Review Summary: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reveals a band trying very hard to reach greatness, but only getting halfway there.
The story is legendary: a band records an album, it gets rejected by their record company, they buy the record from them, and then sell it to a smaller company owned by their previous record company. Perhaps, this will be Wilco’s claim to fame. This could be what gets them into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame. Of course, the story wouldn’t be nearly as memorable if the actual album was a failure. On the contrary, most critics have done nothing but rave about the famous Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. They saw it as the perfect culmination of the album-to-album evolution that Wilco has gone through. The country-alt rockers seemed to not turn away from their past, but rather embrace it and combine it with new influences, mainly that of produce Jim O’Rourke’s expertise in the field of noise. To many, the combination of Jeff Tweedy’s and Jay Bennet’s songwriting combined with O’Rourke resulted in a masterpiece. But is there substance to this claim? Kind of.
As already mentioned, much has been said about the usage of noise throughout the album. While the addition of noise can do wonders to add to the quality of a song, in the case of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, all it seems to do is cover up the blandness found within many songs on this album. Stripped down to its barest form, the opening track,
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart would reveal itself to be nothing more than the same three chords played repeatedly for almost seven minutes. In terms of singing, Tweedy uses the same melody for each verse, and only decides to change things up for the chorus. While this is obviously not a terrible idea in concept, a song that follows this structure needs to be emotionally gripping, and it needs to remain interesting throughout. This is where the song fails miserably, the lowest point being when Tweedy actually says, directed to an ex, "take off your bandaid ‘cause I don’t believe in touchdowns."
Besides that abysmal line, the song is filled with other bad poetry that make the entire noise-folk-rock concept behind it come off as nothing but pretentious. And this is just the first song. Of course, when you consider the rest of the album, the lyrics are not that bad. In fact, there are many inspired lyrical moments found throughout, especially in
Jesus, Etc. and
Pot Kettle Black, which features Tweedy remarking quite cleverly: "I myself have found a real rival in myself. I am hoping for a rearrival of my health. Well, it’s clever if you ignore the fact that “rearrival” is not a word.
In terms of the musical quality of the album, Wilco have created a very inconsistent collection of songs. What is most striking about this album is how the best songs are the ones that have almost no reliance on studio effects.
I’m The Man Who Loves You,
Pot Kettle Black, and
War on War are irresistibly catchy songs. These songs are layered with melody upon melody, essentially creating a beautiful aural collage by the time they are finished. The extremely calming nature of
Jesus, Etc. is also a treat to hear, especially for its pensive violins (or at least as pensive as a violin can sound) that perfectly counter the vocal melody. These four songs demonstrate the songwriting craft that Wilco are constantly hyped as containing. On the other hand,
Heavy Metal Drummer and
Poor Places come off sounding very forced and cliché. Both songs try too hard to insist that they are catchy rather than actually offering the listener anything worthwhile. Because of this, they just end up sounding flat.
Despite its flaws, the album successfully achieves a strong cohesiveness throughout. Each song seems to find its own special way to add to the overall feeling of the album. In terms of pacing, Wilco have created a very effective track list, which keeps a consistent balance of the slow and upbeat songs throughout. Perhaps the highlight of this is the transition from the end of
War On War into
Jesus, Etc. which is brilliant to hear, as the soothing guitar of the latter picks up only seconds after the synthesized chaos of the former song has ended. It is moments like this that make the album better than your average album. Yet, the middle-of-the-road tracks, such as
Radio Cure and
Ashes of American Flags seem to keep Wilco from reaching the potential they clearly have. Whether or not they have reached that potential on the following two albums they have made as of 2008 can be argued, and I'm sure it has been many times already. However, what Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reveals is a band trying very hard to reach greatness, but only getting halfway there.
