Record Reviews Recording of the Vonth WILCO: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Nonesuch 79669-2 (CD). 2002. Wilco, prods.; lim O'Rourke, mix. AAD? TT: 51:51 Performance **** Sonics **** ver since he and partner Jay Farrar broke up the alternative-country band Uncle Tupelo in 1994, Jeff ETweedy has fashioned quite acareer with his subse- quent band, Wilco. Originally made up of former UT members — drum- mer Ken Coomer, multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston, and bassist John Stirrat — Wilco began as afairly straight- ahead rock/country-rock band, and picked up where Uncle Tupelo had left off. Wilco's first album, AM (1995), has songs like "Box Full of Letters," "I Must Be High," and "Passenger Side" — exactly the kind of easily accessible pop tunes Tweedy had written for UT From there, things began to get weird. Wilco's next album, Being There (1996), arare double album, was a19- Wilco: (from left) Leroy Bach, Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt. song exploration of Tweedy's growing confidence as the band's source of original songs. It also marked the debut of ing keyboard effect—is one of the album's singles-in-wait- guitarist-keyboardist Jay Bennett. ing. It's followed by "Jesus, etc.," with sweet touches of vio- It was with Summerteeth that Wilco began taking alot lin and pedal-steel guitar (or, again, akeyboard effect that more chances. Gone were any vestiges of UT-styled twang. sounds like pedal-steel). In their place were guitar-based rock-pop songs of adarker As it has on every one of his previous albums, Tweedy's hue and numbers like "Pieholden Suite," in which Tweedy Beades jones rises on VHF, in the fragile, evenly paced began to fulfill his ambition of working on larger canvases melody of "Ashes of American Flags." (The song titles often that defied convenient stylistic pigeonholes. have little or nothing to do with the lyrics.) It's here that the In between, Wilco had cut Mermaid Avenue, an album of unnamed dread hanging over the entire album, some dark previously unpublished lyrics by Woody Guthrie set to new night of the soul, appears in its starkest form: "Fm down on music by the band and collaborator Billy Bragg (Vol. II came my hands and knees /every time the doorbell rings /I shake out in 2000). like atoothache /When Ihear myself sing... My lies are On Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco continues down the fork in only wishes." The song dissolves in ablizzard of noise. the road they first took with Summerteeth. In some ways an That's followed by Yankee Hotel Foxtroes only peppy sin- exploration of sound for sound's sake, VHF is more about gle, "Heavy Metal Drummer," in which Tweedy sings in a textures than songs, more about indulging the dark side of clear voice about agirlfriend who "fell in love with the Tweedy's songwriting, more about trying to make an inde- drummer," misses "the innocence Ihave known," and finable record than an easily accessible sales star. The album's plays KISS covers "beautiful and stoned." challenging sound did not make the powers-that-be at In the upward-lifting melody of the short, elegiac final Reprise Records happy. They wanted changes, which the track, "Reservations," Tweedy —who on Summerteeth sang band rejected. Hence Wilco's move to Nonesuch (see the "nodiingsevergonnastandinmyway(again)" —opens with the Wilco feature on page 61). one-two punch of "How can Iconvince you it's me Idon't This dark, mostly quiet album's opening track, "I Am like?" before drifting into achorus reminiscent of Brian Trying to Break Your Heart," begins slowly, in fits and starts, Wilson's "God Only Knows" that repeats, "I've got reserva- with a buzz of feedback followed by keyboard effects, tions /About so many things /Not about you." A coda of strummed guitas; and bits of drumming. From there, the sounds — distant keyboards, ominous piano chords, organ light and dark of Tweedy's songwriting and Jim O'Rourke's flourishes —appropriately ends this portentious album. mixing alternate. "Kamera" is afairly straightforward, three- Though it's unlikely to attract new fans to Wilco's and-a-half-minute folk-rock song driven by acoustic guitar, increasingly edgy artistic vision, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the with amarimba (or keyboard-simulated marimba) keeping sound of aband marking one frontier of its territory. A time and adding accents. "Radio Cure" mixes burbles, atoy record with this much weird scope and ambition, howev- piano, and deliberate touches of static with Tweedy's dirgey er failed or well-realized, opens amillion doors for the vocals. "War on War" —powered by acoustic guitars, chant- future. After this, almost any direction would seem like a like repetitions of the title, and awonderfully unruly, growl- natural progression. -Robert Baird Stereophile, June 2002 135 .