Wilco

You can rely on me, honey

Even before Wilco’s only masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot hit shelves in the spring of 2002, it had already cemented its classic status. In September 2001, Wilco streamed the album for free on their website at a time when most artists didn’t know how to address file-sharing, and so to prevent people from sharing low-quality rips, Wilco got ahead of the curve and gave it out for free. Furthermore, the national tragedy that same month gave an album with song titles like “War on War” and “Ashes of American Flags” and lyrics like “tall buildings shake” a huge emotional weight, to say nothing of the album cover of two Chicago towers. Of all the 2002 albums that dealt with 9/11 directly (Sonic Youth’s Murray Street), indirectly (Sleater-Kinney’s One Beat) or ostensibly (William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops), it was this modest alt-country band’s material that was written and recorded well before 9/11 that felt the strongest.

I didn’t hear the album at the time because I was busy cranking Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” on repeat, but when I heard the album years later, I still loved it divorced from all of that context. It’s just a really good, warm and washed-out album, much of which amounts to little more than pop songs (the album opener sets you up to expect a weird album, and the second song is just an alt-country bouncer, and the prevailing mode of the album is the latter with only flashes of the former). While it makes for a great story of delicious irony, it doesn’t make sense that Reprise Records, Wilco’s original label, passed on the album and then showed Wilco the back door because “They didn’t think it was releasable” according to Tweedy. “Kamera,” “Jesus, Etc.” and “Heavy Metal Drummer” are stronger pop/rock offerings than anything Wilco had released prior (or would ever write again), and are the experimental songs like “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” and “Radio Cure” really all that experimental? (Answer: labels are dumb.) After the success of their streaming initiative, Nonesuch Records picked up the album, and as both Nonesuch and Reprise are both subsidiaries of Warner, it means Warner paid for the album twice.

The not-so-secret weapon in Wilco’s arsenal is Jeff Tweedy’s unclely voice that sells the shoulder-to-cry-on line “Jesus, don’t cry / You can rely on me, honey” in a way that many other voices would have failed, but what makes the album special in Wilco’s discography is Jim O’Rourke. (I wrote a guide on Bandcamp that tried to parse out some of the hundreds of albums that O’Rourke has worked on.) O’Rourke didn’t just bring with him elements of drone and American primitivism (most evident on “Radio Cure” and “Reservation”) from his solo career, but he also linked Wilco up with drummer Glenn Kotche to replace original drummer Ken Coomer. Kotche’s peak-a-boo drumming on opener “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” helps make the song as special as it is, and would go on to serve Wilco with a creative and beating heart such that even their blander albums are never truly boring.

I cherish these textures that were not possible from this band before they met O’Rourke and Kotche: the bells and the odd piano harmonies of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”; the sputtering notes and budding radio static behind Tweedy when he sings “There is something wrong with me” on “Radio Cure,” and how it all clears away for the song’s hook; the string line on “Jesus, Etc.”; the wandering ghost backing vocals of “Heavy Metal Drummer”; the horns of “I’m the Man Who Loves You.” Meanwhile, Tweedy is, by turns, delightfully absurd (“I am an American aquarium drinker”) or devastatingly sad (“Oh, distance has no way / Of making love understandable”), while “Kamera” manages both at the same time (“Phone my family / Tell them I’m lost on the sidewalk / And no, it's not okay”). Like Smog’s Knock Knock (another album O’Rourke helped on), the album plays like a reverse loop, starting with a song that declares how Tweedy is trying to break your heart, and then ends with a declaration of love so plain and pure, it scorched into my heart the very first time I heard it, “I’ve got reservations, but not about you.”

They did not arrive at Yankee Hotel Foxtrot easily, nor did they linger on that sound for very long. Debut A.M. is a collection of 3-minute songs that hurt no one, and “Passenger Side” revealed early on Tweedy’s talents as a lyricist. Ken Coomer’s simple drum hits take up too much space in the mix; “Box Full of Letters” has a catchy guitar riff that feels like generic college radio from the prior decade. Being There is one of the more egregiously acclaimed double albums that I can think of, and the second disc is basically a Frisbee; I think “The Lonely 1”—with a stylized title that physically makes me want to vomit—is one of their worst songs, and that’s saying something considering how boring they got in their later years. “Misunderstood” needlessly obscures Tweedy’s voice; the Memphis horns of “Monday” aim for Exile on Main Street but the electric guitar sounds like a wet noodle. Wilco were essentially a folk band with pop sensibilities, and they never pulled off the purer rock songs they essayed in their early years before they met guitarist Nels Cline. Xgau summed this one up aptly, “Is a two-CD package that could fit onto one conning consumers, taking on airs, or wallowing in nostalgia for a lost time when songs were songs and double albums were double albums? All three. […] There's no dynamism to [Tweedy’s] music--the rockers are slackers, the hooks essentially atmospheric,” and that’s why a 77-minute double album by this band at this point in time was doomed to fail.

Summerteeth is fondly remembered for being one of the first major shifts in Wilco’s discography—from alt-country towards mid-60s, pre-psychedelic pop/rock—but for me, it revealed Wilco as a literary band in addition to a sonic one: “No love’s as random / As God’s love / I can’t stand it”; “The ashtray says / You were up all night”; “I dreamed about killing you again last night / And it felt alright to me.” Both “I Can’t Stand It” and “I’m A Jar” work in twists, both powerful: “No love’s as random as God’s love” —> “No love’s as random as my love” and “She begs me not to miss her” —> “She begs me not to hit her.” But no song works quite all the way through. “I Can’t Stand It” hams up its pre-choruses with needless repetition (“It’s all beginning… It’s all beginning…”); “A Shot in the Arm”’s third verse repeats the first verse but without the ‘sun caught fire’ imagery. And there’s a notable drop-off after the album’s impressive opening salvo, with songs like “We’re Just Friends” and “Via Chicago” leaning very hard on Tweedy’s voice while “Candyfloss” is a power pop song with lyrics like “I’m the boy with the poetry power / I’m the boy smell like flowers.”

The Billy Bragg collaboration, Mermaid Avenue, is better than all of those albums. Organized by Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora Guthrie, Wilco and folk-punk singer/songwriter Billy Bragg perform previously unheard lyrics from Woody Guthrie, as well as a few songs here and there of their own. The album starts with a call-and-response drunk fireplace story that’s catchier than anything from Summerteeth and then a Wilco original that’s better than anthing from A.M. or Being There, and I say both compliments even though Ken Coomer isn’t even trying on either song. Billy Bragg pens a few duds including the Natalie Merchant-led “Birds and Ships” and “Another Man’s Done Gone” that’s performed only by Tweedy and Bennett, both pretty but musically barren, but redeems himself with touching “Eisler on the Go,” with snatches of melodica from Jay Bennett floating gently in the background.

A second volume was released two years later, many of which were leftovers (including another Natalie Merchant interlude), but should not be dismissed outright. For starters, closer “Someday Some Morning Sometime” was, according to Tweedy, “a piece of the puzzle that led to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot;” by filtering a vibraphone through space echo, “Someday Some Morning Sometime” has a blissfully stoned sound unlike anything Wilco had recorded previously (I believe this track was originally sketched out for the first Mermaid Avenue but Billy Bragg asked Wilco to re-record it, which became this new version. Thankful for Bragg if that’s the case), while the quick-shuffling “Airline to Heaven” and grittier, bluesy “Feed of Man” are both among the best songs Wilco had recorded by this point. As for Billy Bragg, there’s a five song stretch near the end all with music written by him that makes the album feel far more one-sided than the first volume, including a Tom Waits pastiche in “Meanest Man”; the only Joe DiMaggio song I’ll ever need is “Mrs. Robinson.” That being said, Bragg’s “All You Fascists” has the bite of early Elvis Costello, which some harmonica roar from Jay Bennett, tasked on these early albums to provide much of the colour before being dismissed after the completion of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

After the success of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born shifted dramatically enough again, but the strangely-muted production does them no favors: the ballads feel empty, voided of the warmth that came so easily with Tweedy’s voice, while the rockers never once catch fire, especially compared to the versions on Kicking Television: Live in Chicago where they made a play for best live indie act (their live show in Ancienne Belgique makes me believe it). Opener “At Least That’s What You Said” has both issues at the same time, while the last third of “Muzzle of Bees” is lifted straight out of Jim O’Rourke’s Halfway to a Threeway (a summer strange daydream EP that might actually be the best thing O’Rourke has ever done). “Hummingbird,” “I’m a Wheel,” and “The Late Greats” are—like many songs from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—just fun, rompy pop songs, separating the lengthy krautrock groove of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” and “Less Than You Think,” which gave millennials their own chance to debate “Revolution #9” (except that it’s not nearly as interesting or good). “Hell is Chrome” is my favourite song here, a hangover song for the ages with just enough edge to take the edge off.

Non-album Ghost b-side “Kicking Television” is a rare demonstration of Tweedy’s punk influence (see also: the line “Take the guitar player for a ride” from “Misunderstood” is a Pere Ubu reference), which gives Kicking Television: Live in Chicago its title. The banter—“Let’s get this party started…with some mid-tempo rock!” Jeff Tweedy jests before launching into non-rocking “Jesus, Etc.” and the conversation about Kansas City at the end of “Hell is Chrome”—is appreciated, as is an enthusiastic audience in the red-faced climax of “Misunderstood” and “At Least That’s What You Said.” Almost 40% (9 out of 23) of the setlist comes from A Ghost is Born, mostly improving on the studio versions, while 30% (7 out of 23) comes from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, mostly not improving on them; in the case of “Jesus, Etc.” a slide guitar does what it can to replace the strings, but it doesn’t come close. Plus: one non-album live-only “Comment (If All Men Were Brothers)” that feels like a ‘you had to be there’-type deal.

They exited the critical dialogue with Sky Blue Sky, an album that announced proudly that they’d rather be the Eagles than Radiohead. “Either Way,” “What Light,” and even non-album single “The Thanks I Get” all have good choruses, and “Impossible Germany” is their last great song, featuring a ripping guitar solo from Nels Cline that might actually be my favourite guitar solo from that entire decade, and the opening line, “Impossible Germany, unlikely Japan” is a poem in four words. Cline contributes a solo here and there on their next albums, usually resulting in a highlight while also being a total rehash, including “Bull Black Nova” on Wilco (The Album), an album whose cover and title told you outright to stop taking them seriously anymore. “You and I,” a duet with Feist, is the pinnacle of okaydom. I have fond memories of working in a dish-pit in 2010 where a coworker and I joked with one another if we had “heard the song ‘Wilco’ on the album Wilco by the band Wilco.”

The Whole Love is fondly remembered for its bookends—Who’s Next-syndrome—with “Art of Almost” an all-too conscious return to “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” building, breaking, building again, giving space to Nels Cline to weave his electric guitar through the rhythmic, krautrock-inspired pulse. Meanwhile closer “One Sunday Morning” would be their longest song excluding “Less Than You Think,” and while the chord progression has a bounce and ease to it, the prospect of hearing Wilco pretend to be Dylan doesn’t interest me at all: I can’t help but wonder how Sufjan Stevens might have tackled the same subject matter, of a boyfriend ruminating on his girlfriend’s overbearing father. The other, short songs between these two points are content to having you leave the same way you entered; there’s no impact, even when Tweedy threatens to burn kids on “I Might.”

That said, The Whole Love is still better than the albums that came afterwards: lightweight, mid-tempo rockin’ Star Wars (whose fuzzy best song “More…” pulls inspiration from T. Rex of all things), Schmilco, an album so introverted that it verges on twee pop (not a compliment), and Ode to Joy, where Jeff Tweedy stopped singing at all and stuck to whispering. (From here on out, there’ll be moments where Tweedy will reach for a note and not make it there.) Ode to Joy is a weird one: Glenn Kotche ditches cymbals and leans more heavy into the snare and kick-drums, which are fuzzed-up for extra texture, but the material is so fucking dry. Interesting sonics in search of better songs, or a better singer.

The title of second double album Cruel Country refers to both America and country music. Let me put it bluntly, and Tweedy will agree here: Wilco are not a country band and have never been a country band. At the start, and when Jeff Tweedy was part of Uncle Tulepo, they were an alt-country band, which is shorthand for ‘rock music with pedal steel guitars,’ so divorced from actual country music that no one I know that listens to Wilco is also listening to John Prine or Willie Nelson. Supposedly, Cruel Country is a country album (“With this album though, I'll tell you what, Wilco is digging in and calling it country”) that also seeks to “investigate” the “problematic nature” of country music, but on the album’s most-country songs, it inevitably sounds like the quiet ballads that have been everywhere in the band’s last feels-like-ten studio albums.

Whereas Cruel Country consciously had a back-to-basics approach with the least amount of overdubs on a Wilco album since 2007, this year’s Cousin hires outside help in Cate Le Bon who brought back the overdubs and brought with her some synthesizers. It is should not be regarded in the same universe as the band that once made Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or A Ghost is Born with help from Jim O’Rourke. There’s a shimmer to the guitar on “Evicted” and the introduction to “Pittsburgh,” with its huge waves of synthesized organ, might be tweaked-enough sonics to distinguish Cousin from the last few Wilco albums, but Cate Le Bon isn’t able to push Tweedy out of the comfort zone he’s been in for 15 years now.

The derogatory term ‘dad rock’ started to cling to Wilco the way cheap airport soap does, and to be fair, Jeff Tweedy did become a father, and even started involving his son as a secondary drummer on some of their later albums. But the band have made no efforts to shake off that status, their experimental spirit mostly snuffed out, and with the increasingly reductive role of Nels Cline, they’ve become a mid-tempo rock band that now refuses to rock out, even at mid-tempo.