In the off time during the recording of Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” Jeff Tweedy, Jim O’Rourke and Glenn Kotche created a minimal portrait of the dominating personalities that created some of last year’s most memorable recordings. With O’Rourke behind the mixing board for Loose Fur, the self-titled album sounds like a collection of B-sides from “Foxtrot,” and O’Rourke’s last solo effort, “Insignificance.”

-Tweedy’s songs clip along with his usual cryptic lyrics, delving into themes of a poet’s physics, and keeping time by the changing seasons. Tweedy weaves in common imagery alongside phrases that struggle to find meaning in more than the sounds of the words. Tweedy’s songs are punctuated with art-school cowboy guitar lines that struggle to find footing the way they did on “Foxtrot.” Without the deep, lush backing of a full band, his guitar lines come off as the clanging of an on-again, off-again cowboy, slowly finding his footing as he goes.

O’Rourke’s songs stroll along with his guitar rolling along at his side. His guitar picks up where Tweedy’s may have fallen short, finding strong melody lines accentuated on “Elegant Transaction” by Tweedy, a surprisingly accomplished banjo player. The strong guitar melodies are driven home by O’Rourke’s foreboding and cautionary lyrics, warning, “Be careful when you take a call for someone else/ Not a smart way to begin/ And get embroiled in someone else’s life/ You don’t know where that phone’s been.” Taking themes of intensely awkward social situations from “Insignificance,” O’Rourke finds listeners relating to his call more than Tweedy accomplishes lyrically on this album.

With O’Rourke manning rhythm on tracks like “So Long,” Tweedy picks up the electric to wrench out guitar solos. Tweedy leaves the listener confused, until he accidentally stumbles onto the melody that ties all of it together, and somehow you are willing to make amends with Tweedy’s guitar, and maybe take it out for a congratulatory drink.

The entire album is laminated by the percussion of Kotche. Finding himself a little corner on the back of the album, Kotche may give the best performance on this album. His drums uncoil at times into a pile of what we think is a rhythm, only to rise again with the punctuation of a voice or guitar to shoot a song from mediocre to memorable. Kotche shows restraint – something hard to do when the distortion is kicked on – jaws drop and heads loll around on weak necks. Kotche’s drums add the needed distance to Tweedy and O’Rourke’s arm-around-your-shoulder style of song writing.

“Loose Fur” dishes out seconds for those dissatisfied with “Foxtrot” or “Insignificance.” You’ll have to loosen your belt after this, probably not more than one notch though.