Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

This album has the feeling of a dude with a scruffy beard and a beanie and a guitar slipping casually across a cracking icy lake. Jeff Tweedy’s voice is both ready to shatter at the slightest touch and purposeful.

My favorite songs from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are the unforced ones. First on that list is the self-aware and flowing “Jesus, etc.”, followed closely by “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” once it gets past the random noise making and gets going in earnest.

Wilco’s original label refused to release this album because they didn’t like it, so Wilco decided to stream it on the internet for free before they found another label to release it for them. That’s rock and roll as shit, man.

And a bonus, just for fun here’s my attempt to recreate the photo on the album cover, which shows the Marina City buildings in Chicago. I was actually in Chicago for work and took this photo the day before I started listening to this album for this review, not even aware of the cover of this album — life’s cool like that sometimes.