Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
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Free Music Notes for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Free Music Review: Quiet giants...
Hit: 5 Stars
Wilco never seems to falter. With every album they never cease to amaze my ears with intelligent, thoughtful lyrics and unusual melodies. Their sound is not only innovative, but it is also refreshing as well. Each song feels as if it is a cocktail of folk, rock, country, and alternative influences mixed with unique and sometimes offbeat background sound samples. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" delivers the essential Tweedy magic we all know and love, but also elaborates on it.Before I listened to this record, I thought that "Summerteeth" was my favorite Wilco album. Now...I'm confused and not so sure. "YHF" has quickly caught up with it. The standout song for me is "Ashes of American Flags." It is one of the more openly plaintively mellow tracks on the album, and I believe that is has a few of the best lines on the whole disc--"All my lies are always wishes/I know I would die if I could come back new", as one example. Also, "Jesus, Etc." is an excellent song--the instrumentals alone are exquisite, unexpected, and most certainly unique.
Probably my favorite thing about Wilco is Jeff Tweedy's incredible way of putting emotion into lyrics that are smart in ways unlike many other artists out there. The metaphors and mental images his words evoke are breaths of fresh modern air.
Where most bands from this generation continue to churn out dated shots at greatness, Wilco's albums have no timeline. Every album sounds as perfect as it did when released. Other bands seem to try to hard to be brilliant (if they even try). With Wilco, poetic statements in song just seem to flow naturally in cohesion with each other. I think that their albums are filled with music to live by or with or in that cannot be just merely "listened" to. They become a soundtrack to life, an extension of everyone's experience. Most songs of today don't even aspire to be so much.
I may be a little overzealous with my analyzation, but such excitement is warranted with this record.
Free Music Review: One of the best albums I own
Hit: 5 Stars
As a Wilco fan before this album came out, I followed the drama of its release in various music publications and on the Web. I had heard that this was a different album from the previous releases and the descriptions of it told me some of what they did but there was no way for me to know how it would really sound. It supposedly was a "concept" album that wouldn't appeal to the masses. At least that is what the corporate suits seemed to be saying. What they meant was that they thought couldn't make money on it. This made me even more intrigued because I didn't want a cookie cutter album that matched everything else on the charts (not like any of their other albums fit this description).
I bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the day it was released and I have never felt better about a music purchase that I knew so little about beyond the soap opera of making it. I had maybe heard some live bootleg tracks from it, if that. Straight out of the case, on first listen, I was a believer. Most albums take a few listens from me to make a judgement on if I like it. Not this one. The sound is not inaccessible, even if it is different. There is a great flow and the song order is great and, even though there is no real "radio single" on the album, it doesn't matter. If I put this album on, I turn it up loud and listen to the layers and intricacies of the pieces that come together into the wonderful whole.
As for the suits, they were right to a point. This is not an album that will be loved by the masses. It isn't for everybody. But really, what album is? Some have bigger followings than others and some of the smaller followings are more fervent. I encourage everyone to give this album a chance because if you do like it, you will probably love it.
And if you already liked Wilco's earlier stuff, you will probably like this album. But you might not because it is a change. But it fits into the path of evolution of this band and oh, what a wonderful sound they have become.
Free Music Review: a paxil-loving pet sounds
Hit: 5 Stars
Enough has been written about this album to fill a Proust novel. Sure the record was finished a year before it was released. Sure the same label ended up paying for it twice (after being dropped by a major and then picked up by a subsidiary of the major). Sure critics have been wetting themselves since leaks and live sets started showcasing songs nearly two years ago now. Bottom line is, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a great record. It chirps and buzzes like Radiohead and the Flaming Lips. It rollicks like the Replacements used to and the Strokes do now. It's as heart-felt as a Neal Young album, as universal as Sonic Youth at their broadest strokes, as expansive as the late Beatles, and yet as simple and tender as early Joni Mitchell. And it does it all at once.The first track, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" picks up where "She's a Jar" left off, wistfully abusing a pop melody. The latter's line, "you know she begs me not to hit her" completes a wash of romanticized images the same way the I Am Trying does before ending on an endless negative mantra worthy of a Nirvana song. Great simple pop songs like "Kamera," "War on War" and "Heavy Metal Drummer" are gracefully interspersed with sparse compositions like "Radio Cure," where singer Tweedy croons, "there is something wrong with me," as if he were terminally pensive. Two songs later he tries to cheer up Christ, singing, "Jesus don't cry, you can rely on me honey." And the timely (although written long before 9/11) "Ashes of American Flags" goes somewhere in between, stating simply, "I want a good life, with a nose for things / a fresh wind and bright sky to endure my suffering."
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is probably as close to a Paxil-loving Pet Sounds as we'll ever see. It's something to aspire to, and something to celebrate amidst all the tattered pop clichés. It's a hype worth the wear, a box of tunes worth the listen, an independent triumph, and a achievement that proves American ingenuity goes on despite all the warnings of life during wartime.
Free Music Review: In Defense of Wilco
Hit: 5 Stars
I wholeheartedely and unappoligetically love Wilco. I love ever album that they have ever made, and even love the DVD's that they have released. I also do not consider myself a pretentious intellectual with an indier than thou mentality. I love all kinds of music, but Wilco just happens to be my favorite band, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is my favorite album.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was released four years ago and I still listen to it all the time. There is not a weak or wasted moment on the entire album. YHF starts off with possibly the bleakest song in the Wilco catalogue, the haunting and poetic I Am Tring to Break Your Heart. Right from the get go, if your a fan of Wilco's earlier material you might be turned off by the noise and production techniques on this album. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart features plenty of noise and dissonance to go along with the haunting lyrics. I urge you to give it a chance and listen to it a few times, because the material is complex and it takes time to sink in.
From there the album lightens up, with songs that are catchy and warm, even a bit romantic. The most surprising part of this album is that it is incredibly catchy despite all the noise and dissonance in the production. Heavy Metal Drummer is a nostalgic tune about getting started in rock and roll, Ashes of American Flags is a slow and touching ballad with a great soundscape.
Overall I feel that this album is a classic and the best album to come along so far this decade. Some have critcized the production by claiming that it takes away from the songs and is distracting. I feel completely opposite. I think that the noise and production enhance the songs. As Jay Bennett said about the production "we didn't want to make just a bunch of folk songs, we wanted something more." So I recommend this to Wilco fans and fans of groups like Radiohead, Pink Floyd, and Brian Eno. But I urge you to give it a chance, even if you struggle with it in the beginning.
Free Music Review: THank you Tweedy and gang...
Hit: 5 Stars
The only thing better than this album is Wilco's live set. I was a bit baffled by the crowd, however. They played almost 3 full sets and got the best reaction at the end when they were plugging through standard versions of their old standards (at one point Tweedy quit altogether and let the crowd sing 'Passenger Side'). While Tweedy is undeniably one of the most talented "alt-country" (the very phrase makes me shiver with nausea) songwriters of his generation, he is not at all one dimensional. The new album very clearly recognizes several facets of music making that are foreign to your typical folky songster; namely the existence of Jazz and Classical music and, more importantly, the possibility of a deconstructionist and experimental approach to writing and recording. Yankee HOtel is packed with Folk-Pop tunes that have been butchered, stripped, hosed-down and then rebuilt. Sometimes they maintain their basic integrity, other times they only let out an echo of their original form, but the results are always fascinating and engaging.
Now, back to the live show: The only thing more engaging than the Foxtrot album is to see them present the results of this songbuilding process live. The most fascinating performances were of "Misunderstood" and "Sunken Treasure", the opening tracks of their double release Being There. The compositions they played at times travelled miles from the original recording, allowing the song's first form to be a landmark, something to take off from, or possibly, to return to. But having in mind a more basic song structure (like the ones on the album), the reconstructed versions were even more beautiful to hear than the efforts on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (the live versions more closely adhered to their recorded form).
So, the album is a landmark for rock music. It opens the door to a new approach to making music; one that is fluid and possessing endless possibilities. Truly refreshing. And to Tweedy and Gang, As far as the "new direction" goes, run in it.