Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Worth all the praise and then some
Without a doubt, Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is the best pop/rock album I've heard all year. Forget about the hype. Forget about the umpteen reviews calling it the best album of all time...this really is a very well-made, totally engrossing piece of work. I don't even really know much else that Wilco has done. I've been vaguely familiar with their music for some time now. But by all accounts, this is a different Wilco from previous releases. Sure, there are similiarities. But they really went back to the drawing board for this one. The main difference is the production. There's lots of strange effects, some static and dissonance, lots of experimental touches...but it always complements the music, never distracting the listener. The songs are not really all that unusual...it's the way they're arranged that sounds so incredible. "I Am Trying to Break your Heart" starts things off with lazy distortion and a haze of static. "Jesus, Etc." is helped along with beautifully arranged strings. "Heavy Metal Drummer" would be just another nondescript alt-country single if it weren't for the seemingly out-of-place drum machine that barrels through the song. "I'm the Man Who Loves You" is a glorious, sloppy, horn-driven love song with lead guitar straight out of 70s-era Neil Young. It's beautiful, messy, eloquent, harsh, and like nothing you've ever heard.
Rating: - An Album That Will Last
I don't know. Maybe I'm getting old, but I like an album with textures, thought, and musical integrity. I gave up on waiting for Bon Jovi to become the Beatles years ago...oh, the horror! Not long after that era, I began to listen to bands like Pavement, Guided by Voices, and Uncle Tupelo. I found the independent bands really focused on the music and lyrics, and they meant something. They meant something to me as well, whether or not it was what the bands intended. It didn't matter anyway. The music of Uncle Tupelo (later to become Wilco and Son Volt) was like nothing I've ever listened to before, except maybe Robert Johnson recordings. The lyrics were about life, the music was rooted in America, like the smell of fresh clothes hanging outside all day in the sun. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot breaths life into contemporary America. Like a couch cover gives new meaning to that old comfortable sofa, Wilco gives the music we grew up hating, learned to endure, and slowly started to love a coat of new paint. I can't help but feel these songs mean something deeper, but I think it is more about emotion and feeling, and less about intellectual stimulation. YHF is a beautiful homage to TV dinners, mangey dogs, and out-of-date prescriptions in the back of the medicine cabinet (whatever that means). I'm rambling. Buy the album. Listen to it for awhile. I think you'll hear what I'm talking about. Maybe. It's an album that will last.
Rating: - An album in the truest sense of the word.
In talking to fellow Wilco fans, I've noticed something that I don't often see in fans of other bands - an excitement about change. And let's face it - Wilco's sound has definitely benefitted from a lack of permanent grounding, and YHF takes the biggest steps from the often-repeated stories of Uncle Tupelo this and alt-country that and all the other hogwash.So we can talk about labels and history and the like, but I'll leave that to the music critics. The history only matters if you're already a Wilco fan, and if you're like most Wilco fans, the change from the past isn't even that big a deal. The question is, what merit does this record have on its own? YHF is an album for our times - the human spirit confronted with the modern world is one way you can look at both the songwriting themes and the sounds employed in this album. Put headphones on to hear the organic, typical instruments doing battle with the swirling noise and layered arrangements; this added "noise" is not an afterthought, but a carefully mastered part of the album's whole sound. The feeling you get listening to the way sound is arranged should be a clear indication that there is something deeper going on here, whether or not you're a fan of the noisiness that Jim O'Rourke brings to the table (and even though I usually don't care for this style, I am instinctively drawn to, and pleased by, its execution in YHF). On top of this is Jeff Tweedy's touching songwriting. This is an album to read along to (or sing if you're luckier than I am), so keep the liner notes handy. Tweedy sings songs about the same love, unpredictable and wonderful and painful, in a strange world that is either always changing or always the same. Honestly, I don't know and I'm not going to try any harder than that to say what Tweedy says so much better with lyrics like, "tall buildings shake, / voices escape, singing sad sad songs / tuned to chords strung down your cheeks, / & bitter melodies, turning your orbit around." As he sings this in Jesus, Etc, Tweedy continues to talk about the night sky, and at the same time violins sweep through the air in a jagged, computer-challenged way that feels like the night sky is falling apart. That's just one of thousands of intangible beauties that this album has, combining music and sound and word and thought (pardon if I sound like a hippie) into a truly special album, one that is reborn upon each listen. I have had this album for months thanks to the Internet, but nothing could have prepared me for my first CD listen, w/ liner notes, on headphones. It was an experience I'll never forget. Buy this album.
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