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When Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot was finally released about a year ago, I wrote: "I
suppose if we've got to have an American Radiohead, its front man/visionary
ought to be someone who loves Bob Dylan and the Carter Family and has
been spotted buying [California country garage rock legends] Lazy Cowgirls'
records. I've played this album more than any other Wilco record that
didn't have Woody Guthrie lyrics or wasn’t Being There,
and I plan on playing it some more. But I can't help feeling that the
laudatory press surrounding the album is contrarian solidarity, based
on rePRISE dropping the band over it, and that the reviews are a wee
bit over-enthusiastic. It's pretty and catchy and the sonics are fascinating,
but it's also morose and whiny, it's never fast, and it affects being
"out of it" without ever achieving the natural levels of disintegration
on an Oar or a Third or a Barrett or a Flies
on Sherbet."
My own reaction
to the record was echoed in the most recent Village
Voice Pazz & Jop Poll. Robert Christgau voiced his concern that
Tweedy had succumbed to the temptation of making his “art”
seem more serious by overlaying it with misery, fragmentation, and self
conscious poetic obscurity. When Jeff Tweedy was playing with Jay Farrar
in Uncle Tupelo, the too-frequent assumption amongst those who were
“there” was that Tweedy was the second banana, because Farrar
wrote all the miserable, "deep" numbers, and Tweedy wrote
the upbeat, fun ones that made the girls holler. The truth was much
more cloudy. Tweedy’s songs, particularly on Anodyne, spoke
to disillusionment & heartbreak in what now seem like more realistic
terms than Farrar’s more dramatic negations. There is a dangerous
assumption that songs with a positive message or a humorous face are
somehow less “important” than things that tackle issues of
serious import or seem "dark". It is the rare artist who can
walk the fine line between the two without succumbing to pretension
on one side or pure public placation on the other. For a time I felt
that Mr. Tweedy had crossed over to the side of the dark dramaturgists.
Seeing the band live at the Orange Peel on May 1, 2003,
changed that. Maybe it was the fact that he was playing in a city he’d
never played before. Maybe the relative lightness of the tour schedule
had something to do with it. Maybe I just hadn't seen them in five years,
the good vibes were all in my head - a combination of forward movement
("Wow, he's better than he ever was and hasn't stopped progressing
and changing!") and weird nostalgia ("Wow, "New Madrid"
reminds me of driving all night to catch the Grifters and Guided by
Voices at the Antenna in Memphis"). But, from my point of view
Tweedy & his bandmates played an increasingly exuberant show that
incorporated the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot material into a presentation
that encompassed most of what rock and roll has to offer. Tweedy’s
own increased skill on the guitar made up for any uncomfortable absences
that might have been present on the stage, and the song selection was
impeccable, even if there was the odd grumble that it included no songs
from Summer Teeth. As a Being There/Mermaid Avenue
man myself, I could have only asked for that Airplane song that opens
the second Mermaid record to make my own night complete.
Watching the band, witnessing the audience sing along
with every number and send almost visible waves of love and affection
towards the performers, it became clear that, instead of creating a
breed of Yankee Hotel Foxtrotters, Wilco has, over the last seven
years, managed to create an army of listeners, few of whom seemed to
evidence the kind of corner crowding mopery you expect at a Drag City
show or similar energy sucker. They weren't so much Wilco-come-latelies
as they were long haulers, and the mutual commitment seemed very healthy
to me. Uncle Christgau was worried that Tweedy was not being a good
example, and even though that's not his job, if people need a musical
hero he is one of the most unpretentious, good hearted, genuine and
generous they could hope to find.
The creation & sustenance of an atmosphere is what I value in live
music. While most nights one has to take his or her satisfactions where
he or she can get it (If I ever hear another person telling me a crappy
band had an “amazing drummer” . . . ) Wilco proved themselves
world class, diverse, & possessed of a song catalog that sounds
more impressive over time than it did coming out piecemeal. I left the
show with a renewed interest in their back catalog & upcoming work,
which is generally opposite of my own experience with bands. I tend
to immerse myself in their catalogs BEFORE I see a show & the show
becomes the culmination of the experience, whereupon I forget about
the band for a while.
The interview was
conducted back stage after the show.
Click
here for page 2.
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