Wilco - Hate It Here

Wilco - Hate It Here
Wilco - Say You Miss Me

Much like Bob Mould, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco have a string of songs on the theme of love lost. Songs like Say You Miss Me, We're Just Friends, and ELT all highlight this heartbreak. Even the song Passenger Side, about something as mundane as riding in the passenger side of a car, has a twinge of heartbreak to it: "Should've been the driver, could've been the one. I should've been your lover..."

Hate It Here is off Wilco's latest album, Sky Blue Sky. While the songs mentioned above deal with heartbreak in grand, swooping terms, Hate It Here takes a more subdued, oblique route, making it all the more powerful. Here is an older Tweedy, trying to continue the simple routine of domestic life without her, and he's a wreck, he absolutely hates it. While the other songs offer apologies and emotional games, Tweedy has run out of those now; he can only resign himself to ask "what am I gonna do?"

I wonder where Tweedy, married with two children, still finds the inspiration for songs like these after seven albums. Were it not for the last line ("cause I know you don’t live here anymore"), this could be a song about Tweedy's wife just going away for the weekend. And that subtlety is what I find so fascinating. Were it not for that last line, this could be a very powerful love song about missing his wife while she's away!