Wilco released its latest album of new music, “Star Wars,” this past summer, hitting the stage simultaneously to meet the needs of its beloved fan base.

To the pleasure and surprise of these Wilco followers, the band made the decision to give out the album for free. This tactic may have been installed in order to bring in a new pool of fans, but it is the longtime fans who appreciate it the most. Fortunately, unlike U2 and Donnie Trumpet, Wilco did not inject itself into the music libraries of thousands, which by comparison left the band seen as selfless and passionate instead of arrogant and assertive. But Wilco fans, for the most part, mark the album with four or five stars, claiming that it brought them back to the “old days” of their past albums A Ghost Is Born and Summerteeth.

The album begins with a song called “EKG,” a typically dissonant and cacophony-like sound that Wilco is well-known for. The song gives off a terrifying vibe, mixing the image of the EKG with harsh guitar and quickly shifting meters. While short, the song sets an interesting mood for the album, and lets listeners know what Jeff Tweedy, the lead musician, is going for.

The album continues on with an upbeat feel for the next three songs, “More…,” “Random Name Generator,” and “The Joke Explained.” “More…” sports a relatively catchy melody line on the electric guitar, and “Random Name Generator” marks the highest selling song of the album on iTunes, while “The Joke Explained” feels more like a filler song.

Following after that is “You Satellite,” which plays the album’s first slow and restful song. The song starts off with light percussion and scooping guitar lines that give off a feel of being in space, and it continues with a rather mundane chord progression and Tweedy’s voice pulsing along.

The next song, “Taste the Ceiling” plays a similarly leisurely role but is relaxing and interesting nonetheless. The song includes more “twang” than the rest of the album’s songs, and it lets the listeners relax a bit before the band returns to its more raucous sound in “Pickled Ginger.”

“Where Do I Begin,” the fourth to last song, is uneventful musically but has very sensitive lyrics and ends with a bang. “Cold Slope” offers a uniquely messy sound with mumbled lyrics and a very straightforward percussion backup, a simple but clever song, while the subsequent “King Of You” feels like another filler song. The album ends with “Magnetized,” which begins with layered voices over robotic sounding keyboard and minimal percussion. While you would expect the album to end with a much louder song, this slower, creepier, more somber one wraps of the album much smoother and leaves Wilco’s fans and new listeners craving for more of Tweedy’s ethereal style.