Great artistic transformations are by nature traumatic, but rarely has a single musical statement been the source of more controversy and change than Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, now remastered and reissued for its 20th anniversary. Anyone who's seen the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart witnessed the project's two creative engines, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett, driving themselves mad in the process. Arguably, Wilco's best work were products of the Tweedy-Bennett partnership. Bennett, who came off as unduly obsessive and off kilter in the film, was fired from the band after the album's completion (and sadly died in 2009 from an accidental overdose at age 45); original drummer Ken Coomer was also let go during the recording process. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot also stands as yet another instance where Jim O'Rourke, who eventually mixed the album, continued to build his considerable reputation as a musical influencer. The turmoil continued after the album was finished when Warner Music Group-owned Reprise Records, which had undergone staff changes after a merger with AOL, didn't hear the album's commercial potential, and refused to release it. This led to a lengthy battle during which the band streamed the album for free on its website, gained control of the master tapes, and after a bidding war signed with another WMG label, Nonesuch Records, where the band remains to this day. (As a final complication, the album's cover features a photo of Chicago's Marina City— two corn cobbed-shaped high-rise buildings—and had an original release date of September 11, 2001.)
Artistically, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot marks the moment where Wilco left its Uncle Tupelo alt-country past behind and stepped deep into bold sonic exploration. Although Tweedy has always made it clear that he considers it a "pop album," he's also said, "I was learning about contrasts. A lot of the songs on Yankee aren't particularly abstract. But they benefit from being in a disorienting landscape of language … I needed to find some experimental music with a bigger heart. That's what I was looking for my whole life."
In a telling sign that it's something special, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot still sounds fresh, an artistic evergreen. While the lyrics veered off into nonsensical land, the music, in songs like the "I'm the Man Who Loves You," "War on War" and ever sublime, "Jesus, Etc." are tuneful in timeless ways, untethered to any genre or current of popular music. It's ageless art rock that stands to this day as the band's most lasting work. The original mix has been refreshed by famed engineer Bob Ludwig without any major changes. The tracks that appear under the heading of Unified Theory of Everything are taken from the mountain of tape (much of it ADATs) that the band recorded for the album. At their most revealing, Wilco show the expansive vision of experimentation they brought to the project and the struggle to translate that in the studio. While "Jesus, Etc." is nearly the same as the released take, this version of "Kamera" is slower and has a big buzzy guitar at its center. The "Stravinsky mix" of "Ashes of American Flags" opens with flutes. None is more telling however than "Remember to Remember," which later became "Hummingbird" on 2004's A Ghost is Born. It's much heavier than the original version, the mix based around an insistent drumbeat, wavering keyboards, and an electric guitar part. The live show from 2002 at The Pageant in St. Louis, which benefits from generally good sound, shows the band bouncing back, playing stripped down versions of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot tunes and getting a handle on playing the material without the multi-talented Bennett. There was a time back before the band became the extraordinary collection of virtuoso musicians it is today, when Tweedy was still hungry, desperate even, for success. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the sound of a band reaching and finding something unforgettable. © Robert Baird/Qobuz