"Where's the cardboard sleeve for this Wilco CD?" -Fletcher (Adam Horovitz) While We're YoungWhat more can be said about Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? It's certainly one of the defining indie-rock albums of the decade preceding. It's one of those rare, elusive albums that earned a 10 score from Pitchfork, which hardly doles out perfect ratings. Is it great? Oh baby it is.
Many of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's songs are bookended with shrill buzzes not too unsimilar to intense machinery- but there's nothing mechanical to the album. The opener "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" sounds heartachingly drunk and honest, and there are no other songs on the album that sound quite like it. Really, every song here is its own beast, each one sounding dissimilar to anything else in the album or anything ever. The lyrics are mature and ambiguous, often leaving something to think about after listening.
Maybe the least original sounding song, "Radio Cure", isn't even unoriginal. It sounds like a cut off Radiohead's Kid A. That's a testament not only to Kid A's influence, but to how good this is. It's Kid A good.
Somehow, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot works. There's a hodge-podge of influences here. "Kamera" is acoustically jovial, but "War on War" is somber.The violins on "Jesus, etc." set a tone contrasting to the curious and contemplative lyrics.
It's hard to put a pin on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It's thematically rich, and thirteen years after release, it sounds fresh and classic.
9/10
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