Wilco Albums (8)
What The Critics Say
Rock & roll lifers that they are, Wilco knows the implications of a self-titled album, how any record bearing an eponymous name is bound to be seen as a reintroduction. That's why they puncture Wilco (The Album) with a parenthetical aside, a slyly ironic joke that deflates the notion that Wilco is returning to its roots while signaling that the band is finally lightening up again, a notion reinforced by the llama birthday party on the cover. And, to be fair, "reintroduction" is indeed too strong a term for a band that never went away, they merely spent a decade-and-a-half on a walkabout, consuming anything that came their way, changing their tone and tenor from record to record. Wilco (The Album) finds Wilco the band happily returning from the wilderness, taking stock of where they've been and consolidating all they've learned into one tight, likeable record. (The Album) never veers too far into the experimental -- nor does it dabble in country-rock, a sound that's largely remained verboten in Wilco ever since their debut -- but the reverberations of the Jay Bennett era can be heard in how "Bull Black Nova" builds to a shuddering, noise-filled coda, or the band's general mastery of varying degrees of light and shade. All this studio texture is not the focal point, it's the coloring on a collection of straight-ahead rock and pop songs, tunes that are generally soft, sunny, and hazy -- quite exquisitely so on the '70s George Harrison pastiche "You Never Know" and the nearly Baroque "Deeper Down" -- but also jangly and sparkly, as on "Sonny Feeling," or that have some measure of backbone, as on the spiky "I'll Fight" and the cool shuffle of "Wilco (The Song)." If Wilco (The Album) as a whole is considerably less ambitious than its predecessors, it compensates with its easy confidence and craft: it's the work of a band that knows their strengths and knows what they're all about, and it's ready to settle into an agreeably comfortable groove. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
In 1999, Wilco willingly abdicated their position as one of the leading acts in the alt-country movement to dive head-first into the challenging waters of experimental pop with their album Summerteeth, and moved even further away from their rootsy origins with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, winning the group a new and enthusiastic audience along the way. So it might amuse a number of the band's earlier fans that in many respects Wilco's sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, sounds like the long-awaited follow-up to 1996's Being There -- while it lacks the ramshackle shape-shifting and broad twang of that earlier album, Sky Blue Sky represents a shift back to an organic sound and approach that suggests the influence of Neil Young's Harvest and the more polished avenues of '70s soft rock. Sky Blue Sky also marks Wilco's first studio recordings since Nels Cline and Pat Sansone joined the group, and they certainly make their presence felt -- with Cline, Wilco has its strongest guitarist to date, and while his interplay with Sansone on numbers like "Impossible Germany" and "Walken" lacks the skronky muscle of his more avant-garde work of the past, it's never less than inspired and he works real wonders with Jeff Tweedy's lovely melodies. Sansone's keyboard work also shines, adding soulful accents to "Side with the Seeds" and Mellotron on "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)," as does Mikael Jorgensen's piano and organ, and overall this is Wilco's strongest album as an ensemble to date. Tweedy's vocals boast a clarity and nuance that reveals he's grown in confidence and skill as a singer, and the songs recall Summerteeth's beautiful but unsettling mix of lovely tunes and lyrics that focus on troubled souls and crumbling relationships. Between the pensive "Be Patient with Me," the lovelorn "Hate It Here," and "On and On and On"'s pledge that "we'll stay together" squared off against the resignation of "Please don't cry/We're designed to die," Sky Blue Sky isn't afraid to go to the dark places, but Tweedy and his bandmates also find plenty of beauty, inspiration, and real joy along the way, and the album's open, natural sound is an ideal match for the material. Sky Blue Sky may find Wilco dipping their toes into roots rock again, but this doesn't feel like a step back so much as another fresh path for one of America's most consistently interesting bands. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
'Kicking Television: Live in Chicago'
Release Date 1/1/2005
Tracks 23
Label Nonesuch
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
While Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born established Wilco's reputation as one of America's most interesting and imaginative rock bands, both albums were the product of a band in flux, and this was particularly evident to those who saw the group on-stage after the release of YHF. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot may have blazed new sonic trails for Wilco, but the departure of Jay Bennett in the latter stages of its production left the band with an audible hole when they played the new material on-stage, and while multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach may have been a technically skilled player, he looked and sounded like a cold fish in concert, unwittingly emphasizing the cooler surfaces of Wilco's new music and negating much of the passion of Jeff Tweedy's songs. However, by the time Wilco hit the road following the release of A Ghost Is Born, the group's latest round of personnel shakeups had the unexpected but welcome effect of spawning one of the group's best lineups to date; after Bach amicably left Wilco, the addition of keyboard and guitar man Pat Sansone and especially visionary guitarist Nels Cline gave the band players whose energy and passion matched their technical skill, and suddenly the band was playing its challenging new material with the same sweaty force Tweedy and company conjured up in the band's earlier days. Thankfully, Tweedy had the good sense to document the prowess of Wilco's latest incarnation on-stage, and Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, recorded during four shows at the Windy City's Vic Theater, offers a welcome second perspective on the band's more recent work. With the exception of two numbers from Wilco's collaborative albums with Billy Bragg (in which they set Woody Guthrie's poems to music), Kicking Television focuses exclusively on their "post-alt-country" work, but while many of the songs featured here sounded cool and mannered in the studio, here they gain new muscle and force, not to mention a great deal of enthusiasm, and while tunes like "Ashes of American Flags" and "Handshake Drugs" are never going to be crowd-pleasers in the manner of "Casino Queen," the élan of this band in full flight shows that the fun has been put back in Wilco, albeit in a different and more angular form. Nels Cline's guitar is especially bracing in this context, and his marriage of melodic weight and joyous dissonance fits these songs while expanding on their strengths at the same time. And the title cut thankfully proves that Wilco still can (and still does) rock on out. Kicking Television is the best sort of live album -- a recording that doesn't merely retread a band's back catalog, but puts their songs in a new perspective, and in this case these performances reveal that one great band has actually been getting better. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
It's hard not to wonder if Wilco's breakthrough 2002 release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, would have been such a critical success and so eagerly embraced by the indie rock community if it hadn't become such a cause célèbre thanks to the band being unceremoniously dropped by Reprise Records, and then signed by Nonesuch after the album had become a hot item on the Internet. Much of the critical reaction to the album, while almost uniformly enthusiastic (and rightly so), had an odd undertow that suggested the writers were not especially familiar with Wilco's body of work, registering a frequent sense of surprise that an "alt-country" band would make such an adventurous album while ignoring the creative shape-shifting that had been so much a part of Jeff Tweedy and company's approach on Being There and Summerteeth. The irony is that 2004's A Ghost Is Born, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is also the Wilco album with the strongest stylistic link to its immediate predecessor, as if their new fans are being given a moment to catch up. A Ghost Is Born hardly sounds like a retread of YHF, but the languid, ghostly song structures, the periodic forays into dissonance, and the pained, hesitant vocals from Jeff Tweedy that were so much a part of that album also take center stage here. But while much of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot had a cool and slightly removed feeling, A Ghost Is Born is considerably warmer and more organic; the extended instrumental breaks in several of the songs (two cuts are over ten minutes long) sound more like a group in full flight than the Pro Tools-assembled structures of YHF. And while Wilco's former secret weapon, Jay Bennett, is now out of the picture, the rest of the group (especially multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, and guitarist/co-producer Jim O'Rourke) fill the gaps with admirable grace and strength. If A Ghost Is Born has a flaw, it's in the songwriting; while this album is a "grower" if there ever was one, revealing more of its unexpected complexities with each spin, there are no songs here as immediately engaging as "War on War," "Heavy Metal Drummer," or "I'm the Man Who Loves You" from YHF, and while "Hummingbirds," "Handshake Drugs," and "Wishful Thinking" are tuneful and charming, they lack the resonance and emotional impact of Tweedy's strongest work. And the album's most purely enjoyable tune, the witty "The Late Greats," closes out the disc after the 15-minute drone dirge of "Less Than You Think," dramatically blunting its effectiveness. A Ghost Is Born confirms what old fans and recent converts already know -- that Wilco is one of America's most interesting and imaginative bands -- and it's brave and compelling listening. But if you're expecting another genre-defying masterpiece, well, maybe we'll get one of those next time. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'
Release Date 4/23/2002
Tracks 11
Label Nonesuch
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Few bands can call themselves contemporaries of both the heartbreakingly earnest self-destruction of Whiskeytown and the alienating experimentation of Radiohead's post-millennial releases, but on the painstaking Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco seem to have done just that. In early 2001, the Chicago-area band focused on recording their fourth album, which ultimately led to the departure of guitarist Jay Bennett and tensions with their record label. Unwilling to change the album to make it more commercially viable, the band bought the finished studio tapes from Warner/Reprise for 50,000 dollars and left the label altogether. The turmoil surrounding the recording and distribution of the album in no way diminishes the sheer quality of the genre-spanning pop songs written by frontman Jeff Tweedy and his bandmates. After throwing off the limiting shackles of the alt-country tag that they had been saddled with through their 1996 double album Being There, Wilco experimented heavily with the elaborate constructs surrounding their simple melodies on Summerteeth. The long-anticipated Yankee Hotel Foxtrot continues their genre-jumping and worthwhile experimentation. The sprawling, nonsensical "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" is as charmingly bleak as anything Tweedy has written to date, while the positively joyous "Heavy Metal Drummer" jangles through bright choruses and summery reminiscences. Similarly, "Kamera" dispels the opening track's gray with a warm acoustic guitar and mixer/multi-instrumentalist/"fifth Beatle" Jim O'Rourke's unusual production. The true high points of the album are when the songwriting is at its most introspective, as it is during the heartwrenching "Ashes of American Flags," which takes on an eerie poignancy in the wake of the attacks at the World Trade Center. "All my lies are always wishes," Tweedy sings, "I know I would die if I could come back new." As is the case with many great artists, the evolution of the band can push the music into places that many listeners (and record companies for that matter) may not be comfortable with, but, in the case of Wilco, their growth has steadily led them into more progressive territory. While their songs still maintain the loose intimacy that was apparent on their debut A.M., the music has matured to reveal a complexity that is rare in pop music, yet showcased perfectly on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. ~ Zac Johnson, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Jeff Tweedy once blazed the trail for the American rock underground's embrace of its country and folk roots, but as the decade draws to its close he's spearheading the return of classic pop; simply put, what once were fiddles on Wilco records are now violins -- the same instrument, to be sure, but viewed with a radical shift in perception and meaning. While lacking the sheer breadth and ambition of the previous Being There, Summer Teeth is the most focused Wilco effort yet, honing the lessons of the last record to forge a majestic pop sound almost completely devoid of alt-country elements; the lush string arrangements and gorgeous harmonies of tracks like "She's a Jar" and "Pieholden Suite" suggest nothing less than a landlocked Brian Wilson, while more straightforward rockers like the opening "I Can't Stand It" bear the influence of everything from R&B to psychedelia. Still, for all of the superficial warmth and beauty of the record's arrangements, Tweedy's songs are perhaps his darkest and most haunting to date, bleak domestic dramas informed by recurring themes of alienation, adultery, and abuse -- even the sunniest melodies mask moments of devastating power. If Summer Teeth has a precedent, it's peak-era Band; the album not only possesses a similar pastoral sensibility, but like Robbie Robertson and company before them, Wilco seems directly connected to a kind of American musical consciousness, not only rejuvenating our collective creative mythology, but adding new chapters to the legend with each successive record. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
While Wilco's debut, A.M., spread its wings in an expectedly country-rock fashion, their sophomore effort, Being There, is the group's great leap forward, a masterful, wildly eclectic collection shot through with ambitions and ideas. Although a few songs remain rooted in their signature sound, here Jeff Tweedy and band are as fascinated by their music's possibilities as its origins, and they push the songs which make up this sprawling two-disc set down consistently surprising paths and byways. For starters, the opening "Misunderstood" is majestic psychedelia, built on studio trickery and string flourishes, while "I Got You (At the End of the Century)" is virtual power pop, right down to the handclaps. The lovely "Someone Else's Song" borrows heavily from the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," while the R&B-influenced boogie of "Monday" wouldn't sound at all out of place on Exile on Main Street; and on and on. The remarkable thing is how fresh all of these seeming clichés sound when reimagined with so much love and conviction; even the most traditional songs take unexpected twists and turns, never once sinking into mere imitation. "Music is my savior/I was named by rock & roll/I was maimed by rock & roll/I was tamed by rock & roll/I got my name from rock & roll," Tweedy sings on "Sunken Treasure," the opener of the second disc, and throughout the course of these 19 songs he explores rock as though he were tracing his family genealogy, fervently seeking to discover not only where he came from but also where he's going. With Being There, he finds what he's been looking for. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Not surprisingly, Wilco's debut album, A.M., isn't a great departure from Uncle Tupelo. Wilco's music rocks in a more conventional way than Uncle Tupelo, rolling along with a loping beat that swings more than it rocks. "Casino Queen" is a shambling, bluesy honky tonk number that's boozier than anything Tupelo recorded, which is indicative of the major difference between the bands. Wilco wears its heart on its sleeve, writing songs that fit into the conventions of country-rock, not ones that rework the rules. "Box Full of Letters" doesn't deviate from the standard mid-tempo country-rock number, yet it's done so well it doesn't matter. Still, the opener, "I Must Be High" -- a clever love song that subtly tweaks both lyrical and musical clichés, as well as featuring a killer melody -- casts a shadow over A.M., offering the knowledge that Wilco can subvert the genre without losing its accessibility. In its light, all the very good songs that follow seem somewhat disappointing. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
