April 23, 2002 by A.S. Van Dorston

Jeff Tweedy never ceases to amaze. Contrary to the typical pattern in rock where artists attract attention early in the career when they burn brightly and quickly burn out, Tweedy’s career initially smoldered as the weaker link in Uncle Tupelo and then gradually grew in stature. Even Wilco’s second well-received double album Being There (1996) was a modest campfire compared to Summerteeth‘s (1999) house fire. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finds him full ablaze with virtually no peer. What makes today’s Wilco a welcome antidote to the crushing mediocrity of most artists influenced by Uncle Tupelo and early Wilco, is madness. One would think a seemingly well-adjusted Midwestern family man would have pretty mundane concerns. But Tweedy has managed to tap into his inner madman to create a devastatingly emotional landscape, complete with eerie creaks and quivers as it threatens to crumble down around our grateful ears.

While Summerteeth took tentative stabs at murderous urges and drug references, Yankee completely slays. With its disorientating psychedelic flourishes and sometimes loose song structures that threaten to unravel before pulling a deadly hook out of its sleeve at the last minute, the album is Wilco’s version of Sister Lovers with tasty embellishments of 60s psych-pop (Love, Small Faces’ Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake), Can and Captain Beefheart’s Clear Spot. Despite Jim O’Rourke’s avant-ish mix job, the album is highly accessible. No matter how much songs like “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” “Ashes of American Flags” and “Poor Places” may stray from the path, they are all rooted in timeless melodicism. And just when you think the songs have said their piece, when you’re used to most songs repeating another chorus and ending, they slyly become beautifully noisy whirling dervish freakouts. From this description one would expect perhaps to hear some sort of electronica-tinged space rock album. But Yankee is still very much rootsy, firmly establishing its new form of Americana as the blueprint of the coming decade’s classic rock. This is still guitar, drums, bass and voice based rock, of such a powerful sort so as to make people like Ryan Adams and Pete Yorn sound like clueless nostalgists, desperately clinging to their Replacements albums while the world leaves them behind.

Wilco has the kind of mix of eccentricity and soul that can’t be left behind. Who else could have created such a simple classic as the stunning, moving “Jesus, etc.”? “Tall buildings shake, voices escape, singing sad, sad songs to two chords/ Strung down your cheeks, bitter melodies turning your orbit around.” The arrangement is minimal, Tweedy’s voice cracked and plaintive. It’s a masterpiece. “Radio Cure” starts out as a limping, dragging depression ballad and gradually ascends to an uplifting chorus to the words “Long distance has a way/Of making love understandable.” “Heavy Metal Drummer,” “I’m The Man Who Loves You” and “Pot Kettle Black” display an arsenal of hooks, catchy pop genius that will inevitably prove on the radio to millions what numbskulls the Reprise suits are. “I’m The Man…” is particularly impressive, like a dream team-up between Neil Young and John Lennon in 1970. The album closes with another classic, the elegiac “Reservations,” with perfectly placed strings, keyboards and cymbols. “I’ve got reservations/About so many things,” he sings, “But not about you.” Indeed, Tweedy’s private confidence translates well into our rare luxury of being able to rely on a current band for ever-increasing quality.