Wilco are working on a new album. This is not super surprising news considering the band’s last album, the absolutely phenomenal Ode To Joy, came out way back in 2019. But it’s reassuring news nonetheless.

Friday on Starship Casual, the Substack newsletter where he posts all kinds of thoughts, stories, and sounds, Jeff Tweedy issued an audio apology for the lack of recent posts. He’d been to busy to post for the past week, he explained, because he’d been in the studio working on exciting new music with Wilco. Here’s the entirety of his message:

Hello this is your captain speaking. Just checking in to mostly apologize for the lack of activity this past week on the old Starship. Haven’t had a lot of correspondence since Nels and I covered a Tom Waits song last week behind the paywall. And it’s mostly because — almost entirely because — I’ve been in the studio with Wilco making some new music, chipping away at a new record. It’s been very, very, very fun and exciting, and we’re having a great time. And so next week I should be able to get back to some normal scheduled correspondence. If I can get everybody in the Wilco braintrust on board, maybe I’ll share a snippet of a work in progress or something like that over the weekend behind the paywall. But like I said, next week should be more like the normal amount of reaching out and sharing and just the general activities we’ve come to expect here on the Starship. Alright, carry on.

This is intriguing on several levels. Beyond the appeal of an imagined new Wilco album, he does have me wondering what else is happening back there behind the paywall. If you want to subscribe, you can do so here. And if you’re more interested in the IRL Wilco experience, their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot anniversary shows are coming up in April, followed by their Solid Sound festival in May. The band has a bunch of regular-ass concerts on deck as well. It’s a good time to be a Wilco fan.