Last month I took a look at Gillian Welch’s seminal 2001 album Time (The Revelator), a record steeped in folk authenticity and traditional form. That same year a band from Chicago took their suburban country rock and alt-country and blew it apart into a thousand musical fragments before reconstructing their songs into glorious and inventive studio mini-masterpieces. Wonderfully, both artists and their respective work fall under the wide umbrella of Americana music.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was released commercially in 2002 via Nonesuch Records, following an independent release on their own website the year prior – the result of the decision by their then label Reprise to not release the album and the album’s songs subsequent leaking to MP3 file sharing sites. 

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would be a game changer for the band, both critically and sonically. Upon its release it received near universal acclaim, with a rare 10 score from Pitchfork, and it continues to be their best selling album.

Great albums always carry fascinating back stories and Wilco’s was no exception. Drummer Ken Coomer’s drumming wasn’t a match for frontman Jeff Tweedy’s vision and more experimental approach to the album, while tension between Tweedy and multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, during the recording sessions with new engineer and musician Jim O’Rourke, led to to Bennett’s ousting soon after the album’s completion.

As Wilco began working on the album they were coming off three records released through the second half of the 90s. All were well received but it wasn’t until 1999’s Summerteeth that the band began to really utilise the studio and overdubs to expand their music. ‘Via Chicago’ from that album was one example of layered nuance and textures successfully being applied to their songs. 

A key player in the musical expansion of Wilco’s sound was new drummer Glenn Kotche, a far more versatile and experimental musician than Coomer. Kotche’s ability to create fascinating percussive templates, from Krautrock to jazz, avant garde to noise, opening up numerous possibilities for Tweedy’s songs and entirely in sync with O’Rourke’s openminded engineering and mixing approach. 

Listen to the end of ‘War on War’ with its metronomic hypnotism and acceleration, the dance/funk feel of ‘Heavy Metal Drummer’, or the tumbling mix of straight patterns, clattering percussion and found sounds on opener ‘I Am Trying To Break Your Heart’ and you’ll get a sense of the dexterity and range that Kotche brought to Wilco.

Beneath the sonic vistas and deconstructed soundscapes that enveloped the songs, Tweedy’s writing was still based in traditional forms derived from country rock, fractured folk, power pop, Beatles-esque pop and kaleidoscopic art rock. Strummed guitars, rolling bass-lines and rich vocal harmonies still cast a line back to The Byrds and Big Star. The progression from Wilco’s earlier albums sounded like a natural one, even amid the cornucopia of new sounds at their disposal. 

‘Jesus, Etc’  sounds like a melancholic slice of country soul, a lost gem from the South with gorgeous vocal melodies, pedal steel and violin. ‘I’m The Man That Loves You’ fizzes out of the gates with an almost twee countrypolitan sound – an infectious and a surprisingly upbeat moment on a generally reflective album. ‘Radio Cure’, at its heart sounds like a back porch strum, a work in progress by way of its slow emergence and yearning melodic development, before resolving enthusiastically by song’s end. 

‘Ashes of American Flags’ is another highpoint. On it Tweedy seems to hint at some of his battles with migraines and painkiller addiction, which he successfully overcame a few years later. “I’m down on my hands and knees, every time a doorbell rings. I shake like a toothache, when I hear myself sing,” he reports. 

As with all recognised classics, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has received the reissue treatment, with a 2022 remaster, a 51 song Deluxe Edition which added numerous live recordings and alternate versions plus for those super fans, a Super Deluxe Edition containing eighty-two previously unreleased music tracks, a book, demos and more.

Often described as the American Radiohead, Wilco similarly shook-up the ingredients of their music with overwhelmingly success, setting them on course to continue releasing albums that straddled the worlds of tradition and experimentation – honouring the art and craft of song while venturing out into new and uncharted waters. They’re a rock band playing post-rock, an alt-country band in an alternate universe. Cosmic Americana 2.0. 

CHRIS FAMILTON