Lost albums radiate with a forbidden enchantment regardless of their merit. Shrouded in a cloak of hearsay mystery, they slowly circulate as the myths behind their existence and disappearance mutate and swell.
Since Dylan's "Basement Tapes," the allure of listening to an album that's presence has been established without an official release remains one of rock and roll's purest phenomena, a reassurance that the music community will create means of distributing an album when a record company falters.
Unlike "The Basement Tapes," though, lost albums usually create expectations unfulfilled by their inherent virtues. The recent memory of Whiskeytown's pleasant but underachieving "Pneumonia" and Dave Matthews Band's painfully over-exaggerated "departure" in this summer's Lillywhite demos pay due testament here.
Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is a different story.
Anticipation for the album justifiably reached a mild fervor when the band entered the studio in early June. Aside from Beck, no other artists had so drastically changed their sound over a trajectory of three albums - from the heartfelt but overly Uncle Tupelo-derivative alt-country of "A.M." to the sprawling synthesis of classic rock and twang of "Being There," and finally to the lush, distorted pop of "Summer Teeth," a spiritual successor to "Pet Sounds." Wilco enlisted noise-pop experimentalist and Sonic Youth utility player Jim O'Rourke to mix this album, describing it as being just like "Summer Teeth" only in that it would sound nothing like its preceding album. Wilco was setting the stage for another musical triumph - then the stage collapsed.
Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy dismissed drummer Ken Coomer, a compatriot of Tweedy since Uncle Tupelo's "Anodyne," because his roots rock-oriented drumming style didn't congeal with the band's new direction. A few months later lead guitarist Jay Bennet, a creative stalwart who expanded his creative control with each album, announced his decision to leave Wilco, putting into question his role in "YHF."
After the band turned the final product in to Reprise, the brilliant powers that be decided the album was too "experimental" and asked Tweedy to make the album more accessible, to which Tweedy responded that the album was finished. In response, Wilco bought the album back from Reprise and embarked on an extensive crusade to select the right label.
Meanwhile, a copy of the album leaked from Reprise found its way to Wilco fans before spreading to the Internet this fall.
A lost album was born.
After a meandering journey that threatened to kill the band and the album, "YHF" has finally arrived in record stores, but the inevitable lingers: with such legendary baggage, can it possibly live up to inflated anticipation?
Absolutely. Without exaggeration, "YHF" is a masterpiece, scantily rivaled by any album since "Kid A" or "The Soft Bulletin."
"YHF" results from a band at the peak of creativity, creating an album thematically and sonically cohesive while vibrant, with 11 songs among which none possess weakness and none succumb to repetition.
"I am Trying to Break Your Heart" finds Tweedy drunk and ambiguously heartbroken, stumbling down a city street tossing off stream of consciousness thoughts: "I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue / I'm hiding out in the big city blinking." The music literally echoes the blinking city with static distortion, jaunted percussion, acoustic strums, vibes and bells.
"Kamera" and "War on War" capture the band rekindling the keen pop of "Summer Teeth," but this time the rhythm section reverberates with a much tighter, vibrant pace to accompany Tweedy, himself more vocally restrained and at his most poignant lyrically. "You're gonna lose, you have to lose / You have to learn how to die if you want to be alive," he sings, touching on the thoughts of aging scattered throughout the album.
"Poor Places" begins simply with Tweedy musing on his father, teasing the listener with gradual, slight bass interjections and simple keyboards that finally culminate in a harmony from "The White Album" and a dizzying finale.
"YHF" eschews the shackles of misery, though. "Heavy Metal Drummer," densely layered with a soundscape of synths and jangly guitars and driven by Glenn Kotche's playful drumming, juxtaposes messages of nostalgia with the music's glitzy, futuristic flash. On "I'm the Man Who Loves You," Tweedy rides a thunderous Neil Young riff into a flowing jam of acoustic folk, electric funk and brass decadence.
All the experimentation reaches an apex on "Jesus, etc.," Wilco's most captivating moment put to tape. Vibes and an aching steel guitar weave in and out of the song while a taut violin provides Tweedy with the perfect atmosphere to unravel his heart. "Don't cry / You can rely on me honey / You can come by anytime you want / I'll be around / You were right about the stars, each one is a setting sun," his crackled voice sings, weary enough to make each word heartbreaking.
"YHF" may lose some of the attractiveness it cultivated as a secretly distributed lost album, but it does so in a trade-off for a more prestigious title: an instant classic.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
