Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002/2014) [Official Digital Download 24-bit/96kHz]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the Chicago-based group's fourth studio album. It is Wilco's best selling album, reaching number 13 on Billboard's top 200 chart in 2002. The album features drummer Glenn Kotche for the first time and is the last record to include multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jay Bennett.

On its Nonesuch debut, Wilco delivers a thrillingly experimental work that scored a perfect 10 on Pitchfork, which hailed the album as “complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene … simply a masterpiece.” As the New York Times put it, Jeff Tweedy’s “songs about love, America, apocalypse, and self-invention unfold in richly enigmatic arrangements.”

Few bands can call themselves contemporaries of both the heartbreakingly earnest self-destruction of Whiskeytown and the alienating experimentation of Radiohead's post-millennial releases, but on the painstaking Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco seem to have done just that. In early 2001, the Chicago-area band focused on recording their fourth album, which ultimately led to the departure of guitarist Jay Bennett and tensions with their record label. Unwilling to change the album to make it more commercially viable, the band bought the finished studio tapes from Warner/Reprise for 50,000 dollars and left the label altogether. The turmoil surrounding the recording and distribution of the album in no way diminishes the sheer quality of the genre-spanning pop songs written by frontman Jeff Tweedy and his bandmates. After throwing off the limiting shackles of the alt-country tag that they had been saddled with through their 1996 double album Being There, Wilco experimented heavily with the elaborate constructs surrounding their simple melodies on Summerteeth. The long-anticipated Yankee Hotel Foxtrot continues their genre-jumping and worthwhile experimentation. The sprawling, nonsensical "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" is as charmingly bleak as anything Tweedy has written to date, while the positively joyous "Heavy Metal Drummer" jangles through bright choruses and summery reminiscences. Similarly, "Kamera" dispels the opening track's gray with a warm acoustic guitar and mixer/multi-instrumentalist/"fifth Beatle" Jim O'Rourke's unusual production. The true high points of the album are when the songwriting is at its most introspective, as it is during the heartwrenching "Ashes of American Flags," which takes on an eerie poignancy in the wake of the attacks at the World Trade Center. "All my lies are always wishes," Tweedy sings, "I know I would die if I could come back new." As is the case with many great artists, the evolution of the band can push the music into places that many listeners (and record companies for that matter) may not be comfortable with, but, in the case of Wilco, their growth has steadily led them into more progressive territory. While their songs still maintain the loose intimacy that was apparent on their debut A.M., the music has matured to reveal a complexity that is rare in pop music, yet showcased perfectly on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Tracklist:

01 - I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
02 - Kamera
03 - Radio Cure
04 - War on War
05 - Jesus, Etc.
06 - Ashes of American Flags
07 - Heavy Metal Drummer
08 - I'm the Man Who Loves You
09 - Pot Kettle Black
10 - Poor Places
11 - Reservations

Produced by Wilco. Engineered by Chris Buckley, Chris Brickley, Jay Bennett, Jim O'Rourke.
Recorded at The Loft, CRC, and Soma E.M.S., Chicago, Illinois.
Mixed by Jim O’Rourke at Soma E.M.S. Mastered by Steve Rooke at Abbey Road Studios, London.

Musicians:
Jeff Tweedy - vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, programming, harmonica
Jay Bennett - programming, guitars, piano, keyboards, synthesizers, organ, bass, drums, vocals
John Stirratt - bass, vocals
Leroy Bach - piano, acoustic and electric guitar, organ, glockenspiel, vibraphone, bass, percussion
Glenn Kotche - drums, percussion, cimbalom, siren, chimes
Additional musicians:
Ken Coomer - additional drums and percussion
Fred Lonberg-Holm - cello
Craig Christiansen - programming, keyboards, synthesizers, percussion, autoharp, harmonium
Jessy Greene - violin, viola
Jim O'Rourke - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, keyboards, toy piano, stylophone


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