Published on Jun 22, 2004
One of the biggest challenges any artist faces is following up
success. Your audience might have been wowed last time, but what
have you done to impress us lately?
Wilco’s 2002 disc
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was one of the great albums of the
young century, an album of experimentalist alt-country that’s
bizarre enough to puzzle, grounded enough to move, and clever
enough to delight an audience prepared to accept its quirks. Its
rescue from the major-label dungeon and issuance as an acclaimed
independent album is one of the great music industry
David-and-Goliath stories of recent years.
A Ghost Is Born is a sequel of sorts, another album of odd
and beautiful Jeff Tweedy compositions that materialize out of the
sonic fog like apparitions to dance in our imaginations and then
disappear again. The ruling aesthetic is simple; the rules don’t
exist for Wilco anymore. If a song sounds right played a little
sloppy — as many of these do — leave it. If the mood strikes and
the band feels like tacking a 12-minute droning ambient-feedback
section onto an otherwise fairly inconsequential three-minute song
(e.g. the ironically-titled “Less Than You Think”), go for it. For
better or for worse — and there will inevitably be partisans on
both sides of that one — convention is a straightjacket this band
has left behind
My vote is for “better.” Otherwise how could we ever be treated
to endless dreamscapes like the shambling, magnificent “Spiders
(Kidsmoke),” the only song I have ever heard that could best be
described as psychedelic progressive Americana. Almost eleven
minutes long, it goes through multiple transformations that include
trance-y electronica, rumbly/noodly country-rock chording,
hallucinogenic lyrics (“Spiders are singing in the salty breeze /
Spiders are filling out tax returns / Spinning out webs of
deductions and melodies / On a private beach in Michigan”), a
driving rock and roll chorus that has no words until the very last
repeat, and a pair of psychotic-break guitar solos that would raise
Jimi Hendrix’s eyebrows. To be honest, I’m not quite sure how this
will hold up after 20 listenings, but after four, it sounds pretty
damned awesome.
Truth be told, Wilco can be a bit frightening to listen to.
There’s an aura of lunatic genius about Tweedy, the sense that
you’re in the presence of the kind of unhinged musical savant who
is half brilliant and half alarming. There are moments of quiet,
incomparable beauty in tracks like the pastoral ballad “Muzzle Of
Bees,” the wonderfully textured “Company In My Back,” and the sad,
steady-building, ultimately cathartic opener “At Least That’s What
You Said.” And then there are moments of swirling, atonal guitar
feedback that made me grin and cringe and talk to my speakers like
a drunk at a bad movie, saying: “Dude, get a grip!”
“Handshake Drugs,” despite containing one of the aforementioned
feedback-laden “solos,” is one of this album’s finer constructions,
a gently rollicking tune whose sweet sing-song melody line carries
a faint echo of
YHF‘s charming “Heavy Metal Drummer.” An intriguing choice
for a song that appears to be about Tweedy’s well-publicized pill
addiction… three minutes of pretty followed by a two-minute
nervous breakdown.
A word about the writing. Many of these tracks are once again
somewhat abstract poems that defy deciphering (“Hide your soft
skin; your sorrow is sunshine; listen to my eyes / They are hissing
radiator tunes” goes one verse). Nonetheless, there are some great
lines here: “What would we be without wishful thinking?” “The sun
gets passed from sea to sea.” “When the devil came / He was not red
/ He was chrome and he said / Come with me.” Madness and genius
have never been far apart, and rarely closer than in the studio
with Wilco.
A key part of what made
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot a great album was its rock and roll
heart. Yes, the album had a distinct alt-country/Americana tinge,
but its essential attitude was all rock and roll, as in “Screw
convention and screw you – we’re doing this our way, and you can
either get it or get off the bus. NOW.”
A Ghost Is Born carries that attitude on with admirable
determination. And while the approach isn’t quite as fresh this
time — how could it be? — it remains compelling in the hands of
an artist as talented and apparently fearless as Jeff Tweedy.