My Album of 2025 - Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override
I start this week’s post slightly sleep deprived as I depart from Bristol and back to London, so bear with me! I hadn’t quite planned what I was going to write about this week but then it occurred to me that I should probably write about whatever I’ve been listening to on and off lately – which since its release has been Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override, a triple (!) album. It released in September this year, after a stream of singles being released across the year and has been received with much deserved praise. Wilco were in fact a new discovery for me this year, having briefly heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2023, and since have become my most listened to band of the year. Anyways – here’s some writing that’s hopefully not too delirious…
Despite its colossal size, Twilight Override, is an album that really can be left on loop, listened in sections, or in shuffle all quite seamlessly. The songs meld together in any order and seem to sit amongst themes of light and dark – in their most basic form – with Tweedy’s intention being to create as a means of combatting the darkness of everyday life – the metaphorical override of twilight. If you’ve read Tweedy’s memoir, ‘Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back)’ or ‘How to Write One Song’, then you may already be aware of Tweedy’s discipline towards songwriting – especially the habit of creating, and always trying to stay in an imaginative space. Upon the album’s release Tweedy made a statement: ‘when you align yourself with creation, you inherently take a side against destruction. You’re on the side of creation and that does a lot to quell the impulse to destroy’. Personally, I’m really rather fond of this sentiment, especially the idea that creating music should be rewarding on a personal level, perhaps as a way to counteract the anxieties of life and its often analytical restrictions. I’m always conscious that stepping into the mindset of creating is one that is inhibited by fears of perfectionism, or time-pressures, or sounding ridiculous – but really I think that is where the liberation lies, if you can temper the doubt beforehand!
Notably, one of the album’s online marketing approaches was to promote fans own contributions in the form of verses for the song ‘Feel Free’, one of the album’s singles, a beautifully uplifting tune that functions as its own mantra for creation. Over its seven-minute runtime, Tweedy accompanies the refrain ‘Feel Free’ with tiny vignettes of everyday life that vary in level from the persona, to moral, to communal. The result is an accumulation of images both comedic and tragic, that are all relatable. Perhaps most poignantly, Tweedy’s final command: ‘Make a record with your friends / Sing a song that never ends’, relating his own existence within the album to his listener. If then, ‘Feel Free’ captures a little of Tweedy’s own experience, that is recording Twilight Override with family and friends, I feel the song also functions as a wider microcosm of the album’s shades. It’s an album entangled with all the worries of life, but with often uplifting and real resolutions to compliment them.
Take for example – ‘Parking Lot’, a laid-back track that feels like the evening of a summer’s day, where Jeff finds himself witnessing various versions of himself inspecting his (supposed) coolest self as he looks over a broken-down sports car. There’s an undeniable comedy to the scene, but the line that catches me out is 'I or the me I most am / Drives by in the backseat of my parent’s car’, mainly because it acknowledges a sense that a lot of us feel – that somewhere we are still often viewing the world from the same perspective we might have when we were children, whether consciously or not. There’s a negligence to engage with the most confident version of ourselves, perhaps because it is blocked by so many other internal identities, even if this overconfident self is a ‘show-off’ a lot of the time. There’s an engagement with the idea that we are all constantly different versions of ourselves daily. ‘KC Rain’ acknowledges a similar perspective, with the hilariously self-deprecating lyric: ‘Like an old welcome mat, I’m filthy and I’m flat’. To be downtrodden and low, only serves to uphold the high of the chorus: ‘I’m high in the evening / When I’m sleeping / I’m with you’. The song’s ‘cosmic luck’ (as Tweedy puts it) offers an insight into reaching for something greater than one’s own circumstances, or more specifically to Tweedy – the guilt of leaving one’s own hometown for something greater. Once again, another young Jeff recounts the anxiety of a broken-down car with a prom date in ‘Forever Never Ends’. The scene is painted out lyrically with the perspective of teenage neuroses, worried about being caught drunk on the highway by police, who rather comedically, drive on by without a second thought. To follow, there is a sudden eruption of joyous guitar lines that to my ear are reminiscent of George Harrison’s solo works. Tweedy’s thought that ‘forever never ends / I’m always back there again and again’ reminds us that often we revisit unpleasant experiences with a weighty introspective attitude instead of considering them from an indifferent, external view.
Alongside these tracks, exist more serious concerns with more existential topics – Tweedy is often grappling with mortality. ‘Too Real’ is lyrically sparse but haunting, addressing the need for a high in a claustrophobic mind. Likewise, ‘Ain’t It A Shame’ addresses the shadow of depression over a sunny day. These tracks are gloomy but honest. I’m always fond of Tweedy’s ability to engage with subjects in such an emotionally direct manner, even ‘Throwaway Lines’ employs its own reflexive irony by using said ‘throwaway lines’ to shadow any deeper feelings that exist beneath. I view it as a sort of complicated love song – a confession of being preoccupied with one’s own struggles in the presence of a loved one. I think in acknowledging ‘throwaway lines like, “I love you”’, Tweedy somehow finds a way to communicate ‘I love you’ with a deeper feeling – in fact, it’s everything around those lines. From the outset Tweedy’s voice admits: ‘I don’t want to write about / All the things I’m still working out’ – if the song is a conversation, then the guarded tone of the lyrics serve as their own confession of love. Tweedy suggests that being seen underneath the performative love of ‘throwaway’ phrases, allows for a more honest love that comes from seeing someone truly – for all their worries and complications. Again – it’s that very sizeable ‘grey’ area of life and its feelings that I feel Tweedy grapples with so well on this album, and that contributes to it feeling like such a comforting listen.
My personal favourite – or current favourite (always subject to change!) is the titular track – ‘Twilight Override’, a song to tackle those moments of overwhelm. Tweedy’s vocals open over simple lap steel and acoustic arpeggi, searching for a more permanent fix than getting stoned: ‘My mind is moving fast / Faster than my stash can last’. This fix comes about in the chorus’ self-soothing refrain: ‘override’, which then beckons in Spencer Tweedy’s galloping drums and a pulsing bassline, assuring the song with a rhythmic stride. With this, hope emerges: ‘Now I see clear because / I was not where I thought I was’. Tweedy offers the effect of the mantra, shifting his perspective away from the song’s initial anxieties into a more optimistic territory. ‘I’ll need to find a new past’ acknowledges the need to recontextualise the past or leave it behind and embrace the present. It’s uplifting. The same attitude manifests in the final track ‘Enough’ (where else could it be placed!) that is the sort of song I’d use to wake up in the morning. There is no existence of ‘I’ in this track, instead Tweedy outwardly defiantly questions his listener over and over: ‘Has it ever been enough? / Has it ever been okay?’. ‘Enough’ is a defiant call to live life to the full and to never settle for less, whether in the best or worst of times. To me, it feels like the clarity of mind that comes after a bout of anxiety, a rational line of thinking that can only come about from the irrational. I suppose Tweedy, like many of us, is an overthinker – but in the best of ways.
Really, I’ve only talked about a portion of the tracks here – if I were to write about all of them, in full, I’d be here for a while and you’d likely have got bored reading. But really, I think this is an album that asks for repeated listens, it covers so many shades and so eloquently. I haven’t even spoken about the alternative rockers like ‘Mirror’, ‘No One’s Moving On’, or ‘Stray Cats in Spain’, all of which provide their own energetic response to the album’s sense of nervous anxiety. Twilight Override is an album that commands your attention and that I could easily listen to all day, in any order.
