Cousin by Wilco

Cousin, Wilco's thirteenth studio album, arrived on dBpm Records on September 29, 2023, and for the first time since Wilco (The Album) in 2009 they handed the controls to somebody from outside the family. That somebody was Cate Le Bon, and her fingerprints are all over it: the Chicago band's guitars are pushed into strange, chilly corners, the rhythms tick and hum, and Jeff Tweedy's voice floats through the middle like a man talking to himself in an empty house.

It's the same lineup that has held since 2004, with John Stirratt on bass, Glenn Kotche on drums, Nels Cline on guitar, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen, so the chemistry is a given; the novelty is in the textures. "Evicted", the first single, is the warmest thing here, a rueful pop song hiding under the static, and the title track followed it out. Critics were mostly on board.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.