What people search:
 | Title : Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Author : Wilco
Release Date : 20020423
Binding : Audio CD
Regular Price : $18.98
Amazon.com Price : $10.00
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Editorial Reviews :
Named in honor of the three-word codes used by short-wave radio operators, Wilco's fourth album sounds like a late-night broadcast of some weirdly wonderful pop station punctuated by static and the sonic bleed of competing signals. Songs that begin with simple, elegiac grace--'Ashes of American Flags' and 'Poor Places'--end in a cathartic squall of distortion. The results can be initially jarring, but it's these tracks more than the sturdy jangle pop of 'Kamera' or 'Heavy Metal Drummer' that demand, and reward, repeated listens. Mixed by studio experimentalist Jim O'Rourke and produced by the band, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot harkens back to a time when the words 'pop' and 'sonic adventurism' weren't mutually exclusive. The Beatles and Kurt Cobain knew this, and clearly so do Jeff Tweedy and company. --Keith Moerer
Buyer Reviews :
Four records in and we find wilco further yet from their freshman effort, A.M. First off, at this point in their career to call Wilco alt-country is akin to calling Donna Summers heavy metal. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot takes the listener on an existentialist trip, with the band creating a loose sonic meditiation on distance and love, using random radio signals as a metaphor. This isn't to say that it isn't fun as well - afterall, anyone who's ever seen Wilco live knows that they are spry and playful onstage - and they can rock out with the best of them. With songs like Kamera, War on War, Heavy Metal Drummer (a beautiful ode to youth, innocence and Ray Davies), I'm the man Who Loves You, and Pot Kettle Black, Tweedy and Co. provide enough radio-friendly pop to make you scratch your head at the Reprise execs who said this record was a 'career-ender'. The world would be a better place if War On War and I'm the Man Who Loves You were booming out of car stereos this summer. That said, this album is chock full of darkness and weirdness as well. Kicking off with 'I am Trying to Break your Heart' lyricist Jeff Tweedy takes a haiku-like approach to describing drunken lovesickness. Yeah. And Radio Cure reminds me of noneother than Radiohead, its glum, moody, intriguing and ultimately cathartic. Jesus, Etc. has a great rolling feel accented by a slippery fiddle line and strings that hum out of nowhere and nearly assure that this will lodge in your ears and remain there for a very long time. Ashes of American Flags might make you shiver, its a cold poem on the state of affairs out here in the west. Reservations ends the album eloquenly, gorgeously, and ultimately grounds an album that is dissecting untruths, misundersatandings and miscommunication with one important truth. You have to get there through the album to truly appreciate it. What links the songs is a sonic pallette full of blips, radio pops stops and starts, guitars, horns strings, all forms of odd sounds and fillers pushed through filters, a rhythmic complexity never achieved on a Wilco record, and the poetry, which is VERY non-linear and disassociative, but, taken as a whole, beautiful and imbued with a codified consistency. Its an experience. Its a band that is changing, both in personnel and sound. Its an experience. Its a leap of faith. Take it with them.
(by A music fan)
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