MANCHESTER, Tenn. -- When it's remarked to Jeff Tweedy while walking backstage at the recent Bonnaroo Music Festival that it's a shame he won't have time to catch most of the festival's other acts, he smiles.

``Yeah, well, I don't really like music.''

The Wilco songwriter and frontman is, of course, an obsessive music listener. And on the band's new album, Wilco (The Album), Tweedy exuberantly expresses his love of both rock music and its fans.

On the album's tongue-in-cheek opener, Wilco (The Song), Tweedy sings: ``Do you dabble in depression?/ Is someone twisting a knife in your back? . . . Wilco will love you, baby.''

The song -- like the album's arch title -- is a bit of a goof. But it's also an earnest ode to Wilco's fans and to rock music fandom.

Tweedy says the song isn't necessarily about Wilco loving you, but the feeling of connecting with any musician.

''Does music provide a consolation that you can't find anywhere else in most people's lives? I would say yes,'' says Tweedy. ``I don't see any reason not to acknowledge that in an exuberant kind of way.''

On Wilco's seventh album -- and first to retain the same lineup -- Tweedy & Co. have seemingly arrived at a plateau in their career: confident, relaxed and not afraid to, say, perform on the Tonight show dressed in country music-style sequin suits -- as they did in a recent appearance.

Tweedy calls the record a ''Whitman sampler of the different aspects and obsessions of Wilco.'' He believes that came out of a five-night residency they held last year in their hometown, Chicago, that forced the band to lay ''some claim of ownership'' to the varied Wilco catalog.

Rolling Stone magazine called the album ``a thrilling triumph of determined simplicity by a band that has been running from the obvious for most of this decade.''

The Wilco mythology was forged on its 2002 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It was hailed as an experimental classic and as Exhibit A for the senselessness of the music industry, selling 500,000 copies. The band's next album, 2004's A Ghost Is Born, won a Grammy for best alternative music album.

Each Wilco album has seemed like part of an ongoing narrative for the band. Tweedy, though, thinks their progressiveness has been overstated.

On each record, he sees the ramshackle, psychedelic alt-country associated with 1996's Being There, the impressionistic, chopped-up approach of Foxtrot, and the laid-back folkiness of 2007's Sky Blue Sky.

''This record kind of illustrates that all these records that people have always looked at as being so wildly different from each other, aren't really that different from each other,'' says Tweedy. ``They all contain a song that is sort of like Jesus Etc. All of 'em, even A.M. (Wilco's 1994 debut). There's always been a softer, pop, kind of folky tune. . . . every other record has a fair amount of dissonance.''

If Tweedy and Wilco have in recent years seemingly moved more confidently, it hasn't been easy to arrive at such a point.

The 41-year-old singer suffered chronic migraines and developed a dependence on painkillers. He entered rehab in 2004.

Tweedy says the idea of the tortured artist is ``such a thought distortion.''

``The problems and suffering grew out of an unwillingness to . . . face things that needed to be faced -- an unwillingness to grow up.''

Like Tweedy, drummer Glenn Kotche feels Wilco has arrived at a good place.

''It's almost a bit unnerving that things are going so well,'' jokes Kotche. ``A lot of the issues in the past were because of . . . personal issues with everyone and Jeff having to go into rehab.

``Since all of those things are sorted out and we've got an ensemble now that we all like each other as people and respect as musicians and communicate on stage -- it seems like things are really pretty smooth.''

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