Wilco Announce New Album Ode to Joy, Share Lead Single “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)”

Perennial alt-rock favorites Wilco just want to feel joyful. Is that so much to ask? In 2019’s dire, dreary political climate, maybe it is. Maybe we should risk our individual happinesses to better our community; maybe there’s a way to materialize that joy into political action.

That’s the central tension in the band’s new song, “Love Is Everywhere (Beware),” the lead single from their newly announced 11th album, Ode to Joy. Over twirling guitars and tender percussion, Jeff Tweedy yearns for a solution, struggling through the seemingly opposing mentalities: “So many things I do / I can’t explain to you,” he sighs moments after singing the titular phrase.

Tweedy expands on the track in a statement:

There MUST be more love than hate. Right?! I’m not always positive we can be so sure. In any case, I’m starting to feel like being confident in that equation isn’t always the best motivation for me to be my best self—it can kind of let me off the hook a little bit when I think I should be striving to contribute more love outside of my comfortable sphere of family and friends. So … I guess the song is sort of a warning to myself that YES, Love IS EVERYWHERE, but also BEWARE! I can’t let that feeling absolve me of my duty to create more.

On Ode to Joy, the band will continue to tackle those questions. Tweedy explains that the album is filled with “really big, big folk songs, these monolithic, brutal structures that these delicate feelings are hung on,” citing the importance of Glenn Kotche’s percussion as foundational to the album’s complete sound.