Wilco
A Ghost is Born
(Nonesuch, 2004)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that on their two studio albums since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Wilco has gone in a decreasingly experimental direction.

Jeff Tweedy is likely bored of contradicting statements like that; he’s done so incessantly in interviews since the release of 2007’s Sky Blue Sky. Tweedy argues that people conflate experimental and noise and have “misused that term [experimental] a lot” (Pitchfork). The query What is experimental music? is too broad—and pointless—for the task at hand; but the public perception and inter-album comparison of Wilco’s music is paramount. (Usual disclaimer about everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but…)

When A Ghost is Born was released, the tendency of critics was, naturally, to compare it to Wilco’s previous effort, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002), the mythic record that was sold twice to the same company and contained prescient details about September 11th. (The story has been written many times elsewhere if you haven’t heard it). While most contended that Ghost was a decent effort for such a daunting follow-up task, a few said it was better than Foxtrot and a few said it was rotten. According to Pitchfork, the record was 3.4 points worse than Foxtrot (a perfect 10), while Rolling Stone estimated both albums (in fact, nearly all Wilco albums) to be worth four of five stars. But Robert Christgau, the very picky, very blunt critic, described the problem many Foxtrot fans faced: “It’s hard to imagine any of the suckers who fell for the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot hype striving to identify with, say, ‘Muzzle of Bees.’” And that’s the problem. Beneath the media hoopla and studio fireworks, Wilco was doing what they do: Crafting rock songs and playing around with formats. They continued in this direction on Ghost, but some of their choices and attempts at rock songs confused recent converts who were faced with a record that ostensibly lacked an immediately-catchy, single-worthy tune like Foxtrot’s “Heavy Metal Drummer.”

A bulk of the negative criticism was directed at easy targets: “Less Than You Think” and “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”, two sonically-polar, 10-plus-minute anchors on the record. Near bookends, each explores the pulse of panic and takes inspiration from Tweedy’s notorious migraines: “Less Than You Think” begins as a standard-issue ballad, but the music ceases and the noise (or “experimental” section, if you like) creeps in, slowly building and fading during the latter 12 minutes of the song; “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” steadily chugs along on a one-chord vamp—peppered by Tweedy’s abrasive noodling crackling like dry spaghetti—and occasionally releases tension through a simple, descending, guitar-driven progression.

So let’s find a way to compare these divisive songs to a representative pair of Foxtrot numbers: “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” and “Heavy Metal Drummer.” It’s well-known that multi-instrumentalist/producer Jay Bennett was kicked out of Wilco after Foxtrot was completed, and with him went the gear and a lot of the intricately-knit production methods. So with Ghost being the product of a refurbished studio, any comparison between it and Foxtrot is inherently flawed. Furthermore, Tweedy was shying away from the multitude of production tricks used on Foxtrot, as he told Rolling Stone, “I got nervous about the technology on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot […] If you need a certain amp or pedal to make a song what it is, it isn’t a song.”

In line with Tweedy’s point, it’s fairer to compare the albums’ songs in a neutral field: Live. For that purpose there’s the album Kicking Television, which contains nearly equal amounts of Ghost and Foxtrot material. What is important to note are the knob-twiddled numbers that survive the transition from studio to stage: The opening cacophony of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” is recreated perfectly, with tight, measured disarray; and “Heavy Metal Drummer” succeeds without the assistance of a looped drum sample. These are definitely “songs” by Tweedy’s criteria. “Less Than You Think” is omitted—it wouldn’t go over well in a live setting—it’s probably not a song. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” feels unstable, not as consistent, rigid, or urgent as the studio version. So it turns out it’s a non-song. Still, it’s a damn fine non-song.

I appreciate Tweedy’s point, but my ears still prefer the studio compositions over live songs, so this fair-and-balanced comparison fails. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” has found a place in my musical rotation as one of the best over-all traveling songs: On my very first listen to the record, the song got going just as I boarded an uptown N/R train on lower Broadway and was still playing when I got off in Midtown; a little more than a month later, the song helped me drive across the country—my brother confirms the idea, noting that it’s a great number to listen to while walking.

“Less Than You Think” isn’t my favorite, but it doesn’t drive me into a rage the way it does some fans. It’s at least a gentler ride than any of the four sides that constituted Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. And when an entire faction of listeners spill a cup of piss over one 12-minute noise collage, they’re missing the fact that it’s only a portion of the album—offset by poppy numbers like “Theologians” and “Company in My Back”—and a mere blip in the band’s complete catalogue.