Jeff Tweedy – Together At Last (Loft Acoustic Session I)

This is a purely beautiful album and I personally enjoy many of these songs more as solo acoustic than the full band versions.

My copy sounds great and looks to be clean, but is majorly dished. So disappointing.

It's as if Tweedy is in your living room, singing you his songs. Fantastic pressing as well.

I would imagine that Jeff Tweedy gave due consideration when releasing Together At Last, and is rumored to be followed by several more albums of this nature, just Jeff, his guitars and some of Wilco’s best material laid out in an unplugged fashion. If you’ve ever seen Jeff solo, then you’ve a pretty good idea what to expect, and if I may, he’s as exquisitely good as Neil Young or Bob Dylan when it comes to this sort of presentation, and venue … meaning that what you see on the cover is exactly what you’re gonna get.

It’s goes without saying that it can be a bit disjointing to be hearing Jeff alone with these songs, while echoes of Wilco dance in your subconscious, though by the second spin, the album is all about this delivery and discovering just how important these songs are, and how adequately they lend themselves to be built on, as Wilco are known to do. With that in mind, the first thing that comes into focus is how fragile these numbers are, even somber, laced together with an ambient sobriety of essence, nearly redefining intimacy.

Some have suggested that Together At Last lacks a sense of purpose, and while I can understand that thinking, it’s the acoustic nature of these renditions without the full in flight ventures that rely on production and bigger than life sound for their impact … proving that sometimes, in the right hands, and with the right voice, a whisper can be even more effective. Yet more, if these songs were presented in a live setting, Jeff could give a bit of background, make his inane jokes that go on far too long, and tie the album together though that theme, while here, it’s just one song spinning after another that we all know and love from a different time and place, forcing us to confront ourselves and Wilco in order to hear this music in a new fashion, without the need of the explorative sonic climaxes.

Most magazines did not like this album, with Rolling Stone saying “There are genuine moments of background snooze to be found here, with “Lost Love” sounding like the ornery songwriter has kicked into caretaker mode, or perhaps he’s just clearing his hard drive.” People have very little to say about this stripped down adventure, though for fear of sounding like one of these public radio station Sunday morning shows, and Jeff as just another ‘singer songwriter’ [my how I detest that phrase], I rather like the outing, finding it emotionally satisfying and more than timely for the right moment. No doubt about it, deciding to venture down this avenue was a profound inhale for Jeff Tweedy, and hearing these songs under a star filled sky is a delicious exhale to say the least.

Review by Jenell Kesler