Wilco's latest Nonesuch release, Wilco (the album), has been named Album of the Year by the Independent. In a year that has been "a fine year for albums," the paper's music critic Andy Gill places Wilco's newest at the top of his list of the year's best. Also on his list of favorites is The Low Anthem's Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

"With Jeff Tweedy's compositional smarts allied to Nels Cline's dervish guitar virtuosity," says Gill, "Wilco somehow mingle genuinely moving emotional autopsies and heartbreaking melodies with spiky squalls of abstract guitar noise, pedal steel, sitar and electronics." He then sums up his album of the year as "an extraordinary achievement which seeks to encompass an entire history of rock in its 11 tracks."

Gill describes The Low Anthem as "this year's most intriguing new Americana-indie offshoot." The band's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, which was released on Bella Union in the UK, features "ruminations on life, love, death and religion," he writes, and "arrangements ranging from raggedy grunge grind to brooding harmonium drones and lowing horns reminiscent of The Band."

To see Gill's complete list of the year's best in music, visit independent.co.uk.

Also in today's Independent, as the lead Arts feature, Fiona Sturges has an exclusive interview with Jeff Tweedy. Sturges talks to Tweedy about the past and current states of what she calls "one of pop's most cherished alt-rock bands," not least for the album she describes as "a work that radiates confidence and contentment, recalling the simplicity of the band's early LPs A.M. and Being There." (Those earlier albums also saw their vinyl reissue on Nonesuch this year, along with the band's other '90s release, Summerteeth.)

You can read the complete interview at independent.co.uk.

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Both albums have also made it onto the Boston Herald's Top Ten for 2009. The paper's music writer Jed Gottlieb suggests, in choosing Wilco (the album) for the list, that, while many of Wilco's contemporaries may be on the wane, "Wilco remain on an incline (much to the credit of recent addition guitar monster Nels Cline)." The latest from The Low Anthem is "crackling Americana," says Gottlieb. "Brave music for sure." For the complete list, visit bostonherald.com.

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Wilco (the album) was made Disc of the Day by MOJO earlier this week. "Thank God for this album's breadth and variety," says MOJO's Jenny Bulley, sharing a similar thread with the Independent's Sturges. "Be it baroque Summerteeth melodies, the avant-rock cred of A Ghost Is Born era Wilco or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's Eno-gone country innovations, Wilco (The Album) consolidates the group's disparate strands into a most satisfying whole." Read more at mojo4music.com.