Wilco
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
[Nonesuch; 2002]
Rating: 10.0
Myth, it has been said, is the buried part of every story. On
April 23rd, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally emerges into
the light of day, having spent the last year interred in its
own cluttered mythology: a hermetic studio gestation, with the
inscrutable guidance of Chicago ex-pat/kindly wizard, Jim
O'Rourke; internecine squabbles; conflict and resolution with
American media behemoth AOL Time Warner; the release portentously
slated for September 11th, but mysteriously delayed; the
indecipherable short-wave radio prophecies; and, eventually,
the hero's welcome, with the first stirrings of spring. It's all
there: the miracle birth; the unlikely hero; the, um, benevolent
mentor; the primordial menace; good over evil. Joseph Campbell
would be pissing himself if he weren't dead.
The miraculous birth narrative of Wilco's fourth album, Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot, is already old hat: banished from straightedge
AOL Time Warner imprint Reprise on the cosmically short-sighted
judgment of label executives who deemed the album a "career-ender,"
Wilco streamed Yankee Hotel from its left-wing website to
millions before signing with weirdo progressive AOL Time Warner
imprint Nonesuch. Long is the way and hard that leads up from
AOL Time Warner into the light, I guess.
But the unique circumstances of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's
long deliverance make for more than just pointless disc jockey
chatter before spinning "Heavy Metal Drummer." The long delay
and streaming audio conspired to ensure that everyone in the
world has already heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in part,
if not in its entirety. Vast digital pre-circulation, corporate
controversy, and buzz like a beard of bees have rendered all
reviews afterthoughts at best.
But myth is always an afterthought, and these days, the motif I
like chewing on best is, without question, that of the Unlikely
Hero. Who would have predicted an album of this magnitude from
Wilco? As much I love the band, the fact remains that they were
together for five years before they produced anything that could
stand with Uncle Tupelo's March 16-20, 1992 or Anodyne.
AM is rather forgettable, while the expansive Being
There, though frequently inspired, travels on paths blazed
by Tom Petty on Damn the Torpedoes, if not The Flying
Burrito Brothers.
1999's dolorous Summerteeth was exponentially more
sophisticated than anything that came before it, though its
heroin innuendoes, shades of domestic abuse and nocturnal
homicidal impulses sat somewhat ill at ease alongside the
album's lush and infectious pop arrangements. Of course,
Summerteeth was a strange and majestic, albeit dark,
deviation from the alt-country genre Jeff Tweedy co-invented.
But since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it has retroactively
become more of a harbinger of things to come. Upon being pressed
by the Chicago Sun-Times about abandoning alt-country,
Tweedy dismissively bequeathed the old Wilco sound to Ryan
Adams. And you can never go home again.
So does Yankee Hotel Foxtrot justify the controversy,
delay and buzz? Everyone, I think, already knows that the
answer is yes; all I can offer is "me too" and reiterate. And
after half a year living with a bootleg copy, the music remains
revelatory. Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically
sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene,
Wilco's aging new album is simply a masterpiece; it is equally
magnificent in headphones, cars and parties. And as anyone who's
seen the mixed-bag crowd at Wilco shows knows, it will find a
home in the collections of hippies, frat boys, acid-eating prep
schoolers, and the record store apparatchiks of the indiocracy.
No one is too good for this album; it is better than all of us.
But for all the talk of terminally hip influences-- Jim O'Rourke,
krautrock, and The Conet Project-- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
still conjures a classic rock radio station on Fourth of July
weekend. And this extends beyond the alternating Byrds/Stones/Beatles
comparisons that pepper every Wilco review ever written; Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot evokes Steely Dan, the Eagles, Wings, Derek &
The Dominos and Traffic. The slightly disconnected, piano-led
"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," is delicately laced with
noise, whistles and percussive clutter, like some great grandson
of "A Day in the Life." The muted, "Kamera" strums along darkly
with acoustic and electric guitars; the twittering electronics
in the background don't quite mitigate the tune's comparability
to the clever and precise (though now largely neglected)
jazz-inflected blues-rock of Dire Straits' stunning debut.
The cone-filtered and anthemic country psychedelia of "War on
War" could have been jammed straight out of a hot "Bertha" at a 1973
Grateful Dead show. The violin and coked-up country lounge of
"Jesus, etc." recalls some mythical seventies in true love and
cigarettes. The sharp, stuttering guitar solo that rips open
"I'm the Man Who Loves You" could have come directly out of
Neil Young's hollow body electric circa Everybody Knows This
Is Nowhere. For all its aural depth and layering, Yankee
Hotel tends to come off as earnest as yesteryear's FM radio.
Wilco gets the benefit of O'Rourke's gift for cutting straight
to the guts of every style, without the burden of his trademark
contempt for the subject matter at hand.
And Tweedy seems to be coming into his own as a lyricist. I
still wince when I hear him sing, "I know you don't talk much
but you're such a good talker," on Being There. The
brooding introspection of Summerteeth made for a handful
of elegant lyrics, most notably the skeletal beauty of "She's a
Jar," where "she begs me not to miss her" returns as the stinging
"she begs me not to hit her," transforming a wistful love song
into something gently bruising. But on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
Tweedy becomes what I think he always was: an optimist and a
romantic.
His declaration of wanting to salute "the ashes of American
flags," is less cynicism than, perhaps, the devoted liberal's
nostalgia for an honest patriotism (check out the array of
properly lefty links at wilcoworld.com if you don't believe
me). "All my lies are always wishes," he sings, "I know I
would die if I could come back new." In "Jesus, etc.," there's
a cascading simplicity when he sings, "Tall buildings shake,
voices escape, singing sad, sad songs to two chords/ Strung
down your cheeks, bitter melodies turning your orbit around."
Sad, celestial and lovely. The final declaration on Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot is one of abiding dedication: "I've got
reservations 'bout so many things but not about you." There
isn't a truer word to be had.
On Summerteeth, Tweedy yowled about "speakers speaking
in code" and I thought of that refrain from "I Can't Stand It"
when I first heard the words "yankee-hotel-foxtrot" uttered by
the disembodied English woman on the sublimely creepy box-set
of shortwave radio transmissions, The Conet Project, which
is sampled sporadically throughout this record. And in a
deeper, more deliberate world, perhaps we could trace that
thread to unravel the secret wonder of Wilco's new album. But
I don't think there's any secret; and I don't think there's any
code. Beneath the great story of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
there are all the tropes and symbols and coincidences of a
little mythology; but under that is a fantastic rock record.
And why tell you? You all already knew this.
-Brent S. Sirota, April 22nd, 2002