Send "Wilco " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 When I first heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I felt like I'd just discovered my new favourite band. It wasn't an instant favourite, but sometimes you can just tell when an album is going to grow on you like nobody's business, and this did - and the excitement and discovering the album's secrets were matched by my excitement at hearing what else this band has done. Does the fact that they've since turned out to basically be a one-album wonder make this more or less special? I'm not sure. But long after the initial glow has worn off, I can still turn to this album and acknowledge and enjoy some of the most perfect music I own.'Perfect' is a key word, particularly when it comes to the album highlight. "Jesus, Etc." is just that, and right now, I can't think of a single other song I could say that about. It's unique in the way that it's both entirely laid-back and off-the-cuff, and yet it sounds like every single second has been meticulously engineered to generated the same emotional effect - and that's before we get to how indescribably pretty it is. And those lyrics? It's as if Tweedy had learned from Blood on the Tracks on a poetic level. Like Bob Dylan on that similarly maudlin and moving album, he knows that the only way to achieve earthy sincerity and earth-shattering profundity is to exchange banality with the oblique. 'Don't cry, you can rely on me', 'I'll be around', and 'you can come round anytime you like' sit next to images of tall buildings shaking and a sky filled with a thousands sunsets, all topped off by the final cigarette of the evening. It's my two favourite love songs rolled into one, because it's a song about longing for love but also about protection, about somebody being the vital force that shields you from the outside world. Combine the two and it's a song that knows and feels love but longs for eternity; a song about that restless feeling that can only come from a true love that won't end. Other people might capture the individual sides of the coin better - Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should've Come Over" and Dylan's "You're A Big Girl Now" jump to mind for the former at least, while Massive Attack's "Protection" addresses the latter more directly - but I've never heard a song that hits both so squarely and fearlessly....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| This is how screwed up the music business is in the early twenty-first century: Last summer, after completing their fourth and best studio album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, alternative-country idols Wilco delivered the record to their label, Reprise. The company reacted as if the music was caked in anthrax, throwing the album back at Wilco and arranging for them to leave the label -- immediately. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot now arrives in stores, intact, on Nonesuch. Like Reprise, Nonesuch is a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner. Essentially, the mother firm paid for the album twice. I would love to see one of the suits explain that to the shareholders. They're still getting a bargain. One of the most talked-about records of the past year, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was rumored to be crackpot pop -- Radiohead's Kid A dressed in flannel and cow pie. And there is genuine bedlam here. Creepy pianos and whooping synthesizers zoom in and out of the music like pissed-off ghosts. The close-miked vocals of songwriter-guitarist Jeff Tweedy have a strong edge-of-madness air....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Wilco have come a long way since they rose from the ashes of the late alternative country god Uncle Tupelo in 1994, back when Jay Farrar left the country-punk band to start Son Volt while Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Max Johnston, and Ken Coomer became Wilco (as in radio jargon for "will comply") and signed with Warner-Reprise. The band first released AM (1995), a foray into more radio-friendly country pop than Uncle Tupelo's sound. Musician and recording engineer Jay Bennett joined Wilco for its second outing, the double-disc Being There (1996), an album with plenty of country grooves, but a clear sense of the band's interest in exploring more pop-rock territory. When Wilco released Summerteeth (1999), most alt.country fans didn't know what had hit them -- Tweedy called the album "a dark pop record with nothing country or twangy about it". While the music could be heard as light pop, it was juxtaposed with a complex and lyrical darkness, creating a relentless tension. That's not to say Wilco had smashed their acoustic guitars. At the invitation of Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora, Wilco and Billy Bragg were allowed into an archive that housed lyrics Guthrie had written but never set to music, resulting in the Grammy-nominated Mermaid Avenue (1998) as well as the BBC documentary Man in the Sand. A second volume of Mermaid Avenue followed in 2000 and met with less success....full text |
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