One of the biggest challenges any artist faces is following up
\nsuccess. Your audience might have been wowed last time, but what
\nhave you done to impress us lately?<\/p>\n
Wilco’s 2002 disc
\nYankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/i> was one of the great albums of the
\nyoung century, an album of experimentalist alt-country that’s
\nbizarre enough to puzzle, grounded enough to move, and clever
\nenough to delight an audience prepared to accept its quirks. Its
\nrescue from the major-label dungeon and issuance as an acclaimed
\nindependent album is one of the great music industry
\nDavid-and-Goliath stories of recent years.<\/p>\n
\nA Ghost Is Born<\/i> is a sequel of sorts, another album of odd
\nand beautiful Jeff Tweedy compositions that materialize out of the
\nsonic fog like apparitions to dance in our imaginations and then
\ndisappear again. The ruling aesthetic is simple; the rules don’t
\nexist for Wilco anymore. If a song sounds right played a little
\nsloppy — as many of these do — leave it. If the mood strikes and
\nthe band feels like tacking a 12-minute droning ambient-feedback
\nsection onto an otherwise fairly inconsequential three-minute song
\n(e.g. the ironically-titled “Less Than You Think”), go for it. For
\nbetter or for worse — and there will inevitably be partisans on
\nboth sides of that one — convention is a straightjacket this band
\nhas left behind<\/p>\n
My vote is for “better.” Otherwise how could we ever be treated
\nto endless dreamscapes like the shambling, magnificent “Spiders
\n(Kidsmoke),” the only song I have ever heard that could best be
\ndescribed as psychedelic progressive Americana. Almost eleven
\nminutes long, it goes through multiple transformations that include
\ntrance-y electronica, rumbly\/noodly country-rock chording,
\nhallucinogenic lyrics (“Spiders are singing in the salty breeze \/
\nSpiders are filling out tax returns \/ Spinning out webs of
\ndeductions and melodies \/ On a private beach in Michigan”), a
\ndriving rock and roll chorus that has no words until the very last
\nrepeat, and a pair of psychotic-break guitar solos that would raise
\nJimi Hendrix’s eyebrows. To be honest, I’m not quite sure how this
\nwill hold up after 20 listenings, but after four, it sounds pretty
\ndamned awesome.<\/p>\n
Truth be told, Wilco can be a bit frightening to listen to.
\nThere’s an aura of lunatic genius about Tweedy, the sense that
\nyou’re in the presence of the kind of unhinged musical savant who
\nis half brilliant and half alarming. There are moments of quiet,
\nincomparable beauty in tracks like the pastoral ballad “Muzzle Of
\nBees,” the wonderfully textured “Company In My Back,” and the sad,
\nsteady-building, ultimately cathartic opener “At Least That’s What
\nYou Said.” And then there are moments of swirling, atonal guitar
\nfeedback that made me grin and cringe and talk to my speakers like
\na drunk at a bad movie, saying: “Dude, get a grip!”<\/p>\n
“Handshake Drugs,” despite containing one of the aforementioned
\nfeedback-laden “solos,” is one of this album’s finer constructions,
\na gently rollicking tune whose sweet sing-song melody line carries
\na faint echo of
\nYHF<\/i>‘s charming “Heavy Metal Drummer.” An intriguing choice
\nfor a song that appears to be about Tweedy’s well-publicized pill
\naddiction\u2026 three minutes of pretty followed by a two-minute
\nnervous breakdown.<\/p>\n
A word about the writing. Many of these tracks are once again
\nsomewhat abstract poems that defy deciphering (“Hide your soft
\nskin; your sorrow is sunshine; listen to my eyes \/ They are hissing
\nradiator tunes” goes one verse). Nonetheless, there are some great
\nlines here: “What would we be without wishful thinking?” “The sun
\ngets passed from sea to sea.” “When the devil came \/ He was not red
\n\/ He was chrome and he said \/ Come with me.” Madness and genius
\nhave never been far apart, and rarely closer than in the studio
\nwith Wilco.<\/p>\n
A key part of what made
\nYankee Hotel Foxtrot<\/i> a great album was its rock and roll
\nheart. Yes, the album had a distinct alt-country\/Americana tinge,
\nbut its essential attitude was all rock and roll, as in “Screw
\nconvention and screw you – we’re doing this our way, and you can
\neither get it or get off the bus. NOW.”
\nA Ghost Is Born<\/i> carries that attitude on with admirable
\ndetermination. And while the approach isn’t quite as fresh this
\ntime — how could it be? — it remains compelling in the hands of
\nan artist as talented and apparently fearless as Jeff Tweedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":26730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7036],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37991","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-wilco","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37991"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}