MUSIC REVIEW: Semisonic's Dan Wilson finally (!) gets out his first solo album

By CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER - Minneapolis Star Tribune

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MINNEAPOLIS -- Having endured record-label purgatory with his bands Semisonic and Trip Shakespeare, Dan Wilson knew better than to sit around waiting for his first solo album to come out after finishing it in 2005. So he kept working.

And that's why this week's release of "Free Life" might be semi-perfect timing.

"I would've been happy if this record came out 2 ½ years ago, because at the time I thought I had done everything possible to make it a great record," the Minneapolis music vet said. "But thanks to a tangle of unintended consequences, that didn't happen. Now, it looks great if the plan all along had been to wait. It makes it a pretty special year for me."

Out on the label of the industry's most in-demand producer, Rick Rubin, the 13-track collection provides a fitting bookend to Wilson's 2007.

It started at the Grammy Awards as he shared the podium with the Dixie Chicks in February, thanking his wife and daughter on national TV. He won the song-of-the-year trophy for co-writing "Not Ready to Make Nice," the unapologetic political track that didn't win back the Chicks' conservative fan base, but did win them more respect from critics and peers.

Wilson himself has never been short on respect within the industry. Trip Shakespeare earned favorable press and a cult following in its seven-year run (1986-93). Semisonic fared even better, selling more than a million copies of its 1998 album, "Feeling Strangely Fine," on the back of the Grammy-nominated No. 1 modern-rock single "Closing Time."

Anybody who has followed the music industry over the past decade knows that 1998 is practically a lifetime ago. Instead of trying to court today's radio programmers and hip audiences with "Free Life," the 46-year-old singer aimed to make it something else: timeless.

Drummer Eric Fawcett, one of Wilson's chief collaborators throughout the album's five-year spawning, saw the distinction right away.

"I came into this project thinking it'd be a really high-pressure, professional situation," Fawcett recalled. "Here was the then-Grammy-nominated singer from Semisonic trying to capitalize on that success to catapult his solo career. But it was almost the exact opposite: Just a bunch of super-relaxed sessions at Dan's house."

Semisonic and Trip Shakespeare bassist John Munson, who also plays on "Free Life," said, "With this album, there was no question who was in charge and what he had in mind."

Since Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner also lives in the neighborhood, it's fair to say that writing a hit rock song will get you a house like the one Wilson and his wife, Diane, own.

A four-story Victorian built in 1903 near the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis, the home boasts giraffe-high ceilings, big windows that beg the sunlight, and golden wood floors that seem to ooze the ambience soaked up over a century. Dan, Diane and Coco, now 10, moved in just after the 9-11 attacks in 2001 - and just as the songs on "Free Life" were coming to life.

As touring wound down for Semisonic's last album, 2001's "All About Chemistry," Wilson began writing songs that he said he knew "were for a gentler, folkier album."

Munson recalled, "He told us he wanted to do a solo record for his next project, and in a way we were like, `What!' But in another way, we knew it's in Dan's nature to push himself somewhere else."

Semisonic never officially disbanded. The band got put on hold when its label, MCA, folded, a collapse that also forced Wilson to record his solo album without any label involvement. Talk about a blessing in disguise.