Wilco 2004

Wilco. A Ghost Is Born, Nonesuch

By Andy Gill

04 June 2004

A Ghost Is Born is a curiously backward album. Most bands acknowledge the benefits of putting their most appealing songs up front, to snare prospective punters with the first few tracks. Not Wilco: this album opens with their slowest, most moody and unaccommodating pieces, but gradually gets more animated towards the latter stages. Perversely, the most winning songs are all in the last five tracks, a risky strategy which repays perseverance on the listener's part.

As with 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the album sidles crablike into earshot, with the diffident melancholy of "At Least That's What You Said" setting the tone for the first tracks, glum piano ballads which rumble ponderously along before climaxing with visceral, cathartic guitar solos in the piercing style of Neil Young. Once again, Jeff Tweedy seems trapped in emotional entanglements beyond his control: "I thought it was cute for you to kiss my purple black eye," he sings. "And even though I caught it from you/ I thought you were serious/ At least, that's what you said." By the fifth song, "Hummingbird", the album title and the track sequencing are starting to make sense, through lines such as "His goal in life was to be an echo" and the chorus "Remember to remember me/ Standing still in your past/ Floating fast like a hummingbird": once again, the album seems to be charting a disintegrating relationship, the "ghost" left behind as Tweedy regains his emotional equilibrium through the second half.

The better tracks are all at this end of the album: "I'm a Wheel" is a fairly straightforward, direct rocker distracted by its constantly unorthodox chord changes, while "Company in my Back" features a melodic hook that you can actually hum after one listen. "Theologians" is another catchy number, though it doesn't seem to be produced to optimum effectiveness. Avant-rocker Jim O'Rourke again shares production duties with the band, and it's tempting to imagine his hand behind the longer, weirder tracks such as "Spiders" and particularly "Less Than You Think", a haunting piano ballad which evaporates into a haze of electronic noise.

"The Late Greats" is a jaunty tribute to the rock'n'roll mythos which would have fitted well on Wilco's debut, Being There, as Tweedy's musings about how the greatest music is always the hardest to find lead him to reflect upon other examples of thwarted desire - how, for instance, "the best laugh never leaves your lung". And how ultimately, things are probably best left that way. In a way, A Ghost Is Born itself exemplifies that attitude: it'll probably never be heard on daytime radio, and even sympathetic fans will have to dig deep into its running-order to find its greatest moments. Well worth the excavation, though.