waar Twilight Override opent met het mantra-achtige, troost gevende One Tiny Flower, eindigt het met de ingetogen song Enough. Een emotioneel geladen track die draait om het thema van grenzen, zowel persoonlijke als relationele. Tweedy reflecteert op maatschappelijke malaise en persoonlijke verwarring, maar zoekt ook verlichting in creativiteit. Hij noemt dit album “een creatieve daad tegen verval, een poging om de duisternis terug te overweldigen”. Jeff Tweedy en Wilco maken geen muziek die grossiert in bombast of spektakel. Hun kracht schuilt in de fijnzinnige gelaagdheid, de emotionele intensiteit en de onwrikbare drang naar vernieuwing. Hun werk is als een roman die je langzaam leest, bedachtzaam, meeslepend en onvergetelijk in zijn uitwerking.

Review (Mojo Magazine) : Being a driven and prolific writer, making records since the early 1990s, Jeff Tweedy has on occasion enjoyed a song splurge. The Wilco frontman and bandleader is already responsible for no less than three double albums – ’96’s sweeping twin-disc statement Being There, 2022’s genre-corrupting Cruel Country, and 2014’s Sukierae, his literal dadrock LP with son Spencer on drums. Even so, a triple album is quite the stretch, Twilight Override boldly joining the exalted/dubious company of All Things Must Pass, Sandinista!, Prince’s Emancipation and, more recently, Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me (2010) and Kamasi Washington’s The Epic (2015). Especially in this age of ever-lowering boredom thresholds, it’s a decidedly chin-first artistic statement. But, weirdly, given Wilco’s standing as the American art rock equivalent of Radiohead, Tweedy’s songwriting arguably remains underrated. Free of their production bells and whistles – as proven on his first, ‘unplugged’ solo album, 2017’s catalogue set Together At Last – his standout tunes, such as Jesus, Etc., Ashes Of American Flags and Via Chicago, have the distinct ring of modern classics. Often, though, Tweedy’s LPs issued under his own name have come across as merely investigative or fun side-projects. Twilight Override, however, sounds decisively like a Wilco-quality album, and one that walks tall alongside their best records. Befitting a three-disc set, it’s also wildly eclectic, veering between slanted acoustic tracks, glammy ’70s rock and even ’80s dream pop. Clearly evident in certain parts is the influence of The Velvet Underground, most pointedly in Lou Reed Was My Babysitter, a homage to White Light/White Heat (via Queen Bitch) in which the singer colourfully details his lifelong fealty to rock’n’roll, and continuing urge to feel the thumps of a bass drum “kickin’ in my teeth”. Here, Tweedy is aided, as he generally is on his solo LPs, by both of his sons, Spencer (drums, percussion) and Sammy (everything from synths to vocals to ‘harmonic oscillator’), along with a host of ancillary voices (see Back Story) and secondary guitarist/ acclaimed artist in his own right, James Elkington. Still, electric guitars are only selectively utilised. When fuzzy solos do arrive they are often artfully frenetic and sometimes even sound untethered to the music. Meanwhile, the breezy acoustic strum of Out In The Dark handbrake-turns in its final seconds into a grinding, Sabbath-y riff. It’s this kind of jump-cut eclecticism, over a span of 30 tracks –and even a song named Cry Baby Cry – that means that Twilight Override almost inevitably evokes The White Album. The Beatles aside, the gradual disintegration of the hypnotically droning One Tiny Flower, with its serene appreciation of small wonder in a scene of urban decay, also references Wilco themselves, in recalling the disorientating band-breakdown of 1999’s Summerteeth version of Via Chicago. Here, though, the confusion is partly caused by a lyrical blurring of the present and the past. The title of the staccato violin-driven Caught Up In The Past seems straightforward, but the timeline is slippery: Tweedy lying in his bed at the Ace Hotel in LA, in an indeterminate moment that could be today or back when, listening to the sounds of a party on the roof, and hearing “people in love with a love that just can’t last”. If it’s a song that speaks of middle-aged ennui, or more generally feeling like an outsider, then the flashbacks to incidents involving the younger Tweedy are more acutely awkward. Recalling the gauche teenage reminiscence of Yankee Foxtrot Hotel’s Heavy Metal Drummer, the prettily melodic This Is How It Ends finds our narrator stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel, evocatively being dumped by a girl with a “butterfly tattoo” and “too-tight denim dress”. Forever Never Ends – think Lou Reed jamming with Mott The Hoople in ’72 – offers a vision of his prom night, real or imagined, where he’s ended up in a wintry lay-by, wearing a tuxedo and “red cummerbund”, puking peppermint schnapps and having to call his father to come pick him up. Now, the painful incident has become an inescapable memory loop in the singer’s mind: “I’m always back there again and again.” At the same time, at the age of 58, perhaps inevitably, Tweedy’s thoughts are turning further to mortality, even if they’ve been recurrent since his adolescence. In the mysterious and allusive Ain’t It A Shame – a reverse image of Terry Jacks’s ’74 deathly pop lament Seasons In The Sun – he’s a young guy lying “on a beach in the sun” welcoming thoughts of his imminent demise, yet accepting “that’s just not how dying’s done”. Even in the throes of this dark rumination, there’s clearly some force pushing him on. Sometimes, Tweedy simply succumbs to his dissociation. In Mirror, over a heavily distorted bass line, he’s caught staring at his reflection and wondering whether it “will be the person taking your place”. Other times, as in the spoken-word short story Parking Lot, he’s imagining a parallel version of himself – a confident petrolhead examining a car engine and surrounded by admiring buddies. He’s the version of Tweedy, perhaps, who never found music, and his reason for being, even if that now sounds shaky too. Breaking from his reverie, he references, of all people, The New Seekers and exasperatedly declares, “I’d like to teach the world to sing… fuck… anything.” But what ultimately lingers is a sense of music-led liberation. The seven-minute-long disc two closer Feel Free (similar in its sentiment to the beautiful, Wilco-covered Bill Fay song, Be Not So Fearful) offers multiple playful ways to maintain a breezy outlook: “kick a ball at a tree”, “spin around and get dizzy”, argue about bands (“Let It Be or Let It Bleed”) and most significantly, “make a record with your friends”. In the end, it’s this thrill of communal creativity that colours almost everything here. As a triple record, there are tracks that are less necessary than others, but remarkably it all flows as a cohesive whole, and never loses the listener’s attention. Tweedy’s message appears to be that, for him, a sense of purpose, and a state of joy, can be found in ongoing song and sonic exploration. Sometimes, it seems, more is more.