Wilco Album: “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”

Four records in and we find wilco further yet from their freshman effort, A.M. First off, at this point in their career to call Wilco alt-country is akin to calling Donna Summers heavy metal. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot takes the listener on an existentialist trip, with the band creating a loose sonic meditiation on distance and love, using random radio signals as a metaphor. This isn't to say that it isn't fun as well - afterall, anyone who's ever seen Wilco live knows that they are spry and playful onstage - and they can rock out with the best of them. With songs like Kamera, War on War, Heavy Metal Drummer (a beautiful ode to youth, innocence and Ray Davies), I'm the man Who Loves You, and Pot Kettle Black, Tweedy and Co. provide enough radio-friendly pop to make you scratch your head at the Reprise execs who said this record was a "career-ender". The world would be a better place if War On War and I'm the Man Who Loves You were booming out of car stereos this summer. That said, this album is chock full of darkness and weirdness as well. Kicking off with "I am Trying to Break your Heart" lyricist Jeff Tweedy takes a haiku-like approach to describing drunken lovesickness. Yeah. And Radio Cure reminds me of noneother than Radiohead, its glum, moody, intriguing and ultimately cathartic. Jesus, Etc. has a great rolling feel accented by a slippery fiddle line and strings that hum out of nowhere and nearly assure that this will lodge in your ears and remain there for a very long time. Ashes of American Flags might make you shiver, its a cold poem on the state of affairs out here in the west. Reservations ends the album eloquenly, gorgeously, and ultimately grounds an album that is dissecting untruths, misundersatandings and miscommunication with one important truth. You have to get there through the album to truly appreciate it. What links the songs is a sonic pallette full of blips, radio pops stops and starts, guitars, horns strings, all forms of odd sounds and fillers pushed through filters, a rhythmic complexity never achieved on a Wilco record, and the poetry, which is VERY non-linear and disassociative, but, taken as a whole, beautiful and imbued with a codified consistency. Its an experience. Its a band that is changing, both in personnel and sound. Its an experience. Its a leap of faith. Take it with them.

Eerie and heartbreaking, Wilco's latest effort somehow manages to blow 1999's "Summer Teeth," perhaps the best release of the late 90's, out of the water. How? Here's three reasons.

1. The band has been tweaked just enough to find the right mix. Though a fine drummer, Ken Coomer was more akin to a busy drummer like Keith Moon. But just as Moon wouldn't have worked on Velvet Underground records, Coomer's sound just wasn't right. Enter Glenn Kotche, a Moe Tucker with crash cymbals, whose sound adds a decidedly different flavor to this entire recording that Coomer's did on the previous Wilco records. In addition, Leroy Bach, whose piano work on classics such as "My Darling" and the Woody Guthrie-penned "Remember the Mountain Bed" has been hauntingly gorgeous, is now made a full member of the band, which shows in lovely flourishes on keyboard in "War On War" and spine-tingling piano for the achingly tearful closer "Reservations."

2. Jeff Tweedy has learned how to sing. If you're at all a Wilco fan or are educated in their history, you know of an old alt-country band called Uncle Tupelo, which featured Tweedy as lead vocalist. If you've never heard Uncle Tupelo, listen to Wilco's first record, 'A.M.;' it's essentially the same sound. But even as recently as 'Being There,' Tweedy seemed like he was still searching for a voice, still reaching just slightly out of his range and some sort of security as a singer. No longer. If in 'Summer Teeth' he found his range, Tweedy has now found confidence as a singer. The vocals on "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" and "Ashes of American Flags" prove that a mid-range singer can be just as powerful as an alto (a la Brian & Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys)

3. There are as many radio-friendly songs here as devotee album tracks. A few years ago, radio stations maligned Moby's 'Play,' saying it had zero commercial potential. Yet when the songs hit the airwaves after eighteen months of pushing them into TV ads to make some money off them, radio listeners enthusiastically gobbled the record up. So were the programmers right? Obviously not. However, the record company executives at Reprise, Wilco's former label, did essentially the same thing to 'YHF,' saying it sounded like, "a career-ending album." What they were probably frightened by was the strange free-form intro to "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," even though it's not too much stranger than the intro to 1996's "Miunderstood."

All-in-all, there is no reason why any listener should not own this record. It may go down in history as one of the greatest of the new millennium. Certainly it will go down as the best record of 2002...or 2001 (when it was released via the band's website)...or whenever.

Is it possible for an album to completely change your state of mind? If it is Wilco's YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT it is. For Wilco's fourth album they once again change their sound, showing their vesatilty. If you are looking for the alternative country sounds of their first and second albums, A.M. and BEING THERE, this is not the place to look (although I highly recommend Ryan Adams if that is what interests you). Likewise this album doesn't contain the power pop of SUMMERTEETH. It beautifully blends the pop sensability of SUMMERTEETH with the dark undertones of BEING THERE. Like Radiohead's KID A, this album is more experimental than the band has ever been, and it comes out as a gorgeous example of their talents. The tracks range from the Beatles-esque "I'm the Man Who Loves You," to the more subdued "Radio Cure," in which lead singer Jeff Tweedy sings, "Cheer up/Honey I hope you can/There is something wrong with me/My mind mind is filled with radio cures" with all the honesty he can muster, however he does not have to resort to using any gimmicks as many singers do when they convey such raw emotion.

It is just a shame that one of America's greatest bands has to have such a hard time gettng their music heard. This album has been finished for some time but the band's previous record label Reprise would not release the album stating that it is too "uncommercial." I only wish that the music industry could see that it is "uncommercial" projects such as this that are going to save the music industry. With the "boy band" era dying, we can hope for a bright future on the horizon for music: with bands like Wilco and Radiohead exploring new territory, and old favorites like U2 and R.E.M. still producing albums that keep our feet planted in the tradion that is still necessary. This album can not come recommended highly enough. It will leave you wanting to explore the bands roots; and if you start listening with Tweedy's beginning band Uncle Tupelo, to Wilco's previous efforts, to their collaborations with Billy Bragg, you will not be dissapointed anywhere.

This record is stunning - possibly among the finest pieces of modern American music. It is hard to explain why it is so good, though. Folks who look for catchy pop will find this album formulaic and increasingly dull with each listen. Folks who look for way-out-there craziness will find this a pathetic effort given all the other electronic tweaking and Beefheartian possibilities being explored today. Folks who are committed to an underground or an indie or an obscurantist groove (e.g., Chilton-heads) will see this as just more evidence of "Summerteeth" sell-out from Tweedy & Co. But, those of us who are willing to listen carefully and really engage the music - those of us who are not necessarily wedded to some sort of musical ideology - will find this album ceaselessly rewarding. The songs get at something - a certain longing, a certain glee, a certain confusion - without being sophomoric musings in the key of G (yeah - lots of G on this record - it's true). Tweedy never reaches when he sings - but he is not lazy either. Like a good actor who knows that a little twitch above the eye or lean of the head is better at getting across emotion than an outburst, Tweedy hits the mark just enough when singing. It really feels like you are sitting with a good friend and just rapping. But, this is not enough to make it a great album. The music itself - so simple and direct - has a scrambled edge to it that keeps it from becoming just another example of a stale genre. Rather, the music spreads out and fills out the room (or wherever). The music feels like a peculiar and slightly awkward emotional response to everyday events. It is not spectacle - something people inexplicably still long for after 9/11 - it is rather music that reflects a very confident but perhaps too-intellgent person's confusion about what to make of the world before him or her. This music is meant to be savored and felt - it is not a quick one off. I have been a Tupelo fan for almost a decade and, for the first time, I will say it: Tweedy and co. have moved far out of the shadow of Tupelo. Congrats, Jeff... and thanks.

Man, have these guys been through some serious trials and tribulations to get to this point--and for the most part it has all paid off. Leaving behind a record company not content with a recording "listener friendly," Jeff and the boys buy the rights to YHF for a reported $50,000 and search for a less hostile environment to finish the album. Nonesuch provides such an environment, widely known as being an "artist" record label. During all of this, Jeff loses another music partner named Jay--this time its multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett. Jeff, though, remains focused and finally gets his record released.

The album is great. And it absolutely swimming in melodies, riffs and lyrics like only Jeff Tweedy can create. And as always, Jeff's song order is astonishing. This ranks right up there with "Being There" and "Summer Teeth". In many respects its more consistent than ST. Although, it does lack that killer track like "Shot in the Arm".

This last section is written to all who have downloaded MP3's of this album. Do not, under any circumstances, refuse to buy this record because you have a CDR version of YHF. This is completely unfair to Jeff Tweedy and every other individual who has so much invested in this project. Do the right thing and buy this CD today. It will become your soundtrack to the Spring/Summer of 2002.