Spin Magazine
June 2001
 
Whiskeytown
Pneumonia
 
by Jim Walsh
 
Saturday-morning records are unlike any others. On Saturday mornings you're not looking for salvation; you just want something to hug you gently, something to take the edge off a hangover, camouflage your depression, or give you something to sing along with while you're doing other shit. Whiskeytown's Pneumonia is a great Saturday-morning record. Its woozy fiddles, grainy acoustic-electric guitars, and pop-string harmonies give you the courage to face the day armed with such roots-rock fortune cookery as "Don't Be Sad," "Breathe In, Breathe Out," and "Trust is a weird thing."
 
This is the last Whiskeytown album, what with singer/songwriter Ryan Adams now pursuing the solo career that debuted grandly last year with Heartbreaker. And that's too bad: Whiskeytown have never risen above their status as bad boys of the No Depression set, but here they relax into a sprawling warmth that suggests the same maturation process heard on Wilco's Being There. Songs like the big-city/small-town lament "Jacksonville Skyline" or the euphoric piano-led "Mirror Mirror" don't quite transcend hand-me-down craft, but they're lived in- breathing in, breathing out- with curveballs like the Neil Young-like lo-fi love letter "What the Devil Wanted" adding grit. Pneumonia was recorded in 1998 but got put on hold during the major-label free fall of that year, so cameos from ex-Pumpkin James Iha, producer/drummer Ethan Johns (Rufus Wainwright), and bassist Tommy Stinson (Guns N' Replacements) have a post-alt grab-bag feel.
 
Like any of that matters on a Saturday morning, when the sing-alongs and lyrics make a whole lot more sense than they did in the car on the way home from the bar the night before. So leave changing the world to Friday-night records. This is the sound of coffee grounds, laundry fresh from the dryer, dust specks falling through dirty sunbeams. Wanna go to the park?
 
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