JeffTweedy_bySammyTweedy
photo by Sammy Tweedy

Jeff Tweedy announces new album 'Love is the King' (listen to 2 songs)

Jeff Tweedy will release new solo album Love is the King on October 23 via dBpm Records. He made the album back in April at his Chicago studio, The Loft, with help from his sons Spencer and Sammy and they worked to record a song a day till they had an album. You can listen to two songs — “Guess Again” and the title track — below.

“At the beginning of the lockdown I started writing country songs to console myself,” Jeff says of the new album. “Folk and country type forms being the shapes that come most easily to me in a comforting way. ‘Guess Again’ is a good example of the success I was having at pushing the world away, counting my blessings — taking stock in my good fortune to have love in my life. A few weeks later things began to sound like ‘Love Is The King’ — a little more frayed around the edges with a lot more fear creeping in. Still hopeful but definitely discovering the limits of my own ability to self soothe.”

Check out the album art, tracklist and liner notes by Cate Le Bon, below.

In other news, Jeff and his band will be performing a drive-in show from McHenry, IL Outdoor Theater on Friday, September 18. It will also be livestreamed at 7:30 PM Eastern; tickets are available, and it will be available as an on-demand rental through September 25. Jeff also does more informal “Tweedy Show” livestreams via his wife Susan Tweedy’s @stuffinourhouse Instagram many nights at 10 PM ET. He also played last week’s Daniel Johnston tribute.

Jeff also has a new book, How to Write One Song, that will be out October 13 via Penguin Random House’s Dutton Books.

Jeff Tweedy Love is the King album cover

Love Is The King tracklist
1. Love Is The King
2. Opaline
3. A Robin or A Wren
4. Gwendolyn
5. Bad Day Lately
6. Even I Can See
7. Natural Disaster
8. Save It For Me
9. Guess Again
10. Troubled
11. Half-Asleep

LOVE IS THE KING LINER NOTES (BY CATE LE BON)

It was inside Jeff Tweedy’s second home, The Loft in Chicago, that Love Is The King was recorded in April of 2020, surrounded by an assemblage of treasured instruments and loved ones in a world that felt more and more alien by the day. Not long into Wilco’s North American tour, Tweedy’s natural instinct to return home was realized when all further dates were abandoned. He escaped the anxiety and dislocation of being out at sea during a worldwide crisis and fell into the familiarity of the studio. With his sons, Spencer and Sammy, by his side, he set the task of writing and recording a song a day until they held an album in their hands.

Creativity/music was their comfort food. Rather than directly addressing the significant
disruption unfolding outside, Tweedy looked inwards and examined the matters that fear,
separation and vulnerability pulled focus on. The candor with which he calls upon the nourishing elements of nature, gratitude and love is effortless. His wisdom is frank and possesses a glorious wit as he accepts without resistance the inherent duality of living and loving.

Songs unfold with the poetic structure of short films—his language poised and concise, personal but collectively shared. Comforting country songs paint vivid scenes of escapism. Songs of separation become eulogies to the love he is apart from. He sings of the world falling apart and whistles a solo. Joy against sorrow.

Poetry and music animate the human struggles associated with a particular time more so when
they don’t attempt to sing to the times directly but allow them, unfettered, to permeate the process.

The initial impetus was to self-soothe as a family and shield in the comfort of creativity.
However, on Love Is The King, Tweedy has balanced the books and penned a beautifully honest
ode to love and hope. He has documented a time in history through the personal lens of shared human experience.

There is solace here for all who need it.

jeff tweedy livestream