One of the most revealing things Wilco's leader Jeff Tweedy says on this week's Sound Opinions (airing on WBEZ 8 p.m. tonight, 11 a.m. tomorrow, and available as a podcast after that) is his answer to Greg Kot's question of what stood in the way of Wilco being truly collaborative in the past. Tweedy answers, "Well, I probably stood in the way of that a lot of times, to be completely honest."

We've been following Tweedy's career ever since our neighbor used to drag us to see this little band her brother played drums for named Uncle Tupelo. At that time we thought Tweedy was the less talented of the two primary songwriters in that band, since Jay Farrar's songs just seemed so much, well, deeper. Wilco's A.M. did nothing to dissuade that notion, but then, out of left field, came the stunning Being There, the first in the line of a number of Wilco albums that were just absolutely terrific. In our minds Tweedy had found his counterbalance in wild man Jay Bennett, and that yang to his yin allowed Tweedy to produce some of the best music of his generation.

Until A Ghost Is Born (AGIB).

On AGIB, Bennett was long gone, Jim O'Rourke was behind the boards, and there was no one to rein Tweedy in. The end result was a self-indulgent and largely disappointing album. More members left or were fired, and we feared our love for Wilco had finally run its course, as the band seemed to be turning into a Tweedy solo project.

However, if there's one thing Tweedy is an expert at, it's confounding expectations, and that's just what he did post-AGIB when he assembled Wilco's strongest line-up to date, anchored by guitar master Nels Cline. A live album followed, and we began to hope again that Tweedy was finally ready to let Wilco function as a collaborative effort.

And that's just what he did.