Issue date: 5/3/02 Section: Features

I don't know if it was college or the South that introduced me to my new love: alt-country. Granted, Wilco has come a long way from their alt-country beginnings as Uncle Tupelo; but like a bad hair-dye job, the roots still show the same old colors. From their first album A.M. to 1999's Summerteeth, the "country" part became much more obscured—never, however, to a fault.

Musical tension grounds much of Western music, and personal tension generally breeds the most effective and evocative songwriting. Interpersonal tension, then, might then yield an even more powerful musical performance. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has tension in spades. First of all, Warner Bros. Records refused to release the album, because it might fail commercially. Wilco was forced to buy their own creation for fifty grand and pedal it to various record labels. Finally, Nonesuch records, who deal primarily in modern jazz, picked it up. Jay Bennet, a founding member of the band added to the interpersonal tension as he left the band over creative differences and decisions made regarding YHF. The personal tension in Jeff Tweedy's lyrics shows through clearly, and you need only listen to the album to hear the musical tension.

Fans of Mermaid Avenue might be surprised to hear static and noise juxtaposed with a clear and fairly melodic guitar riff on the first track, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart." With lyrics that sound like they might be taken from a drunken walk home after closing time, it is unquestionably Wilco. A few lyrical missteps fail to mar the otherwise solid opening to the album. It ends in a wall of noise which abruptly stops as "Kamera" starts up.

Here, the listener finds Wilco in Summerteeth form with a quality sing along chorus. Said chorus sets the tone of the CD, as "No it's not o.k." haunts the remaining nine tracks. "Radio Cure" represents the extreme of the band's experimentation on this outing and is probably quite inaccessible to newer listeners, but fans will definitely appreciate it.

"War on War" steers away from these experimental tendencies, but traces of the "new" Wilco are very evident. To be honest, I think this song is a weaker moment on the album, but it is still a necessary component to the whole. Maybe it seems sub-par because the next song, "Jesus, etc," is Wilco at their very finest. Jumpy strings accompany this hesitant and timid love song, and lyrical gems abound.

Another foray into the noisy static follows the simplicity of "Jesus." "Heavy Metal Drummer," the obligatory pop song, brings the casual listener back into the conversation.

"I'm the Man Who Loves You" continues the wonderfully catchy dialogue started on the previous track, adding a prominent new voice in the form of blistering Neil Young-esque guitar solos. The marriage of experimentation and accessibility comes into the stable (yet sad) last three tracks. While sad, it ends on a hopeful note: "I've got reservations / about so many things / but not about you." And with that, it disintegrates into noise and shortwave radio static.

YHF might be the best album I have ever heard. Of course, Wilco happens to be one of my favorite bands, and my opinion is a little biased. It certainly kicks the pants off anything else I listened to this year, and probably last year, too. It certainly is what real critics say. But they leave out the fact that to the non-fans, that is, the uninitiated, YHF probably sounds like a pile of crap. So while I remain speechless, you might not.

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