Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot CD

11 songs about America that echo and update some of the themes heard on early albums by The Band, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young. Enhanced format features exclusive live footage, band photos, and a trailer for the film 'I Am Trying to Break Your Heart'. Slipcase. 2002.



This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Wilco: Jeff Tweedy (vocals, guitar); John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, Jay Bennett.
Additional personnel: Craig Christiansen, Ken Coomer, Jessy Greene, Fred Lonborg-Holm, Jim O'Rourke.
Recorded at The Loft, CRC, and Soma E.M.S., Chicago, Illinois.
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel: Frederick Lonberg-Holm (cello); Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt (horns); Glenn Kotche (drums, percussion).
Audio Mixer: Jim O'Rourke.
Recording information: CRC; Somia E.M.S., Chicago, IL; The Loft, Chicago, IL.
Photographer: Sam Jones.
Unknown Contributor Roles: Jessy Greene; Ken Coomer; Leroy Bach.
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
Far too much attention has been focused on this album's tortured history; band makes weird album, label rejects it, band buys it back and puts it out a year later through another arm of the same corporation. For the record, wildly overexcited Radiohead comparisons aside, the album's not that weird--it merely ventures a bit further down the sonic-shambles roads explored on the band's previous two releases. As has been noted elsewhere, the most valid reference point for the occasional pop deconstructions of YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT is BRolling Stone (5/9/02, pp.71-72) - 4 out of 5 stars - "...An earthy, moving psychedelia, eleven iridescent-country songs about surviving a blown mind and a broken heart....the enchanting sound of things falling apart-and gingerly, doggedly coming together again..."
Spin (1/03, p.70) - Ranked #2 on Spin's list of 2002's "Albums of the Year"
Spin (3/02, p.131) - "...The record includes fragments of treated piano, static interference, [and] random noises....YANKEE isn't your typical Americana or alt-country record..."
Q (May 2002, p.121) - 4 out of 5 stars - "...This elegant, world-weary...album ploughs enthusiastically into the leftfield..."
Uncut (1/03, p.94) - Ranked #4 in Uncut's "100 Best Albums of the Year" - "...Wilco's finest, its pretty electronic textures and melodicism making a heartbreaking album..."
CMJ (12/30/02, p.10) - Ranked #5 on CMJ's "Top 10 of 2002"
CMJ (4/22/02, p.4) - "...[A] beautifully strange mix of organic textures and oblique poetics, all of it gently pulsating with a backwoodsy tech-head feel..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.26) - Ranked #26 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "Jeff Tweedy suffers personal crisis and pines for innocence lost before eventually arriving at a redemption of sorts."
Mojo (Publisher) (1/03, p.73) - Ranked #4 in Mojo's "Best Albums of 2002"
Mojo (Publisher) (5/02, p.99) - "...Truly, a remarkable record..."
NME (Magazine) (4/20/02, p.22) - 8 out of 10 - "...it's a gripping darkness that doesn't often lift. It's hard going but worth it, and that is undoubtedly their point."