A new Jeff Tweedy solo album? Well, kinda. While the Wilco singer-guitarist and songwriter did pen and play a whole ton of new music for filmmaker Alex Winter’s revealing HBO documentary about child actors — fittingly, in a family-affair collaboration with his own sons Sammy and Spencer — the bulk of the set consists of minute-long instrumentals used as background music in the film. Even so, some of the bits are interesting enough to make you hope he goes back and fleshes them out sometime down the road. And the one fully formed new number At A Distance is definitely a treat. So it could be worse — although not as bad as being a child actor, as anyone who’s watched the doc has probably learned.
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy has released a soundtrack album for the HBO documentary Showbiz Kids. The album features the film’s original score composed by Tweedy and his sons Spencer Tweedy & Sammy Tweedy. Also included is the new song At a Distance. Showbiz Kids is written and directed by Alex Winter and centers on the shared experiences of prominent former child stars and the personal and professional price of fame and failure on a child. The movie is executive produced by Bill Simmons and features interviews with Henry Thomas, Mara Wilson, Todd Bridges, Cameron Boyce, Milla Jovovich, Evan Rachel Wood, Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Wheaton, among others. The documentary premiered this past Tuesday on HBO.
