It's strangely fitting that we get a self-titled record from alternative rock band Wilco on this its seventh studio album.

Wilco has been busy recently: There's also a fine two-disc live audio recording, "Kicking Television," a documentary film about the band's inner tensions and personnel transitions, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," and, released earlier this year, a great live concert DVD titled "Ashes of American Flags."

But rarely has this artful, innovative band sounded more confident and comfortable in its own skin as they do on this self-titled release.

And that is a good thing. Even if the music of Jeff Tweedy & Co. has often appeared to thrive on tension growing from elevated musical aspirations, tangible talent, an artistic vision mixed with insecurity and a yearning for some unattainable quality. All that remains true here as well, yet there's a sense of ease and humor that is welcome, if unexpected.

Which is to say that Wilco's records are smart, often experimental works, filled with ironic word play and a refusal to play by too many of the music market's rules about genre niches or simplistic attempts to feed fans what they want. Wilco never played that game. At least, not in a simplistic, straight-forward fashion. Wilco dares to trust the intellect of its fans and their willingness to take a musical journey into uncertain, uncharted territory.

With "Wilco (the album)," Tweedy's confidence and the band's craftsman-like playing delivers a set of songs that, for lack of a better word, feel remarkably like pop songs. A roots band from the beginning, when it sprang whole and complete from the head of alt-country progenitor Uncle Tupelo, Wilco continues to flaunt its exceptional grasp of the history and evolution of rock music.

Live at the Aronoff Center on June 12, I was struck with how often the songs were held together by a solid R&B, Sly Stone styled soul groove; how the guitar soloing — at times with as many as three people playing at the same time — recalled early Allman Bros. interplay, how Tweedy led the band through its often-experimental leanings without ever losing hold of the reins, reminding one of David Byrne, of Van Morrison, of whoever. The five new songs from "Wilco (the album)" fit seamlessly with songs from the groundbreaking "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" through more recent days, with only "Misunderstood" and "Shot in the Arm" representing the band's earlier recordings.

On "Wilco (the album)" the band, once called an "American Radiohead," still delivers a little Hank Williams here, some Kinks/Cheap Trick three-chord guitar pop there ("Sonny Feeling"), a nod or two to European techno ("Bull Black Nova"), ripping a hook from the Beach Boys, and a salute to avant-garde guitar avatars like Fripp and Belew where ever Tweedy sees free to unleash Nels Cline.

Live, again this year, I was reminded of a finely tuned steam train engine, but one that speeds up when heading into one of those noisy, experimental sections. They are so confident in their ability to hold on to the core of a song's emotional center that they go around those dangerous curves up on the wheels on one side, risking it all but, often eloquently, finding their way back to a solid footing. Graceful daredevils all.
 
But with the funny (yet sad, somehow) eponymously-titled track, "Wilco (the song)," Tweedy uses irony to deal with the way we make saviors, rescuers and dream lovers of entertainers. And here and throughout, songs like "One Wing" and "I'll Fight" emphasize Tweedy's comfort with pop song melodic hooks, making "Wilco (the album)" its most accessible complete disc yet. Something that is more than evident on the disc's two most obvious singles. "You Never Know," with its E Street band piano and organ intro, is an arena rock anthem in the making, and "You and I," a duet with folk singer Feist is the kind of bittersweet love song that deserves a breakthrough as a pop hit.

And of course Wilco's not just about Tweedy, or even about Tweedy and Cline (which in most bands would be more than enough), because the solid support of bassist John Stirratt, amazingly melodic drummer Glenn Kotche, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, and key and rhythm guitar player Pat Sansone, and the creative interplay of these superb talents makes this one of the finest live bands playing today.

But of course smart music practically requires insightful lyrics, and here is where Tweedy's complex, belligerently honest approach pays off. When he sings "I don't care anymore," you get the sense that while that is a true statement it's likely no less true that of course he still cares.

In the mournful, almost parental, depression lullaby that is "Country Disappeared," Tweedy sings "there's so much we don't understand, so stick as close as you can," before concluding "I won't take no, I won't let you go." It doesn't flinch in the face of the real challenges of modern life, but rather than lift up stoic individualism, suggests that we can't survive in isolation ("Solitaire"), we are better together.

And so is Wilco. I'd be hard pressed to name a smarter, more complicated and more enjoyable rock outfit working today. Both live, and on this fine new disc, Wilco is a band not to miss this summer.

Wilco (the album), Nonesuch Records
Wilco (the band)
Wilco (the concert), Aronoff Center, Cincinnati, OH – Friday, June 12 


The Rev. Brian Q. Newcomb is Senior Minister at David's UCC in Kettering, Ohio and a long-time music critic published in Billboard, CCM Magazine, Paste, The Riverfront Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, among others.