Jeff Tweedy, photo by Shervin Lainez

How lucky we are to have Jeff Tweedy. After four decades of performance, the Wilco frontman remains an incredibly prolific and powerful songwriter, with an uncommon sense for life’s subtleties that can make his music a beacon in troubled times.

Today, he’s released Twilight Override, a sprawling 30-track, two-hour triple album. Tweedy cut his follow-up to 2020’s Love Is the King at his Chicago studio, The Loft, with contributions from his children Spencer and Sammy and collaborators James Elkington, Sima Cunningham, Macie Stewart, and Liam Kazar. The project’s massive undertaking seems deliberately at odds with the bite-sized, rapid-fire culture it reflects, asking listeners to break from perpetual motion and listen with intention. The three chapters were intended as the story of the past, present and future, with some lifelike bleed between them.

While Tweedy has long walked the line between rock and its crossings with country and folk (see his recent appearances at the Newport Folk Festival), those influences are exceptionally strong on his latest, providing a firm, stripped-back foundation for candid introspection and rumination. That sound subtly slips from orthodoxy as the sparing blanket of guitar, percussion and some keyboards, strings and pedal steel knots around itself, creating an atmosphere of warm discordance. Flashes of rumbling, propulsive indie and loose proto-punk are among the many other styles strewn throughout the mix.

“When you choose to do creative things, you align yourself with something that other people call God,” Tweedy expressed in a personal essay supporting the album. “And 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. Creativity eats darkness.”

After a lifetime of fandom, a month of painstaking research and several listens, Relix’s own Associate Editor Hana Gustafson may know more about Twilight Overrride than anyone but Tweedy himself. She shared her takes on the album’s finest moments:

“Blanketed in reflection, the set showcases Tweedy’s mindset as he enters his own twilight. At 58, his words effortlessly co-opt the lived experiences of a rock star, calling out his influences on ‘Lou Reed Was My Babysitter’ and ‘Stray Cats in Spain.’

Thirty tracks, at just under two hours of play time, the triple album provides ample space for the harmonies to uplift the listener, ‘Western Clear Skies,’ ‘Out in the Dark’ and ‘New Orleans,’ find Tweedy holding notes longer than ever before, supported by a strong stack of female vocalists.

Surprise cuts like ‘Betrayed,’ ‘Twilight Override’ and ‘Saddest Eyes’ are standouts, representing the very best of Tweedy’s craft —the ability to write short and impactful prose that provides comfort, like the whispered reassurance of a friend on our darkest days.”

Tweedy is not the only long-awaited return today. Neko Case is back after seven years with Neon Grey Midnight Green, her first solely self-produced album. Her unfiltered artistic vision matches her brand of rough-hewn gothic Americana and cutting folk-rock with ardent, dizzying rushes of horns and strings. Robert Plant’s new album, Saving Grace, is his first since 2021’s Raise the Roof with Alison Krauss, and firmly establishes the English rocker as a master of Western roots. Alongside vocalist Suzi Dian and a band of longtime collaborators, Plant reinvents classics by the likes of Memphis Minnie, Low, Moby Grape and Blind Willie Johnson.

While it’s a big day for longtime icons, one of this week’s most noteworthy releases comes from the relative newcomers in Geese, whose third album, Getting Killed, is the sort of earth-shaking rock overhaul that’s bound to have profound ripple effects. Cameron Winter’s hypnagogic warble, Emily Green’s commanding and angular guitar, Dominic DiGesu’s thumping basslines and Max Bassin’s scattered, frenetic percussion combine to a sound that can’t be held down. Some of my favorites–including “Husbands,” “Getting Killed,” “Islands of Men,” “Bow Down” and “Long Island City Here I Come”–are dark, loose and jangly, like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah hopped up on minimum wage and illegal Polish chaw.

Elsewhere, there’s the Marcus King Band, whose new record Darling Blue is the Southern-rock torchbearers’ first together since 2018’s Carolina Confessions. Synth wizard John Maus has returned with the hectic dark wave of Later Than You Think, which follows 2018’s Addendum. Cate Le Bon’s Michaelangelo Dying places her uneasy and earnest indie-pop in great, warped, cavernous structures. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram’s Hard Road is a fiery, soulful blues outpouring that’s been brewing since 2021’s 662. Fred Armisen’s 100 Sound Effects is, you guessed it, a massive collection of familiar, sometimes funny, and oddly evocative noises and scenes.

Jazz, in its many shades, is very well represented in this week’s picks, with great new releases from Zem Audu, Samara Joy, Cochemea, Mulatu Astatke, Sven Wunder, Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini, Sage Bava and Braxton Cook, Cody Steinmann and JD Allen, Thomas Morgan and Theo Croker, who welcomes a dream team of Theophilus London and Nosaj Thing for the latest expansion of his revelatory album Dream Manifest.

There’s a lot more where that came from. This week’s batch of Relix Staff Picks also includes new music from Bruce Springsteen, Amanda Shires, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, Portugal. The Man, Colter Wall, Lady Wray, Kit Sebastian, Miki Berenyi Trio and many other gems. Tune in here.