Jeff Tweedy Announces Triple Album "Twilight Override"

Jeff Tweedy has always had a maximalist side. That was apparent when Wilco released a double album, the excellent Being There, as their second record. (That was, somehow, almost 30 years ago.) More recently, the band Tweedy — the father-son duo in which Jeff plays with his son Spencer — released the double album Sukierae as their debut. And last year, Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born got the deluxe/archival treatment as a nine-CD or nine-LP set. All of which is to say: hearing that Jeff Tweedy’s new solo album is a triple LP is not the most shocking news.

The album is called Twilight Override, and it’s set for release on dBpm Records on September 26, with Tweedy hitting the road this fall in support of it. Will this be Tweedy’s version of The Clash’s Sandinista! or hew more closely to Prince’s Emancipation? Either way, he’s reuniting with a number of regular collaborators for this album, including producer Tom Schick, guitarist James Elkington and Tweedy’s kids Spencer and Sammy.

If the idea of a triple album seems inherently prog-rock to you, you’re not off-base. In a statement, Tweedy said that he didn’t set out to write a concept album, but ended up arriving there regardless. “The way that this ended up falling together and being arranged — it does tell a story that I think I wanted to tell,” he noted. “That’s what a process does for me. This is why it sounded right to me in this order, aside from tempos and music.”

Tweedy also explained that he was inspired by the current state of the world, and that of the nation, something he termed “a bottomless basket of rock bottom.”

“Whatever it is out there (or in there) squeezing this ennui into my day, it’s fucking overwhelming. It’s difficult to ignore,” he said. “Twilight Override is my effort to overwhelm it right back. Here are the songs and sounds and voices and guitars and words that are an effort to let go of some of the heaviness and up the wattage on my own light.”

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The three discs of Twilight Override are said to correspond to the past, present and future. This week, dBpm Records is releasing three songs, one taken from each disc — “One Tiny Flower,” “Out In The Dark” and “Stray Cats in Spain” — in addition to the single “Enough.” Tweedy debuted the latter song earlier this year at a solo benefit concert at Chicago’s Vic Theater.

Since the release of 2017’s Together at Last, this will be Tweedy’s fifth solo album, an impressive discography in addition to his acclaimed work with Wilco — though it’s also his first solo album in five years. If the expansiveness of this record is any indication, he’s making up for lost time.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…