Sukierae

Sukierae
Studio album by Tweedy
Released	September 23, 2014
Label	dBpm
Producer	Jeff Tweedy

Sukierae is the debut album by Tweedy, a side project formed by Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer. It was released on September 23, 2014, and features 20 new songs. The album is promoted by a new band touring under the Tweedy name.

After producing albums for Low, White Denim, and Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy set out to create a solo album. From the start, the album was intended to be more than simply acoustic guitar and vocals. While recording demos, Tweedy's son Spencer joined him to record drums and "[help] the songs take shape". Tweedy had most previously worked with his son when they both appeared on the split single for the "Songs For Slim" series in 2013.Sukierae was completed mostly by the two of them, but also features additional vocals by Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of the band Lucius, as well as keyboards by Scott McCaughey.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Tweedy spoke about the creative process of making the album and why he decided to release it as a solo album instead of a new Wilco album:

"I like to include elements of early recordings on the finished records when I can. Almost every song on Sukierae has an original demo element somewhere in there. A lot of my iPhone acoustic demos became the basic tracks we overdubbed to, and they’re still there in the finished record. (That’s why we listed the iPhone as an instrument in the track notes.) The song “I’ll Sing It” includes a cassette recording from a "Being There" -era demo of that song. Stuff lies around forever, and for this record it was fun to make some use of it.

"It’s a totally different process working with an ensemble. Wilco is a six-piece band, and its members have varying degrees of interest in the finishing touches. As a collective, we always gravitate towards something much more fully realized—and that’s the pleasure of it. Working on my own, I always hope to abandon something before I feel like I’ve made all of the choices that could be made. If I commit too much to one approach, I mourn all the choices that weren’t made when I get to that point. I think that’s one way Sukierae would have been different if it had been recorded by Wilco. I can still hear possible overdubs on every track, I can still hear things I could have done, and that’s the most enjoyable part for me. It’s the same thing I love about Daniel Johnston’s music—all that unrealized potential."

Jeff Tweedy had mentioned that he had 90 new songs that he had written, but not recorded, when interviewed in 2013 about the prospect of a new Wilco album. Material for a new album has since been recorded, but so far has not been released. In the meantime, all members of the band have released or appeared on numerous albums, from one-off collaborations, to their more closely related projects of The Autumn Defense and The Nels Cline Singers.

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