Latest Release
- JUN 28, 2024
- 6 Songs
- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot · 2001
- Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions · 1998
- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot · 2001
- Sky Blue Sky · 2007
- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot · 2001
- Wilco (The Album) · 2009
- Schmilco · 2016
- A Ghost Is Born · 2004
- Mermaid Avenue · 1998
- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot · 2001
Essential Albums
- Wilco’s fourth record was already legendary even before it was officially released in April 2002. Over the course of their prior albums, the Chicago group had gradually drifted from their formative alt-country sound, but Yankee Hotel Foxtrot catapulted them into another sonic universe entirely. A product of frontman Jeff Tweedy’s budding friendship with avant-rock figurehead Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot corrupted Wilco’s heartland serenades with industrialized clamor, buzzing distortion, and shortwave frequencies. The album’s anti-commercial ethos led to a highly publicized break with the band’s label, Reprise Records, causing its release to be held up for months (during which Wilco took the then-radical move of streaming the album for free on their website). And by the time they landed at their new home, Nonesuch, Wilco were a new band: Original drummer Ken Coomer and Tweedy’s longtime creative foil Jay Bennett were out; experimental percussionist Glenn Kotche was in. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was originally set for release on September 11, 2001, but its songs uncannily anticipate the chaos and confusion of the post-9/11 era. On the seven-minute opener “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” the band seem to be dismantling the song brick by brick, until it collapses into a dust cloud of feedback drones and broken piano keys. But for all its difficult reputation, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot ultimately amplified rather than obscured Wilco’s most engaging qualities, be it their wobbly-kneed irreverence (“I’m the Man Who Loves You”) or their aching vulnerability (“Reservations”). Yankee Hotel Foxtrot may have subjected Wilco to grueling growing pains, but they came out all the stronger for it—a band that once seemed like a rootsier Replacements were suddenly reborn as the Rust Belt Radiohead.
- The record starts brightly with “Can’t Stand It,” music basking in a pure pop solar glow while Jeff Tweedy sounds like he’s about to flame out: “You know it’s all beginning/To feel like it’s ending,” he sings, convinced that he feels fine. You start to wonder about that even keel, though, as the words on Summerteeth get sadder and the pop tunes reveal a new, and desperate, patina. Gram Parsons and cowpunk were no longer Wilco’s avatars; Ric Ocasek, Jeff Lynne, and Brian Wilson loom large here. The twang is gone. Meanwhile, a lot of other stuff was going on with the band. Tweedy had become a father and his marriage was falling apart and he was writing candidly about it, as in “She’s a Jar,” where he finishes with a tossed-off “she begs me not to hit her” that leaves the listener wondering. Painkillers and antidepressants were in the studio with Tweedy and bandmate Jay Bennett, maybe more than was the rest of the group, who are downplayed in favor of Pro Tools and synthesizers. Here is the creative core of Wilco, breaking down and finding itself in the process. On 1996’s Being There, Tweedy had showed new skills as a melodist and arranger; here, he comes through as a first-rate lyricist, too, writing evasively yet revealingly. There’s a lot of late-night confessing, notes left on the bathroom mirror, and drunken rambles—and the more his words go on, the less you trust them. That's the point: He’s lurching toward something, not arriving, and he may be fooling you, himself, or both. “Oh I’m a bomb regardless,” he repeats in “Nothing’severgonnstandinmyway (Again).” And by the end of Summerteeth, what crawls from the rubble is a new kind of artist.
- 1996
- 2020
- 2019
Artist Playlists
- Meet the band that started as alt-country visionaries and changed the face of rock.
- A long trip from alt-country darlings to modern rock innovators.
- Where classic folk sits comfortably with experimental noise rock.
More To Hear
- Jeff Tweedy joins to discuss the band's latest record Cousin.
- Joy talks with musician, songwriter, and author Jeff Tweedy.
- Strombo revisits Wilco’s formidable fourth album, 20 years on.
About Wilco
It’s nigh on impossible to overstate the influence of Wilco’s role in the expansion of scope and sound in American music. In 1994, lead singer and songwriter Jeff Tweedy, fresh from the breakup of his pioneering alt-country band Uncle Tupelo, formed Wilco in Chicago and wasted no time releasing A.M., their 1995 debut. It established the band as part of the college-rock realm while retaining some of the more traditional folk and country aspects that Uncle Tupelo had mastered. But their 1996 double album, Being There, took them way beyond the heartland with a mix of noisy experimentalism, classic rock influence, and intimate folk, with songs like “Misunderstood” sometimes combining all of it. After 1998’s Mermaid Avenue—a collaboration with English songwriter Billy Bragg where the artists set unused Woody Guthrie lyrics to new arrangements, resulting in understated beauties like “California Stars”—Wilco doubled down on growing their sound with Summerteeth and songs like the woozy, symphonic “She’s a Jar.” But it was 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a deeply emotional record that unravels through dreamy collage (“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”), languid pop (“Jesus, Etc.”), and nostalgic classic rock tribute (“Heavy Metal Drummer”) that turned them into true trailblazers. Since then, the band have been tirelessly imaginative and predictably unpredictable, opting for grand, sophisticated pop experiments (2004’s A Ghost Is Born, 2011’s The Whole Love), lush Americana (2007’s Sky Blue Sky), and fractured folk (2016’s Schmilco, 2019’s Ode to Joy). The band’s sonic boundary-pushing—coupled with Tweedy’s insightful lyrics—is Wilco’s legacy, spurring on legions of artists like The War on Drugs, The National, and Andy Shauf along the way.
- ORIGIN
- Chicago, IL, United States
- FORMED
- 1994
- GENRE
- Rock