Wilco

Artist Rating: 89%

Peak Album Score: 24

Average Album Score: 23

Development Score: 8

- The band experimented with some sounds, then took them away.. yeah (oh and Nels Cline!!).

Originality Score: 8

- Very overrated here, but still quite original - the 'avant-garde' element only counts for so much.

Personal Bias Score: 26

- I'm only occasionally bored, and only occasionally thrilled, by the idea and reality of Wilco. But they're pretty consistently good, you know.

A.M. (1995) - 83%

I'm gonna be honest: I'm treading on unfamiliar ground with Wilco. I'm pretty sure this is the first band I've reviewed with practically no prior exposure (beyond hearing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot a couple times in the car), and it doesn't help that they're pretty much hallowed ground for the modern rock canon. What does help is that their super low-key debut simply isn't, being comparable to Radiohead's Pablo Honey in terms of respect, though clearly a large step above in terms of quality. In fact, I don't see why anyone chews this album up at all. Sure, the Neil Young influence is as clear as can be, but it isn't bothersome at all.. in fact, it's rather charming. Songs seem to either shoot for hooky, cute, sort of intimate country-inspired rock tunes, or faster, equally hooky barrock sort of deals, and both categories generally work. No songs on here totally blow me away, but there are a number of songs I'd be glad to come back to, particularly the opening sequence of tunes, which are a step stronger than the rest it seems. In fact, the songs seem to descend into more generic countrydom as the album progresses, though the songs are still well-done and cutely-performed enough for it all to get by. Anyway, the opening "I Must Be High" rocks convincingly, featuring a simplistic but super catchy verse melody that pretty much repeats throughout, with a harder rocking section breaking it up. "Casino Queen" rocks a bit dumber, but it's fun as shit, with a melody extremely reminiscent of something off Muswell Hillbillies, in fact.. probably an accidental ripoff, but anyway. "Box Full of Letters" barely has any country spirit in it at all, and might be the best-developed song here, with hooks implanted in Jeff Tweedy's vocal deliveries that might not even be songwriting-related, but get me nonetheless (actually, how great is that hook in the chorus, with the breaks?). "Shouldn't Be Ashamed", then, is pried straight from the Crazy Horse book, dirty guitars, Neil-style repetitive solo, nice aeolian hooks with thick semi-distorted chords underpinning everything, a success. Other successes include "Passenger Side", which paces along slowly and sort of movingly, including an even more obvious Neil tribute than "Shouldn't Be Ashamed" (the line "roll another number for the road; you're the only sober person I know"); and "Blue-Eyed Soul", which carries country vibes into the realm of the hip with a subdued 'underground' vocal delivery, but anyway it's pretty good. The album's not half-bad, haters.

- Highlights: "I Must Be High", "Casino Queen", "Box Full of Letters", "Shouldn't Be Ashamed", "Passenger Side"

Being There (1996) - 91%

Big sloppy double album! It's questionable what Wilco were trying to prove by this album's length so early in their career, but somehow they pull it off really dang well. Actually, it's really no wonder - this album is remarkably consistent, with pretty much all very good-to-great songs, and the performances are straight-ahead but exploding with patent-Wilco charisma from top to bottom. I'm not even remotely bothered by the (total Neil Young tribute) move of repeating "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" from side one as "Outta Mind (Outta Sight)" on side three, since, heck, it's one of my very favorite songs on the album, both versions have a lot to offer on the theme, and they're spaced out enough that I don't even feel cheated for hearing it twice. Anyway, the first of those, while on the topic, rocks pretty hard and is bursting at the seams with the enthusiasm that made certain tracks on A.M. so lovable, except this is a whole step above the best ones there. The latter, then, isn't quite low-key, but it hops along very cutely, same song but clear instrumentation, nice harmonies, the whole deal. Other big highlights for me are "Hotel Arizona", a tense, gradually growing number that explodes into loudness and a really cool riff towards the end; and the uncharacteristically dense "Monday", a pounding rocker with neat horn arrangements adorning the majority of the song. The songs that seem most uniquely Wilco, as their later albums seem to paint them, are the opening "Misunderstood", an extended (six minutes), very subdued, two-chord affair that manages a spare beauty very reminiscent (in this case a bit too close) of Neil's After the Goldrush, but with some wild noise here and there to make it edgy; and "Sunken Treasure" (seven minutes), a similar deal, but with a different vibe, in a way I'm having trouble characterizing.. perhaps a bit more ominous? Anyway, both are very effective songs, though I think a rabid fan of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would find them the best songs on the album, where I prefer the explosive pop tunes. But anyway, Being There is a big win for Wilco.

- Highlights: "Misunderstood", "Monday", "Outtasite (Outta Mind)", "Hotel Arizona", "Sunken Treasure", "Outta Mind (Outta Sight)"

Summerteeth (1999) - 90%

This album has all the architecture to be one of my all-time favorites: mellotrons, soaring harmonies, extremely likable vibes, etc. The country aspects of Being There are all gone, and that's kind of what I wanted, honestly... but something doesn't quite click here, and most of the songs aren't really up to the gold songwriting standard of "Outtasite (Outta Mind)", for instance. That said, a lot of them, heck, enough of them, are. The opening "Can't Stand It" is one of the best starters ever: bells, organs, mellotrons, nice guitar riffs, catchy grooves, simple and memorable vocal melody.. just perfect. "She's a Jar", then, is typical of this album, though successful on all counts. The melody is a bit non-existent, but the texture is just beautiful, this flute-imitating keyboard tone, clear-ringin' acoustic guitar, and all of it gives way to a huge, sweeping mellotron in the chorus.. it builds up perfectly, too. Things like "We're Just Friends", a straight-ahead piano ballad of passable prettiness but little else, or "Pieholden Suite", an ambitious flop attempting to sequence a bunch of decently pretty sections into a suite.. though none are outstanding, and the sequencing is clumsy as hell, just don't really sell Wilco for what they can do at their best. "I'm Always in Love", the title track, and "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (Again)", though, win me over in the same way as my favorites from Being There (but with even cooler orchestration and textures): by overwhelming me with excitement, straight-ahead pop-rock, hooks, etc. But most of the album, yeah, even "Pieholden Suite", gets by on textures, because the band is trying really hard in that area. "Via Chicago", the longest track by a long ways, is another interesting one, moody acoustic-driven mid-tempo song, disenchanted (in a good way, I guess) vocal delivery, that eventually builds into a noise-rock fest, though all the noise sounds basically overdubbed onto the original track, so it's a bit incongruous.

- Highlights: "Can't Stand it", "She's a Jar", "I'm Always in Love", "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (Again)", "Summerteeth"

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) - 95%

Let me be clear here: this review details why I don't think this album is perfect, and I didn't feel inclined to really get into the vast sea of positives, since everyone seems to be aware of those. I wasn't, though - I started the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot listening process pretty unenthused. My original complaints about this album still appear very reasonable to me, and still bother me if/when I think about this album the way I did at first. Until I get over the possibility of looking at the album as I did before, I don't think I can unabashedly shower praise on this album, but from the way I look at it now it deserves it! Anyway, to try and put in more concrete terms, one can either say that this album has at least nine fantastic little folksy rock songs of varying tempos and moods, all of which feature interesting-to-fascinating noises of all kinds intermittently which seriously enhance the dynamic and compositional aspects of each song. Yeah, the chords in "Ashes of American Flags" are beautiful, but without that soaring electric guitar part that pops in here and there, or the mellotron on the chorus, would it be quite as great? Sometimes things are real subtle: "Kamera", a super low-key acoustic-driven rocker, has a little plinky percussive instrument being hit along with the song occasionally, and I find it adorable; "Heavy Metal Drummer", a bouncy, rather catchy pop tune, has that 12-string guitar, the occasional piano, and those random synth flourishes after the chorus. Sometimes the additions overpower the actual song: "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" is a cute enough refrain repeated for seven minutes, but the bells, drums, wobbly rhodes, piano countermelody, weird metal object, and the watery echo at the end all augment the song, building it into something kind of glorious. But another side of me finds it really easy to see through all of that junk. And what I've heard again and again is that beneath all the noises, the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are superb in their own right, even when the noises seem extraneous (which, as I said, a significant part of me is having trouble with: are these embellishments integral parts of the songs or experimental studio additions?). Are they? Yeah, they're all pretty good, but they've mostly got some nagging issues. "War on War" has some beautiful aspects, for instance (the guitar part that pops up here and there; the rising texture on the "You've got to lose" refrain), but the verse length kind of kills me when I try actually focusing on the vocal melody (which I'm forced to the first time, at least; "it's a war on war" is repeated like seven times), the bassline is kind of clumsy, the piano riff at the beginning and before subsequent verses isn't really catchy at all... anyway, these complaints are all pretty much overshadowed by the splendid beauty of everything else going on, but I'm still bothered a bit. And sometimes I lapse into being bothered by "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" and "Radio Cure"'s very self-aware artsiness; and the closing "Reservations" actively bothers me (partially because the texture drags on for four spare minutes, partially because of the general 'look I'm being emotional' vibe, and even because of that weird moment in one of the choruses where the band skips half a beat and ends up on the offbeat for the rest of the song... if that was intentional it sounds clumsy as shit), even though the basis of its chorus is pretty dang beautiful. It's all taking cues from Neil Young, but the lyrics here don't hold up like the old grouch's himself - in fact, they all sound kind of random, and that bothers me too, when I listen in. But I'm only listing negatives here because you can find the scores of positives listed in anyone else's discussions of this album. Yeah, the songs all kind of come together into a really rootsy, but also really intricate texture, the melodies range from fairly memorable to extremely memorable, and the album is brilliantly sequenced, but I'm not sure I'll ever get to a place where I can worship this record.

- Highlights: "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", "Kamera", "Radio Cure", "Jesus, etc.", "Ashes of American Flags", "Heavy Metal Drummer", "I'm the Man Who Loves You", "Poor Places"

A Ghost Is Born (2004) - 80%

Breakthrough? Nah. Gotta say, I don't really get the huge appeal this one. Okay, I get the huge appeal of "Hummingbird" - it's really fucking good, from the Beatlesque piano stompin', minor fourth chord-abusing, string-augmented groove, to the wonderful violin jam that closes the song out (and the totally unexpected ending chord), and "Theologians" might be the hardest-hitting Wilco song I've heard. But otherwise? It's alright. Few songs, if any, do as much for me as anything on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Alright, "Muzzle of Bees" goes somewhere - that crescendo at the end is sick - and "At Least That's What You Said" sports such a spot-on Neil Young guitar imitation that I can't help but smile, but I gotta say, I'm underwhelmed. "Wishful Thinking" has a charming quaintness to it, and that organ in the background brings back haunts of YHF, though the melody recalls that of "Heavy Metal Drummer" pretty strongly as well; and "Company in My Back" shares the same quaintness, actually. In any case, the album's real shaky aspect is the questionable presence of two really long tracks. The first, the ten-minute guitar jam "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" is actually pretty good considering what it is - yeah, it gets old, but the groove is nice, and the playing is good in the same vein as the opener. The big stinker, then, is "Less Thank You Think", which begins as a pretty decent piano ballad and ends as twelve minutes of incoherent studio noise. The fact that both King Crimson and Wilco pulled this sort of thing makes me think there's a certain quality they have in common... Anyway, the rather stylistically-schizophrenic rocker "I'm a Wheel" is pretty weak as well, even if the chorus itself threatens at moments to be great. On the whole, I guess the album has a good number of memorable tracks, it just happens to be bogged down by some huge piles of shit. Shame.

- Highlights: "Muzzle of Bees", "Hummingbird", "Wishful Thinking", "Company in My Back", "Theologians"

Sky Blue Sky (2007) - 91%

Well, this is quite a change, and quite a surprise. And to think I've heard such awful things about Sky Blue Sky, that it's the first openly dull Wilco album, that it lacks all of the things that made Wilco stand out before! Well, they always stood out to me because they're good fucking songwriters, let the cool, innovative noises rot. I'll take this over A Ghost Is Born any day of the week, and will probably listen to it more than Summerteeth and maybe even Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (heresy!) in the future. Alright, the second half is a bit slow.. but the difference between slow tracks here and their equivalents on its predecessor is that the slow tracks here nonetheless attempt to be something more than bare-bones 'emotional' material. I appreciate arrangement, sounds aside from Tweedy's voice and a piano, interesting chord changes, and a melody that moves a little bit. Alright, so "Shake It Off" is mostly kind of lame (though dig those little rhythmic breaks), and "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)" is perhaps too sweet to stand out at all, but "Walken", straightforward and relatively normal as it may be, is loaded with neat little hooks, textural ones (throwing in all those guitars towards the end, or just the short breaks earlier on, to alternate with the piano), harmonic ones (the little lydian fills here and there) - the types of things that indicate great songcraft. The opening five songs, then, constitute one of the best stretches of Wilco ever. "Either Way" is almost too peaceful, until new guitarist Nels Cline throws in this ridiculously beautiful jazz guitar solo, after which the song sort of grows and falls softly back into place. "You Are My Face" recalls "Suzanne" at the outset, and then, again, Cline takes the listener away somewhere else. The subsequent guitar-led section rocks so hard, so convincingly, and with so much ingenuity.. I swear, Nels Cline might be the best guitarist ever to be in a rock band, and this is just two songs in. "Impossible Germany" follows a similar trajectory, though the listener is submerged in a sea of harmonized guitars from the outset, and, after a memorable sequence of mellow verses, into an incredible three-minute guitar solo to close it off. I usually don't like this kind of thing (I didn't like it as much on A Ghost Is Born), but Cline is ridiculously good, and I cherish every second. The title track is pretty as anything, but the album highlight for me is probably "Side with the Seeds", a stunning piano-driven waltz sort of epitomizing what the previous album wished it could do. Then, of course, Cline comes in around 1:30 and tears things up, leading the band into a minute-long crescendo that's simply one of the coolest things ever.. until the last minute of the song, another guitar-led break, this time building into, again, one of the best guitar solos I've ever heard. So the news is Wilco is back to songwriting, and somehow became a guitar hero band in the process.

- Highlights: "Either Way", "You Are My Face", "Impossible Germany", "Sky Blue Sky", "Side with the Seeds", "Walken", "On and On and On"

Wilco (The Album) (2009) - 87%
Alright, then, this might be a bit too understated for my tastes. On the whole it ain't much worse than most great Wilco, but Wilco (The Album) lacks something in the energy department. Though it isn't at all in the same way as with A Ghost Is Born, really - there things were a bit morbidly still, here they're just real complacent. One more thing: where the hell did Nels go? One reason my mind was blown on a substantial portion of Sky Blue Sky was his guitar heroics, and here they're basically absent all around. Huge letdown for me. But anyway, the songwriting is pretty solid: the opening "Wilco (The Song)" is almost too cute, as a lil' pop-rocker dedicated to Wilco's fans, promising to love them; "Sonny Feeling" has perhaps the most genial verse melody on the album; and "Deeper Down" carries a subtle tension, and interestingly breaks after every verse... it's actually kind of hard for me to remember things about these songs, which isn't a great sign. Oh, except the closing "Everlasting Everything", which not only reaches for some instrumental grandiosity (and succeeds), but brings back some Cline guitar madness at the very end, though it's subtler than before. Anyway, the songs are good enough... you get the point.

- Highlights: "Deeper Down", "You Never Know", "Sonny Feeling", "Everlasting Everything"

The Whole Love (2011) - 92%
In all honesty, I think it's harder for me to get excited about this album because I've listened intently to Wilco (The Album) and Sky Blue Sky and A Ghost Is Born and.. heck, extending all the way back. Wilco is a bit samey. That said, this album steps firmly out of the relative mire of Wilco (The Album) - that is, the band is back in weirdo mode, at least part of the time. In any case, it works wonders on the opening "Art of Almost", probably the coolest Wilco track since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The song launches straight into a rather interesting groove backed by mellotrons and an array of electronic noises, growing into a sort of rhythmically stimulating update of the longer tracks on YHF. My other favorite is "Born Alone", which begins as a pretty typical Wilco rocker and grows into something substantially larger, with soaring guitars, keyboards and the like. Those two aside, the majority of the album is more of the same, in a sense, but more consistently and a bit more interestingly than usual. In fact, this is probably my second favorite Wilco album...the only reason I sound so unable to describe it is it's also the last one (so far). Ah, well the closing track is something new. Yeah, the 12-minute "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" is a real surprise, not because of its length but because, despite its length and near-total monotony, it manages not to bore the shit out of me. On the contrary, I find the atmosphere pretty captivating, and that main guitar hook real catchy after a while. Success.

- Highlights: "Art of Almost", "Born Alone"