Wilco have shared a new song called “Cousin.” It’s the title track from their forthcoming Cat Le Bon–produced LP, due out later this month via dBpm. They’ll support the album with a U.S. tour, kicking off later this month.
Wilco previously shared “Cousin’s” “Evicted” in August. The new album is out September 29th and follows last year’s “Cruel Country”. “I’m cousin to the world,” Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy confesses. “I don’t feel like I’m a blood relation, but maybe I’m a cousin by marriage.” Produced by the singular Welsh artist Cate Le Bon, “Cousin” marks the first time since “Sky Blue Sky” that Wilco have handed the reins over to a producer outside their immediate circle of collaborators. Le Bon’s influences — among them the inclusion of saxophone, cheap Japanese guitars, and a cinematic, new wave-style drum machine — drive the album into the future.
The result is Wilco’s most pointed and evocative album, one related but not tied to our present moment, truly new ground for a band that has tested musical boundaries throughout its lengthy career. Longtime admirers of each other’s work, Wilco and Le Bon first met at the band’s Solid Sound Festival in 2019, where they formed an immediate connection, inspiring Tweedy to invite Le Bon to the band’s famed Chicago studio, The Loft, in 2022 to work on “Cousin”.
Le Bon pushed the band to take risks, repurposing Wilco’s established strengths and challenging them to oppose habits — all the while maintaining what has, for the last 30 years, defined Wilco as a band, their fearlessness, made possible by musical virtuosity and the secret language only a family shares. “The amazing thing about Wilco is they can be anything,” Le Bon says. “They’re so mercurial, and there’s this thread of authenticity that flows through everything they do, whatever the genre, whatever the feel of the record. There aren’t many bands who are able to, this deep into a successful career, successfully change things up.”
The Fat Angel Sings 