CD reviews: Wilco and LeAnn Rimes

Wilco, "The Whole Love" (dBpm)

It's the best Wilco record since (insert your last favorite Wilco record here). In all seriousness, it's the Chicago band's most sonically experimental disc since its early-'00s breakthroughs "A Ghost Is Born" and "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot." And yet, it's also the most musically lighthearted and Beatles-y Wilco album since 1999's "Summerteeth," which was made by an entirely different Wilco.

One thing that's amazing about Jeff Tweedy: He's the unequivocal leader, but he has faded more and more into the background since the current lineup of his band gelled around 2004. John Stirratt's bass parts are arguably more prominent than Tweedy's lyrics in a pair of the best new tracks, "I Might" and "Dawned on Me." And then there's Nels Cline's continually percolating guitar wizardry, let loose right away in the dark, dizzying opener, "The Art of Almost."

Another thing that sets Tweedy apart (when you are paying attention to his lyrics): He has this ongoing ability to write love songs with the element of shock and awe, as if he can't believe he still has any love left in him. That was true of "You and I" on 2009's "Wilco (the Album)," and it continues here in "Dawned on Me" and the title track. Mostly, though, "Whole Love" seems to be all about being in love with this current lineup of his band, together since 2004 and gloriously captured here. So much for the seven-year itch.

Wilco performs Dec. 6-7 at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis.

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER, STAR TRIBUNE

LeAnn Rimes, "Lady & Gentlemen" (Curb)

Rimes has made a new album of covers of country songs either written by or for men -- including "Blue," written by Bill Mack, which was Rimes' first hit in 1996, when she was 13, and revisited here.

I can understand a singer in midcareer falling in love with this idea. The problem is that the idea crumbles so quickly. Does she spin them at all? Rewrite the pronouns, alter the mood? A little bit. She changes the lyrics of John Anderson's "Swingin'" so that "Charlotte Johnson" becomes "Charlie Johnson." The subject of Waylon Jennings' "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" is rendered "Mama." She makes Freddy Fender's "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" a bit slower and less emotionally domineering -- an obvious but effective way to woman it up. A vampy, jazzy "16 Tons" sinks like a stone; so does George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," a piece of mawkishness so pure that switching to a female narrator doesn't alter the song's impact very much.

It's Merle Haggard who leads her toward her best performances. She transfigures "The Bottle Let Me Down" into a slow and misty contemplation with minimal drums. And because "I Can't Be Myself" is a song about uneasy feelings that have no male or female attachment, Rimes can finally ease up on her default vocal style, brassy and belting, which is, of course, its own gender role.

BEN RATLIFF, NEW YORK TIMES