Review: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Super Deluxe Edition)


Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Super Deluxe




An extensive retrospective on Wilco’s modern classic.

Whilst it’s a matter of perspective (and current circumstances aside) there were fewer periods in recent history which were as uncertain than the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.

Famously, the US government drew up a list of songs which were banned from radio, including ones as ostensibly harmless as The Crickets’ That’ll Be The Day and The Beatles‘ Ticket to Ride.

They also coincided loosely with the time when, for the music industry, file trading sites and iPods meant the model which had served it largely uninterrupted for three or four decades faced massive disruption.

With this as a backdrop, the decision by their label to drop Wilco after three modestly successful albums – particularly their third, Summerteeth – seems like a gamble, but a calculated one. That they did so after turning immediately sour on their fourth was, with hindsight, a bit of a fuck up to be honest.

It’s not like Wilco weren’t going through major changes themselves, as they parted company during the recording process with creative stalwart Jay Bennett and singer Jeff Tweedy found himself negotiating difficult personal issues.

Wilco then struck upon a bold, some felt reckless course of action; like an aural equivalent of baseball’s Field Of Dreams, they would make their now homeless record available to stream to anybody with the bandwidth to do it – and for free.

If this all seems like exceedingly small beer twenty years later, at the time it felt revolutionary, but whilst cynics reckoned that giving away your product for free brought some disproportionate level of good will, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot revealed itself to be a work that, in time, would have the credibility of an underground record release squared with the commercial success of the opposite.

Its appeal remains undimmed; Tweedy baulked at the idea of being labelled alt. country, or alt. anything and instead – from the cracked, weary boned opener I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, through Heavy Metal Drummer’s diamond-bright pop to I’m The Man Who Loves You’s rustic boogie – Wilco unfurled an old music that felt very much like a brand new one.



This anniversary edition is quite simply a feast for anyone who has even a passing interest in it, or even for newbies keen to understand what all the fuss is about.

Through various archive sessions the songs are presented in different forms and points of view; if for instance you want to chart how many lives Poor Places experienced then this is laid out, but not in the familiar out-take form, more the respective versions as fully formed brothers and sisters of the tracks we’re more familiar with.

Included in the package as well is material which never made the original release, and a concert recorded around the time of release, but the most compelling content comes as something of a surprise in the form of a long interview with a Chicago radio station.

As a time capsule it’s of immense worth, taking place in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, but Tweedy is also fascinating in answering questions about making the material available online, being dropped and his relationship with Bennet.

Even in a time when hyperbole was less than the norm, one of the callers to the show compares Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to something by The Beatles and makes Tweedy for the songwriter of his generation.

With the benefit of perspective this still feels less than radical, and whilst it’s arguable we’re shown too much behind the curtain on this encyclopaedic exercise, it’s a fitting commemoration of a great leap into an uncertain future which is now firmly in the distant past.


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