The problem with Wilco, and the goodness too
March 10th, 2009 by Flint
I own all of Wilco’s studio albums bar one on CD, and the remaining I’ve got in digital format waiting for a physical purchase some day in the future. They’re number 16 in my Last.FM top artists chart. “Jesus, Etc” is one of my favourite songs of all time and Jeff Tweedy is a fantastic singer. Wilco’s a band whose future endeavours I’m excited to follow.
But at the end of the day, when I really start thinking about it, I really have no good reason to be as into them as I am. One of their albums is quite frankly poor, two of them are alright but dodgy. Out of the remaining three, only one is a genuinely great record (and one I love dearly). The other two, while good, definitely have their flaws. Sometimes I wonder why I spend my money on them.
The reason? Because those three albums just make it all worth it.
Quick history lesson for those not in the know. Wilco started in the early 90’s when Tweedy’s previous band Uncle Tupelo broke up due to hissyfits between Tweedy and another member of the band. Tweedy took the rest of the members, formed Wilco, started a new career. At first Wilco traversed the same country rock road Uncle Tupelo did with their negligible debut A.M. Pretty soon the band already started to form their own path: the sophomore album Being There was composed of two discs of both varying styles and majorly varying quality. Tweedy and co decided to start experimenting with music and created the trilogy I hold dear: Summerteeth took a keyboard-heavy dark pop approach, indie favourite Yankee Hotel Foxtrot began the road of exploring with sonic textures and increased emphasis on atmosphere, A Ghost Is Born took the experimental nature and upped it to 10 by creating a wildly varying album full of production gimmics and stylistic experiments. It seems that after all this Tweedy and co have calmed down, 2007’s Sky Blue Sky being a laidback return to the band’s earlier days, unfortunately also in terms of quality. The band’s currently recording their next album and as of yet it’s pretty unclear whether Wilco will continue on the same ’simplified’ path, return to the enhanced sound textures of their middle period or do something completely different. I’m betting on the first and hoping for the second or third.
Those three more ‘down to earth’ albums I really cannot get into. A.M.’s country twang is infuriatingly annoying and the song material is plain weak, and it manages to establish one notable fact early on in the band’s career: Wilco can’t rock. Whenever the band let their hair loose and rock out, the result is almost always something utterly, utterly forgettable or annoying. We’ll talk about the exceptions later. Being There is hailed by many as brilliant but its double-disc nature makes the varying song quality even more annoying since you can’t have all the good stuff on one disc. Not that there’s tons of it and there’s no downright great material there, but there is a very strong spark of light. Sky Blue Sky on the other hand just feels dull. It definitely has its moments but it’s too mellow throughout. And it’s not chilled out mellow, it’s just complacent uninteresting mellow. Breahtakingly awesome cover though. In short, the band’s got a lengthy history of doing wonky things that do not go together with my taste in music at all. Things aren’t helped by the fact that Tweedy’s weary voice sounds really unconvincing when he’s doing some country rocking schlab.
Those three albums though…
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot I never really got as into as many others have. Sure, it carries “Jesus Etc” which is not only Wilco’s best song but also one of the best songs ever made, and generally it carries an arsenal of really good tunes and a couple of great ones (Heavy Metal Drummer, Reservations), but overall the good isn’t as good as it is in the other two albums I value. “I’m the Man Who Loves You” is especially a song that always sounds really out of place on the rest of the album. I can see why YHF is so praised though. It’s got a great, consistent style – Wilco expanding their sound and adding some extra depth to it – but in this case the songs aren’t as brilliant as somewhere else. For me.
The funny thing with Summerteeth is that it took time to grow on me despite being so accessible. It’s not like Wilco has ever been hard to get into mind you, but Summerteeth’s rich, warm production and the shamelessly direct, upbeat pop songs that surface here and there are quite a surprise for someone whose main grasp on Wilco is their sparse, melancholy acoustic misery. The misery is still there, in the words and those words are actually some of the darkest stuff Tweedy’s written (”I dreamt about killing you in bed last night and it felt alright to me”, starts Via Chicago). All the darkness is just hidden in keyboard-heavy, uplifting pop and subdued, dreamy calmness. The result is a warm, shining album about death, drugs and collapsing relationships perfect for playing during those beautiful, warm summer nights. Some of its material is a bit flimsy – partly because Tweedy sounds so damn weird when he’s fronting upbeat material – but as a whole it’s a thoroughly enjoyable piece.
A Ghost Is Born I treasure. I love. The more I listen to it the more I get into it. It’s Wilco’s musical peak, not just in quality but in the manner they work with the music. The expansion of sound that began on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot continues on Ghost, utilising all sorts of production effects without sounding artificial and ranging from style to style, from atmospheric dreamfluff to quick and fast rockers. There’s even a krautrock-jam (11 minutes of pure brilliance) and a noise collage (13 minutes of love it or hate it drone; I’m one of the few people who have listened to it in full more than once). At the same time it’s the peak of Tweedy’s neuroses, the stories of his migraine attacks during the recording are well-known now and the entire album has a personal but disjointed feeling. It’s not a personal, introspective album but it’s got the sound of a man who’s really not all well while recording, even during its sweeter moments. But most importantly it’s the one album that condenses every single good thing there is in Wilco into one consistent album. From the affectious pop songs to the paranoid, tired dreamers, it’s all here. It also includes the small miracle of “I’m a Wheel”, a Wilco rocker that’s actually good (not to mention the 3-minute guitar solo rockout climax of “At Least That’s What You Said” is something very, very brilliant and one of the best guitar solos ever). The songs are backed by the wonderful production. It sounds nothing special on the usual listenings, fairly typical softer-sounding rock production, but once you pull out your headphones a whole new world of quiet, hidden sounds and endless textural details unveils itself. Each second of each song is crafted with precision.
Despite my occasional doubts, there is a firmly good reason why the band’s #16 on my Last.FM charts. Wilco might be really awkward when they’re being iffy, but when they’re good, they’re really really good. So what if I pretty much only listen to three of their albums and the occasional individual songs from the others? Those three albums are lovely, lovely music.
MP3: Pieholden Suite (from Summerteeth)
MP3: Wishful Thinking (from A Ghost Is Born)
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Jesus, Etc.
Tags: Wilco
March 11th, 2009 at 5:09 am
i would really suggest getting that other record that you say you don’t have. some of the things you’ve said here are true, but without your owning their full catalog, i have trouble understanding your assessment that they “can’t rock”. Listen to Kicking Television. see them live. I’m not sure boasting their status on your Last.FM account has as much of an impact as you apparently think either. Really dwell with wilco and you will find there’s much more to them than the accessibly pop-y hook of Jesus Etc. and by all means, go see them live!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:51 am
What I meant by lacking one album was that I lacked it physically – I only own Sky Blue Sky in a digital format at the moment but I want to get it on CD too as I do love my physical formats.
The last.fm thing isn’t much to do with boasting, I just used it to illustrate that Wilco has clearly managed to grab a rather big chunk of my music listening if they can make that (relatively) high on my constantly updating charts. I tend to listen to all my music on computer these days, be it via CD or not (mainly thanks to some changes in my life circumstances leading me to lack an actual sound system), so everything I listen to gets scrobbled. I mainly just wanted to give some sort of a concrete image with the Lfm comment this time rather than dwell with unclear, abstract images.
I’ve been thinking about getting Kicking Television at some point, but live music has never really meant as much to me as studio albums have and at the end of the day, it’s the studio albums that I judge a band by, not their live condition. I doubt I’d change my opinion about their more rocking songs always being somewhat limp and weak on albums if I’d listen to the improved live versions – after all, I can’t replace the album version with them on the albums.
Thanks for replying! It’s very much appreciated.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Before “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” Wilco were one of those “also ran”-bands… and if it wasn’t for the history behind that album it still would have stayed this way, because… honestly… it absolutely wouldn’t have gained its status based on the music alone. I mean, it’s anything but bad and really NICE… but nothing which sounds too much different from what Pavement recorded ten years earlier… when this kind of music was still called “alternative” instead of “indie”. *lol* I guess people get a bit carried away with “Foxtrot” mainly out of ideologic reasons.
Anyway, the only song I [i]really[/i] keep coming back for is “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”, but apart from that I feel fairly indifferent towards that band.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Hooray! I replied honestly to something without being percieved as hostile! I just gained a lot of respect for you as far as that goes… Anyway, BUY kicking television, i gaurantee that even if you usually only judge a band on studio engineering, it will change your mind about at least a couple of Wilco tunes. “Misunderstood” which is one of Tweedy’s favorite tunes to play live, glows here, as does a guitar solo on Ashes of American Flags, a song that made no impression on me on YHF in the beginning but is now one of my favorites all around. I mean, no one judges Phish on their studio albums, as their live performances are what they DO ( I am not a huge fan of them, just an example), but Wilco too is a band that has made its living on the road, not through record sales. Thank you again for being civil about my possibly harsh sounding first comment, and not shutting down as soon as you saw negativity. You are the kind of person that actually deserves their own space on the internet! I like what you’re doing, keep it up.
-Glenn
March 11th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Haha, don’t worry, you didn’t sound hostile at all – in fact I was worried my tl;dr comment seemed aggressive! I’ll definitely keep an eye out on Kicking Television if I ever see it cheap, I’ve heard so much about it that I really need to give it a check at some point. I’m just the sort of person who in general values the studio environment more thanks to the added emphasis on musical details and generally the possibilities of the environment, so I rarely put any sort of emphasis on the live forms of artists when judging them.
Thanks for the kind comments, I/we genuinely appreciate them :).
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:52 am
I think Being There has moments that certainly rock. (Misunderstood, Red Eyed and Blue, and I Got You among others.) And if it bugs you that you feel there’s only enough good material for one album, just burn a copy with the songs you like!
AM certainly has some weak spots (lots) but Box Full of Letters, Casino Queen, and Passenger Side are pretty damn great and hold up well.