I was so excited for the new Wilco, I actually walked up the escalator at Tenleytown/AU. The long one, too, and these escalators are major league. I was so excited that after I bought it, I kept yelling "Tweedy!" on the train after every song. "Tweedy! Don't mind ridin' on the passenger side!" Good times. These are some things I think I think:

• I'm not going to bullshit and pretend I'm the first one to say this when I've seen it in about five reviews, but that guitar part in "At Least That's What You Said," yeah, it's pure Neil Young, like "Cortez the Killer." And it feels good.


• When that change hits in "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" around the four minute mark, it was like ice cream on a summer day. I couldn't stop smiling. Just absolutely got me in my wheelhouse. And I like all 10 minutes of the song; it just works for me.


• There are some moments on the album that are actually very sad, knowing what is known about Tweedy (and there's a really good article in the issue of Spin with the Beastie Boys on the cover by Chuck Klosterman about Wilco, but mostly about Tweedy). Like the line "and I've been puking" in "Company in My Back" or his voice in "Hell is Chrome."


• I really don't know how to feel about "I'm a Wheel."


• Why does Tweedy sound like he has a mouth full of cotton on "Company in My Back"? Is this the art-rock version of "Through the Wire"?


• You'd think Tweedy had written a song about how the Strokes are overrated the way people have reacted to the drone in "Less Than You Think." Yeah it's annoying and yeah it's indulgent and I listened to it once, and never again. But that's why God invented the fast forward button. Calm down. On the annoying scale, I'd put it between the song that's all seagulls chirping on the new PJ Harvey and the twin feedback drone at the end of Fugazi's "23 Beats Off."


• Come to think of it, I don't know how I feel about "The Late Greats" either. Nice break in the middle, but for the most part, it reminds me of "Dose of Thunder" by the Replacements. Not for any good reason, but it does.

All in all, it's not Yankee Hotel. Yet. But it's an album that probably needs to be excavated, slowly. Things aren't going to sink in for a while. The guitar work, that change in "Spiders," those are shiny sparley ornaments... the real gettin's are underneath it all. And that's fine, because I don't have much else to do. It'll keep me off the streets, and I've got a whole summer to burn.