Artist: Wilco
Album: Wilco (The Album)
Year: 2009
Grade: 3.5 pretzels
There’s no doubt in my mind that Wilco are one of the great bands of this decade. However, for such a great band, they sure can be frustrating. I literally cannot throw enough accolades at 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to adequately describe how astonishing and masterful I think it is. It’s one of the true, beginning-to-end masterpieces of the past ten years. But then you have all those other Wilco albums. They all contain interesting moments, but, at least in my book, none of them can even stand in the shadow of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. That album’s signature blend of sonic experimentation, noise and emotionally raw, country-flavored songwriting seems to have been a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience. Wilco have tried going farther in both directions (the hyper-experimental A Ghost Is Born and the more country-ish Sky Blue Sky), but the balance has never quite felt right.
So now, seven years after the release of their masterpiece, Wilco have recorded an album they say encapsulates exactly what they think their band’s music should be (thus the self-referential title). Right off the bat, it’s undeniable that this is the closest Wilco have come to recreating the magic of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. There are definitely some similarities between the two albums, some more superficial than others. I’m sure many listeners are going to notice the emphasis on “strange” noises throughout the album, especially on tracks like “Deeper Down”, featuring gurgling noises and a high, ringing pedal guitar line. However, if you dig a bit deeper, the real similarity lies in the songwriting. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was an album dominated by solemn songs about disillusionment with the modern world and romance. It was weary and resigned. Songs in a very similar vein seem to keep popping up on Wilco (The Album), such as the lonesome “Solitaire” and “You And I”, a gentle duet between Tweedy and fellow NPR-approved singer Feist. The latter seems destined to become the romantic indie ballad of the year, despite the fact that it documents the complete collapse of a relationship. It’s nice to hear Tweedy’s songwriting strongly veering back into such maudlin, emotional material. It suits him so damn well.
At the same time, however, Wilco (The Album) lacks the cohesiveness and symmetry that defined Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The tracks tend to jump around wildly, from jumpy rock to languid country twanging. Each track seems cut off from the songs preceding and following it. Of course, it would be ridiculous to expect Wilco to make every album just like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but without a clear connecting thread, these songs, with their zany noises and sudden shifts in tone, seem a bit chaotic. It’s a style of music that works very well over the course of an entire album, but when packed within just a single song, it loses the magic. The album is also brutally frontloaded, with the first five songs being much, much better than the following five. The album does end on an excellent note with the closing “Everlasting Everything”, but waiting through slag like “Country Disappeared” and “Sonny Feeling” can make getting to the last song a test of one’s will.
As is perhaps to be expected, my favorite song on the album is, by a landslide, the strangest one. “Bull Black Nova” is shockingly unusual for a Wilco song, both in music and subject matter. Over a staccato backing of keyboards and discordant guitar sounds, Tweedy sings from the perspective of a man who just killed his girlfriend. Over the course of five-and-a-half minutes, the song builds to a claustrophobic climax, with Tweedy, screaming and paranoid (“I can’t calm down, I can’t think”), yelping over a torrent of noise. It’s intense as hell and more than a little bit scary. It’s also something I have never heard Wilco do before and it makes me want a whole damn album of similar material. Of course, this insane track is immediately followed by the aforementioned “You And I”, with it’s pretty-but-slightly-prefabricated romanticism. Right there lies the problem with Wilco (The Album). The album is a very mixed bag; you reach in and who knows what the hell you’re gonna pull out. The album has some serious high points, but it finds ways to lose that momentum just as quickly as it gained it. For an album that will inevitably be compared to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it feels like a pale imitation.
So now, seven years after the release of their masterpiece, Wilco have recorded an album they say encapsulates exactly what they think their band’s music should be (thus the self-referential title). Right off the bat, it’s undeniable that this is the closest Wilco have come to recreating the magic of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. There are definitely some similarities between the two albums, some more superficial than others. I’m sure many listeners are going to notice the emphasis on “strange” noises throughout the album, especially on tracks like “Deeper Down”, featuring gurgling noises and a high, ringing pedal guitar line. However, if you dig a bit deeper, the real similarity lies in the songwriting. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was an album dominated by solemn songs about disillusionment with the modern world and romance. It was weary and resigned. Songs in a very similar vein seem to keep popping up on Wilco (The Album), such as the lonesome “Solitaire” and “You And I”, a gentle duet between Tweedy and fellow NPR-approved singer Feist. The latter seems destined to become the romantic indie ballad of the year, despite the fact that it documents the complete collapse of a relationship. It’s nice to hear Tweedy’s songwriting strongly veering back into such maudlin, emotional material. It suits him so damn well.
At the same time, however, Wilco (The Album) lacks the cohesiveness and symmetry that defined Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The tracks tend to jump around wildly, from jumpy rock to languid country twanging. Each track seems cut off from the songs preceding and following it. Of course, it would be ridiculous to expect Wilco to make every album just like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but without a clear connecting thread, these songs, with their zany noises and sudden shifts in tone, seem a bit chaotic. It’s a style of music that works very well over the course of an entire album, but when packed within just a single song, it loses the magic. The album is also brutally frontloaded, with the first five songs being much, much better than the following five. The album does end on an excellent note with the closing “Everlasting Everything”, but waiting through slag like “Country Disappeared” and “Sonny Feeling” can make getting to the last song a test of one’s will.
As is perhaps to be expected, my favorite song on the album is, by a landslide, the strangest one. “Bull Black Nova” is shockingly unusual for a Wilco song, both in music and subject matter. Over a staccato backing of keyboards and discordant guitar sounds, Tweedy sings from the perspective of a man who just killed his girlfriend. Over the course of five-and-a-half minutes, the song builds to a claustrophobic climax, with Tweedy, screaming and paranoid (“I can’t calm down, I can’t think”), yelping over a torrent of noise. It’s intense as hell and more than a little bit scary. It’s also something I have never heard Wilco do before and it makes me want a whole damn album of similar material. Of course, this insane track is immediately followed by the aforementioned “You And I”, with it’s pretty-but-slightly-prefabricated romanticism. Right there lies the problem with Wilco (The Album). The album is a very mixed bag; you reach in and who knows what the hell you’re gonna pull out. The album has some serious high points, but it finds ways to lose that momentum just as quickly as it gained it. For an album that will inevitably be compared to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it feels like a pale imitation.
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