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FLASHBACK: Wilco

6 August 2012 | 9:00 am | Cheryl Billman

When you talk about American alt-rock, you’re really just talking about WILCO, we flash right back to when they burst on the scene in 1994.

When you talk about American alt-rock, you’re really just talking about WILCO. Since they burst onto the scene in 1994, they’ve been the poster band for the genre—and, despite multiple lineup changes and the expected development of the band’s sound over their eight studio albums...

...(and, ahem, their live double album and wicked sick collabs with other artists), they continue to define the genre, with artists like The National and Norah Jones naming them as an influence. (Counting Crows have also covered some of Wilco’s songs but they were also on the soundtrack to that one Hugh Grant movie so… you know.)

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the album that brought them to true notoriety—the album saw WILCO dismissed from label Reprise Records roster and later becoming their most successful release. In fact, fans consider it to be their best work, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a forum discussion on “Best Ever Indie Records” that didn’t see Yankee in the top five.

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It was their fifth album, though, A Ghost is Born, which received the most recognition from within the industry, landing the band two Grammy Awards (including Best Alternative Music Album), and boasting tracks like “Muzzle of Bees” and “Hell is Chrome”.

WILCO did release an album—entitled The Whole Love—last year, but fans will always look backwards to the glory days, when every other hipster wasn’t wearing a WILCO shirt. And I’m not pointing fingers, Guy Rocking Skintight Jeans/Floppy Hat Combo, standing in front of me at THE KOOKS’ Splendour set, but I don’t think you could name a song off of their first studio album, A.M. A shame as, even though Wilco themselves considered it to be “a failure”, there were some diamonds in the rough with tracks like “I Must Be High”.

Artistically, WILCO—and particularly singer Jeff Tweedy—set the bar for Artists Putting the Music First: the band sacrificed $600,000 worth of royalties to label Respite Records in order to release their 19-track second release, Being There as a double album sold at the price of a single album. It was a bold move, but one that paid off, with Rolling Stone giving the album their kiss of approval soon after release and the album reaching seventy-three on the Billboard album charts.

This purism is perhaps why, despite being a major label band (and having been a major label band for years), they are instantaneously associated with indie rock. This common association could also be influenced by the bands admiration and emulation of artists who pushed the boundaries in the late Sixties and early Seventies, including John Lennon and Neil Young.

Perhaps the most interest thing about WILCO, though, from the perspective of a great wordsmith like myself (LOL JKS, I spend 90% of my time writing about cats) is their unique style of crafting lyrics, dictated in part by cadaver exquis. Not up on your Latin? It’s chill, I got you bro: it translates to “exquisite corpse”, and means that each band member contributed to the lyrics by adding a single line in turn—while only allowed to see the last line written. Effective process? You tell me:

It’s little wonder that WILCO have been given the title “American Radiohead” and described by Rolling Stone as “one of America’s most consistently interesting bands”.

Words by Cheryl Billman