Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
(Nonesuch)

Sam Jones - I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
(Cowboy Pictures)

Wilco, being pegged as "alt-country," had always struck me as a band for wusses who thought they were too cool to admit to liking actual country music. Sure, they are fine musicians, who write good songs, but, decades after Let it Be, Let it Bleed and Bringing it All Back Home, and our perspective of them as filtered through Diamond Dogs and The Clash, Wilco seemed a bit redundant. A good song by good musicians can only be so good if it repeats what you already know. All the praise heaped upon the band for being innovative and exciting seemed to be, at its base, simply praise for playing good ol' fashioned rock n' roll in a market where such does not sell. Sure, they're better than [insert band name here], but does that make them innovative?

What makes a musician innovative? One aspect is when the musician retreats from convention and creates a new method of expression for themselves. This is precisely what one encounters upon hearing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a fantastic album full of strong, beautiful, heartbreaking songs that have been pushed beyond the conventions in which they were conceived, becoming transformed into new creatures. It is clearly evident upon hearing the record that the band had taken a set of songs and broken them down, broken them apart, and pieced them back together again in a way that would carry them beyond the language of rock and roll.

I was delighted to discover in I Am Trying To Break Your Heart that the album was recorded with that intent expressly in mind. Wilco spent a year in their space creating what they refer to as the "definitive" versions of songs, and then intentionally destroyed them, breaking them apart, pushing them in new directions. The influence of Jim O'Rourke, who mixed the record, is evident, and the band states as much in the film, referring to mixing as one of the most collaborative stages of the process in involving an outside influence (he makes a brief appearance in the film but sadly does not speak).

The record is dry, intimate, warm and close. On the opening track, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," singer/guitarist Jeff Tweedy sings as if he is whispering in your ear. This song, and several others, like "Radio Cure" and "Poor Places," are constructed as patchworks of instrumental bits: rhythmic acoustic guitar, the static of a shorting-out amp cord, plonking xylophones, off-key pianos, and all manner of whirs, buzzes, and noise. Drums may propel one portion of a song only to then drop entirely out of the mix. Kits are mixed with timpani. Even the straightforward tracks, like "Kamera" and the beautiful "Jesus, etc." are sufficiently subdued and so evenly mixed that instruments blend into one another creating amorphous tones that swell and contract like a breathing organism. The album is a startling experience upon first listen, and gently reveals its textures upon repeated listens. (With the exception of "Heavy Metal Drummer" which sounds like Pavement redux sans Malkmus' self-satisfied asshole attitude, and that's pretty much it).

Unfortunately the film, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, gets sidetracked from the compelling topic of the creative process behind Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in favor of the oft told label disputes which resulted in Wilco's move from Reprise to Nonesuch. This is a bit surprising as the director, Sam Jones, has stated that his intention initially was to capture the moment in a band's existence where they take that great step forward that cements their spot in Rock History (and cited, as an example, when the Rolling Stones recorded Exile on Main Street, which makes one wonder if he had seen Jean-Luc Godard's fascinating and bizarre Sympathy for the Devil which captures the sessions in which that tune was worked out). Yet this aspect of the Wilco story quickly becomes subplot to the more solid narrative of industry troubles.

Though ultimately far less satisfying that the resulting album, the film does have some choice moments. Jones' background is in photography, and he makes a pretty picture. The film was shot on a grainy black and white film, which gives a lot of texture to the piles of crazy junk in Wilco's loft or to singer/guitarist Jeff Tweedy's exceptional bedhead or to the band slinking around Lake Michigan in the bleary Chicago cold. The really good stuff, though, seems to happen despite Jones, such as the maddening scene in which Tweedy and soon-to-depart guitarist/keyboardist Jay Bennett bicker like an old married couple about how to mix the intro to "Heavy Metal Drummer." It's easy to sense Bennett's frustration at not being taken seriously, or even acknowledged, and Tweedy does not seem to care at all what he thinks. Lucky for us Jones happened to be there with a camera. But he had done nothing to set up the scene, and does almost nothing to follow it up.

The greatest, and most telling moment in the film comes after a solo show Tweedy played in San Francisco near the end of recording Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. He is standing backstage while several people interrogate him about the status of the album. His discomfort is palpable, and becomes nearly unbearable when one person who has heard that they are using samples and loops in recording asks, only half kidding and with some fear, if it is going to be a drum n' bass album. Tweedy is clearly disheartened by the question. He has spent a year pushing himself as a musician and a songwriter into new terrain, creating what he hopes to be the greatest album he can produce, yet fearful that it will be a total failure. At the apex of this period he is met by ostensible fans who trivialize his efforts and express an unwillingness to follow him into a new musical area. It's a perfect manifestation of his fear that either the album will not work or people just won't get it.

Such fears, however, were wholly unfounded. Wilco has created in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot a sad and subtle work of originality, and, though I am loathe to agree with Rolling Stone, perhaps the best album of 2002. Playing to their strengths, Wilco has created a set of songs that showcases their consummate musicianship, beautiful melodies, lack of pretense, fearlessly open hearts, and, most importantly, their sincere love of music. The album has been constructed in a fashion that, unlike their previous work, downplays the conventional nature of their songs' structure and the band's influences, and highlights, when appropriate, the concrete elements of melody and rhythm, and, when appropriate, abstract emotional elements through more freeform collages of sound.

What Wilco has done in the past does not matter. Nor does what they may choose to do in the future. All that matters is that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has succeeded in its stated attempt to break our hearts.

david christensen 2002 aug 16