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WilcoAlbums Reviewed89/93: An Anthology (2002)Being There (1996) Mermaid Avenue (1998) Summerteeth (1999) Mermaid Avenue II (2000) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) A Ghost Is A Born (2004) Kicking Television: Live In Chicago (2005) Sky Blue Sky (2007) Uncle Tupelo89/93: An Anthology(2002)A group whose brief history has left fingerprints over both modern alternative and alt-country music, Uncle Tupelo probably deserve better than being tacked on as a forenote on this Wilco page. While other bands had previously experimented with mixing country music and punk, the alt-country tag was specifically coined with the band, the terms "no depression" and "cow-punk" are also synonymous with them, and Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy have both continued high profile careers as respective leaders of Son Volt and Wilco, while their guitar tech went on to form The Bottle Rockets. Vocalist/guitarist Farrar, bassist/vocalist Tweedy and drummer Mike Heidorn all grew up in the small town of Belleville, Illinois, schooled in traditional country and folk music like the Carter Family, then blown away by punk at high school to the point where they wouldn't associate with anyone who wasn't into Black Flag. Originally taking a typical teenage stance in rejecting the former in favour of the latter, Tweedy explains being able to reconcile the two forms in that "eventually I found myself attracted to the darkness in a lot of these songs. I remember having a revelation at some point that that music was scarier than Henry Rollins could ever be." While the band started with Farrar as the acknowledged leader and primary songwriter, eventually Tweedy also began to write prolifically, causing the group to splinter into two separate factions after their fourth and final album, Anodyne; even on the early material here, there's a gulf between the oeuvres of the rough voiced Farrar and the more yearning songs of Tweedy. Right from the start the band managed to successfully retain a foot in both the country and punk camps, their debut album No Depression featuring both a reverent take on The Carter Family song of the same name and the blistering cowpunk of 'Graveyard Shift', while they'd subsequently perform both a ferocious cover of The Stooges' 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' and an entire acoustic album (1992's Peter Buck produced March 16-20 1992). Tweedy's atmospheric 'Fatal Wound' provides a good indication of the direction he'd take with Wilco, Farrar's 'Gun' and 'Whiskey Bottle' are aggressive yet rooted in country, while there are plenty of acoustic charmers like 'Sauget Wind' and 'Watch Me Fall'. 89/93 also throws in a high proportion of non-album tracks for a best of with covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Effigy' and The Stooges, as well as alternate versions and b-sides. I'm not sure that this compilation is the best approach for this group - on one hand, it's eighty minutes of excellent music in one place, with nice packaging and well written liner notes, but if you're serious about the band it's probably better to pick up their individual albums. Whichever approach taken, Uncle Tupelo is an important little link in the history of rock music, and anyone interested in knowing what forces shaped modern alt-country and Indie should make an effort to hear them. 
 WilcoBeing There(1996)From the Uncle Tupelo schism, Farrar and Heidorn formed Son Volt, while Tweedy grabbed drummer Ken Coomer, bassist John Stiratt and fiddler/multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston from the group's final edition and formed Wilco. Shortly after recording 1995's A.M., Jay Bennett also joined, giving Wilco an instrumental prowess as a lead guitarist and keyboardist that was absent from Uncle Tupelo. While Being There retains a distinct country tinge, already Tweedy's clearly shying away from the territory his former band explored; rather than the Black Flag/Carter Family that informed Uncle Tupelo, Being There is a sprawling double album which is steeped in rock and roll heritage. As well as evoking a bunch of classic rock groups, like The Band in the clavinet laden 'Kingpin' and The Stones in the closing 'Dreamer In My Dreams', the tracks that open each disc reference the redemptive yet hollow power of music: "Music is my savior/I was maimed by rock and roll" Tweedy sings in 'Sunken Treasure', while 'Misunderstood' drowns futility in music "Short on long term goals/There's a party there that we ought to go to/If you still love rock and roll/You still love rock and roll?" While Tweedy came across as the precocious kid brother to the ornery Farrar in Uncle Tupelo, given a double album to his own, he's revealed as the sensitive, tortured male, obsessed with picking apart relationships in the same way as Pete Shelley and Paul Westerberg before him. While Shelley buried his angst beneath a wall of guitars, and Westerberg counterbalanced any potential soppiness with his brattish sense of humour, Tweedy's a textural experimenter, and while there's nothing here as extreme as the experiments on later Wilco albums, there's plenty of textural variation with various forays into country and rock, while moments like the psychedelic introduction to 'Misunderstood' and the sudden piano outburst that closes 'Red-Eyed And Blue' do point the way to the future. And to balance introversion like the superlative 'Say You Miss Me' and the pensive 'What's The World Got In Store', Tweedy also pulls out the breezy power pop of 'I Got You (At The End Of The Century)' and the brashy, horn-laden 'Monday'. Even above its emotional range and its appreciation of rock tradition, what really makes Being There outstanding is Tweedy's ability to pull out memorable melodies and evocative words so consistently. While Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is arguably an even stronger record, that record's also a triumph of studio craft; Being There showcases Tweedy as a great songwriter come into his own and putting forward his own double album, worthy to stand in the pantheon alongside the bands that inspired him.
Mermaid Avenue [with Billy Bragg](1998)Folk legend Woody Guthrie ceased recording in 1947, but before his death in 1967 he wrote hundreds more songs. The music for these was never written down, so his daughter Nora approached British protest singer Billy Bragg, and persuaded him to write new music and record an album from Guthrie's lyrics. Bragg enlisted the help of American alt country band Wilco, resulting in Mermaid Avenue, named after the street in Brooklyn where Guthrie spent his post war years. As much as anything, the nostalgic Americana of the lyrics and the rustic feel recall The Band's recordings; when Jeff Tweedy's voice cracks during the mournful 'Another Man's Done Gone', it's evocative of Richard Manuel. Tweedy and Bragg share the lead vocals between them, and the contrast is effective; Tweedy's voice is more supple and youthful than Bragg's deadpan. It's almost as though they're playing as Guthrie at two different ages; the young idealist and the old and world weary eccentric. Natalie Merchant takes lead vocals for the low key acoustic 'Birds and Ships', and adds harmonies to the lovely 'Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key'. English folkie Eliza Carthy also guests on violin. What makes this record memorable is the range of moods explored. Guthrie's lyrics lend themselves to diverse moods, from nursery rhymes ('Hoodoo Voodoo') and whimsy ('Walt Whitman's Niece', 'Ingrid Bergman'), to social commentary ('Christ for President', 'Eisler on the Go') and poignant balladry ('Another Man's Done Gone'). It's also consistent; some of the less serious efforts like 'Walt Whitman's Niece', which makes a memorable but jarring start to the album, can be off putting even though they form the soul of the album, but the ballads on this record are just plain gorgeous. 'Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key', 'One By One', 'Another Man's Done Gone', and 'The Unwelcome Guest' are all beautiful. It doesn't feel quite significant enough in its own right to earn five stars, but Mermaid Avenue is a fine recording and it rates highly in Wilco's impressive back-catalogue.
Summerteeth(1999)I was totally primed to love this record - it was my first Wilco album, and I bought it at the beginning of summer, just after a root canal. Where Being There was a trawl through classic rock, this tends far more towards classic pop, with a previously undisclosed influence from Brian Wilson and the last vestiges of country gone. It's also the most Jay Bennett dominated Wilco album, with lots of vintage keyboards layered on. Unfortunately, this isn't as intriguing as it sounds - Summerteeth lacks the energy and rawness of Being There, and it's only really given any edge by the narcissistic lyrics ("I dreamed about killing you again last night, and it felt alright to me" is the opening line of 'Via Chicago', while the line "I need something in my veins/Bloodier than blood" hits home on 'A Shot In The Arm'). The emotional weight, that I personally find the most appealing aspect of Wilco, is less apparent here with the glossy arrangements than on the earlier rootsy albums, or the later, more experimental material; this is still a great band, in their prime, but working in a genre that's not doing them any favours. Summerteeth opens with a trio of great songs; 'I Can't Stand It' is pretty much the funkiest piece in the Wilco catalogue with its crisp organ attack and memorable chorus ("It's my love/I can't stand it/I can't stand it"), 'She's A Jar' is moody and gorgeous, and 'A Shot In The Arm' is desperate in its empathy ("The ashtray says/You were up all night"). Orchestration is used to great effect in 'Pieholden Suite', which breaks down into a pretty horn section. Overall, though, there's too much snoozy material, even if most individual pieces are excellent, and the net effect can be wearying, a situation not helped by the fact that of the few rockers, 'Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)' and 'ELT' seem pretty much interchangeable. Summerteeth does reward repeated listening - these songs are well constructed, and often fascinating - but it just doesn't have the immediate visceral appeal of the most of their other records.
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II [with Billy Bragg](2000)The forgotten record in the Wilco canon, this is one of the few cases of sequelitis in music, an obvious repeat of a successful concept, right down to the Natalie Merchant cameo on a simple acoustic track. To be fair, this is rougher and more rock oriented than the first album, and it has enough strong songs to make it a thoroughly worthwhile project, but it's quite possibly the least revealing album in the Wilco catalogue. Most of Tweedy's songs are pretty strong, and it's Bragg's material that's the problem - his melodies generally aren't as memorable as Tweedy's, and sometimes he's left to bellowing as demonstrated on 'Meanest Man'. While it feels like Tweedy could have written something similar in spirit to songs like 'Another Man's Done Gone' or 'California Stars' on the first album, it's fascinating to hear the archetypal confessional songwriter take on another voice here, whether he's celebrating Americana in 'Joe DiMaggio Done It Again' or singing openly Christian lyrics ("Them's got ears let them hear/Them's got eyes let them see" or even dramatically with "I'm, all clean/I'm all spotless/I'm all pure like them snows/I'm all washed in the blood of the lamb"). There's at least one total masterpiece here, the lengthy 'Remember The Mountain Bed', where Guthrie's metaphysical, sexual lyrics ("All this day long I linger here and on in through the night/My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes and dreams inside me fight") are matched perfectly by a pretty folk melody and subtly climactic arrangement. 'Secrets Of The Sea' is catchy, heading towards power pop territory, while one man band Bennett plays upright bass and drums on the elegiac closer 'Someday Some Morning Sometime." Of Bragg's compositions, guest vocalist Corey Harris does a terrific job on the ludicrously satirical 'Aginst Th' Law' ("It's against th' law to shoot/It's against th' law to miss"), while Bragg's enthusiastic take on 'All You Fascists' is similarly effective. Bragg also delivers with a masterful solo acoustic performance on the mournful 'Black Wind Blowing'. If you liked the first Mermaid Avenue, this one's well worth hearing too; it lacks the wide-eyed vitality and unified tone of its prequel, but song for song it's not really that far behind.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot(2002)Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has quite a chequered back story - when it was completed it was rejected by Wilco's record label, Reprise, who deemed it too uncommercial. When it was eventually released, it came out on Nonesuch records, who like Reprise are a Time Warner subsidiary, meaning that in effect Time Warner paid for the album twice. If that's not complicated enough, the band was self-destructing at the same time, with tensions caught in the movie I Am Trying To Break Your Heart leading to the departure of Jay Bennett and Ken Coomer from the band. The ego clashes between Bennett and Tweedy are particularly significant, with Bennett assuming an ever larger role, taking co-writing credits on eight of the eleven songs and leading the band further into electronic territory. Outside producer Jim O'Rourke, despite his avant-garde pedigree as a member of Sonic Youth and solo artist, actually ended up toning down the record's more experimental moments. Of course, Wilco at their most experimental are hardly going to rival Can or Jandek in the weirdness stakes, and if anything Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is more accessible than their previous two records - shorter than Being There and more coherent than Summerteeth - it just has a few more beeping noises than those records did. Despite the band's less organic approach, their strengths remain the same; if anything Tweedy's neuroses and pretty melodies are more effective in these brooding soundscapes than in the poppy sheen of Summerteeth. Tweedy's lyrics are even more disturbed than ever before, and it's hardly surprising to learn that he's undergone rehabilitation for depression and a painkiller addiction. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot starts with the uncertain 'I Am Trying To Break Your Heart', with the cryptic opening line "I am an American aquarium drinker", leading shakily through one finger keyboard solos and collapsing under a wall of static. Meanwhile the catchiest material is pushed to the third quarter of the album, with the bouncy 'Heavy Metal Drummer' ("Playing Kiss covers/Beautiful and stoned") and 'I'm The Man Who Loves You', which feels like a late sixties Beatles track, down to the guitar tone and primitive riff. Honours for best song on a terrific album go to 'Poor Places', which suddenly loses its building tensions as it opens out into the record's most memorable lines ("And it makes no difference to me/How they cried all over overseas"). Some vestiges of country remain with 'Jesus, etc', where a country fiddle provides the texture, while 'Ashes Of American Flags' features another classic Tweedy lyric ("I shake like a toothache/When I hear myself sing"). Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is nearly perfectly sequenced, and enhanced by its creative effects and production; even the uneventful four minute wind down on 'Reservations' is important to the shape of the album. The crown jewel in Wilco's impressive back-catalogue, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot thoroughly deserves its status as one of the strongest albums to emerge in the 21st century so far.
A Ghost Is Born(2004)As opposed to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which was pretty much a conventional Wilco album with some pretty cool sound effects and production tricks, A Ghost Is Born is far more extreme, spiralling off into lengthy guitar jams and an even lengthier drone. With most of the original Wilco members gone, there's almost a completely new band here; Tweedy and Stirratt are joined by O'Rourke, drummer Glenn Kotche, and keyboardists Leroy Bach and Mikael Jorgensen, giving the band even more of a synthetic feel. There are obvious flaws on this record, and it's far more uneven than the tightly constructed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but most of the difficult spots are due to Tweedy's perversity rather than any lack of creativity; most notably 'Less Than You Think', which is basically three minutes of gentle song followed by twelve minutes of unlistenable droning, used by Tweedy to represent his constant migraines. Despite these flaws, it's still Wilco's most interesting and creative effort, beautifully produced and arranged and with songs that are becoming more and more idiosyncratic. For instance, I can listen to 'Company In My Back' obsessively and still hear something new each time; the piercing bass lines, the way Tweedy's voice reaches the high notes on "I will always die/I will always die, so you can remember me," the staccato jabs that leads into each chorus, and the shower of notes that kicks in after each chorus. To balance out the obsessive studio craft, some of the songs also tend towards lengthy Neil Young-like guitar jams, with Tweedy showcasing his much improved guitar skills on the 10 minute 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)' and 'At Least That's What You Said'. The defining characteristic of this album is ambiguity, and the appeal of these songs is their cryptic nature; without getting overtly pretentious, these songs lead in unexpected directions and have surprising lyrics, while still functioning as emotional conduits for Tweedy. Apart from the conclusion to 'Less Than You Think', which is going to make most listeners reach for the skip button, the abrasive 'I'm A Wheel' is the other problematic track, completely out of place and not a particularly good song to start with. But the other ten songs are absolutely terrific; the understated 'Muzzle Of Bees' ghosts by on a wispy guitar riff, the oblique 'Hell Is Chrome' ("When the devil came/He was not red/He was chrome") which utilises Tweedy's gorgeous falsetto, the opening 'At Least That's What You Said' builds from reflective piano to chaotic guitar soloing from Tweedy, while 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)' locks into an intense guitar riff. 'The Late Greats' is a surprising coda to the album, a straightforward and nostalgic statement of rock fandom ("The best songs will never get sung/The best life never leaves your lungs"), while 'Theologians' is far more characteristically oblique ("Theologians don't know nothing/About my soul...I am a notion/I am all emotion/I am a cherry ghost"). Sure, A Ghost Is Born isn't as tightly constructed as Wilco's strongest albums, but it still ranks as their most fascinating effort to date, and it's the one I feel like pulling off the shelf the most often.
Kicking Television: Live In Chicago(2005)Recorded over four nights in Wilco's hometown, Kicking Television documents the best from four consecutive nights of Wilco concerts. There are two reasons why a Wilco live album would be worth hearing; with regards to their earlier material, the current lineup is almost completely changed from the group that recorded their first three albums, tending more towards virtuosity and music scholarship, so any new interpretations are inevitably going to be markedly different. With regards to their later material, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born are such studio based albums that any live version is inevitably going to be rawer and less ornate. The set-list is focused on the latter, covering 3/4 of A Ghost Is Born and 2/3 of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, throwing in a bit of earlier material, although the closest the band get to their alt-country roots are the takes on 'One By One' and 'Airline to Heaven' from Mermaid Avenue II. I'm not usually too fussed on live albums, but I'm so fond of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born that I'm more than happy to hear alternate versions of most of the songs. Highlights include the opening 'Misunderstood', the guitar jams of 'At Least That's What You Said' and 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)' and the cover of Charles Wright's 'Comment (If All Men Are Truly Brothers)' which closes the set. The only other song not to appear on a proper studio record is the title track, a Ghost Is Born b-side, and it's disappointing, but pretty much the only song here that's not terrific. I'd still grab the studio albums first, but if you love them, Kicking Television is a great little appendix.
Sky Blue Sky(2007)Wilco are one of the few bands I care enough about to actually buy their albums new and pay full retail for, but even they're not infallible. There's nothing particularly wrong with Sky Blue Sky but it's the least exciting Wilco album in a long time, intricately professional and well-crafted, and understatedly emotive, but lacking both the rootsy edge of Being There and the experimental streak of A Ghost Is Born. Although the lineup is the same as on Kicking Television, as avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline, and second keyboardist Pat Sansone were added to the lineup shortly after A Ghost Was Born, the sound here is much more subdued. While Uncle Tupelo were defiantly part of the post-punk/alternative mindset, Sky Blue Sky takes many of its cues from pre-punk influences, like The Band, Van Morrison, and Steely Dan. There are faster songs here, but they're not just that memorable; 'Walken' hits a nice guitar riff intermittently but isn't that memorable otherwise, while the climax of 'Shake It Off' just isn't as thrilling as the lengthy workouts like 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)' on A Ghost Is Born. Likewise, some of the slower stuff isn't particularly exciting either; songs like 'Please Be Patient With Me' and 'Leave Me Like You Found Me' just don't have strong enough vocal melodies to connect, even if they're emotional and sincere. There is some genuinely terrific material here though; 'Impossible Germany' evolves from an elegant melody into a great guitar workout, almost reminiscent of Television with the angular soloing over a weird riff. 'Hate It Here' showcases the dual keyboardists' chops with its jazzy grooves, as Tweedy delivers memorable lines like "What am I gonna do when I run out of lawn to mow?" 'You Are My Face' showcases the new line-up's capabilities for tight interplay and weird riffs, while the last two songs are charming and low key. Sky Blue Sky is a very controlled, disciplined record and it's a worthy enough addition to their catalogue, but it's their least notable album for quite some time and hopefully they try something different than soft-rock next time around.
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Written 2001-2007, Graham Fyfe
