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Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

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Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the fourth album by Chicago-based rock band Wilco. The album was completed in 2001, but Reprise Records, a Warner Music Group label, refused to release it. Wilco acquired the rights to the album when they left the label. In September 2001, Wilco streamed the entire album for free on their website. Wilco signed with Nonesuch Records (another Warner label) in November of that year, and the album was officially released on April 23, 2002.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was a critical and commercial success, and is their best selling album, with over 500,000 copies sold in the U.S. and topping the Pazz and Jop critics' poll for 2002. It was Wilco's first album with drummer Glenn Kotche, and the last with multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jay Bennett and drummer Ken Coomer.

Context

Wilco was touring to promote Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in May 2000 when Jeff Tweedy was invited to play at the Noise Pop festival in Chicago. The festival promoter offered to pair Tweedy with a collaborator of his choosing, and Tweedy decided to perform with Jim O'Rourke. Tweedy frequently played O'Rourke's album Bad Timing in his car while he traveled during the previous winter. O'Rourke was an accomplished producer as well as a musician, and had produced over two hundred albums by the time that Tweedy requested the collaboration. O'Rourke offered the services of drummer Glenn Kotche, and the trio performed at Double Door for the festival on May 14, 2000. Tweedy enjoyed the performance so much that he suggested that the trio record an album together. They chose the name Loose Fur, and recorded six songs during the following summer.[11]

By the end of the year, the band had recorded enough demo tracks to release a fourth studio album (the working title was Here Comes Everybody), but the band was unhappy with some of the takes of the songs. This was attributed to the inflexibility of Ken Coomer's drumming. The band decided to bring Glenn Kotche into the studio to record with the band. Wilco officially replaced Coomer with Kotche in January 2001, a decision originally proposed by Tweedy and almost immediately approved by the rest of the band.[12]

Jay Bennett recorded the entire album with Chris Brickley, and agreed with Tweedy that O'Rourke would be a good choice to mix the album, after a failed attempt by Bennett and Brickley to mix a few of the songs at CRC and after hearing O'Rourke's "audition mix". One of the conflicts, exhibited in the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, was over the ten-second transition between "Ashes of American Flags" and "Heavy Metal Drummer". Bennett attempted to explain to Tweedy that there were several slightly different ways to approach the transition, each of which would yield slightly different results, but Tweedy explained that he just wanted the problem fixed, and was not concerned with understanding the different approaches. Bennett focused on the individual songs, while Tweedy focused on larger conceptual and thematic issues—a tried and true division of labor that had worked well on the four releases on which they co-wrote the material. In order to achieve the band's musical goals, Tweedy invited Jim O'Rourke into the studio to mix "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" (sampleⓘ), and the results impressed the band members. O'Rourke was then asked to mix the rest of the album.[13][14]

The cover of the album is a picture of Marina City in the band's adopted hometown of Chicago. The album was named after a series of letters in the phonetic alphabet that Tweedy had heard on the Irdial box set The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. On the fourth track of the album, Audio file "Tcp d1 4 phonetic alphabet nato irdial.ogg" not found, a woman repeats the words "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" numerous times; a clip from this song was placed in the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot song "Poor Places". Irdial sued Wilco for copyright infringement, and a settlement was reached out of court.[15] After the album's completion, Tweedy decided to eliminate Bennett from the band in favor of O'Rourke. The album was completed in 2001, and Tweedy believed it to be complete.[16]

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Main article: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco

Los Angeles photographer Sam Jones contacted Wilco in 2000 about producing a documentary film about the creation of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Jones shot over eighty hours of footage for I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (named after the opening song of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) beginning on the day that Coomer was dismissed from the band. The footage was edited down to ninety-two minutes, and the film was released to theaters in 2002.[17] The documentary has received generally positive reviews.[18]

Dismissal from Reprise Records

In 2001, AOL merged with Time Warner to form AOL Time Warner. Time Warner's market share of the music industry had dropped by almost five percent from the mid-1990s, and the new executives ordered the termination of six hundred jobs. One of those jobs was Reprise Records president Howie Klein, who had been a big supporter of Wilco on the label. Klein's dismissal caused head A&R representative David Kahne to be in charge of deciding whether to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Kahne assigned A&R representative Mio Vukovic to monitor the progress of the album. Vukovic was unhappy about the album because he felt that his suggestions were not being considered. Kahne wanted a radio single from the album, but he felt that none of the songs were suitable for commercial release. In June 2001, the album was officially rejected and Vukovic suggested that the band independently release the album.[19]

Josh Grier, Wilco's lawyer, was able to negotiate a buy-out of the band from Reprise. The band would keep the rights to the album if they paid Reprise $50,000. Before Wilco could accept the deal, Reprise called the band and changed their offer to give the band the rights to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for free. Despite Reprise's efforts to accommodate Wilco's departure, the process marred public relations after an article in the Chicago Tribune described what had happened.[20]

Wilco had planned on releasing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on September 11, 2001, but Tweedy did not want a change in record labels to significantly delay the release of the album. Within weeks of being released from the label and Jay Bennett leaving the band, MP3s of all tracks from the album began to appear on file sharing networks. In a decision aimed at discouraging the pirating of lower quality MP3s and having some control over how the album was distributed, on September 18, 2001, Wilco began streaming the entirety of the album on their official website. The wilcoworld.net website registered over fifty thousand hits that day, eight times as much as typical daily traffic. Traffic to the website quadrupled the normal traffic over the next few months. The following tour was a success financially, and members of Wilco observed that fans sang along with unreleased songs on the album.[21]

Release on Nonesuch Records

"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"
The first track from the album, this song featured an intro on bells composed by Glenn Kotche.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Both independent and major record labels bid for the right to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, including Artemis Records and Nonesuch Records. Tweedy denied the bids of record labels that did not have a roster of signed artists that matched his liking. He also decided to ignore small independent companies because he wanted to be able to put the album out for a large audience and felt that they would be unable to produce more than 100,000 records. Wilco decided to sign with AOL Time Warner subsidiary Nonesuch Records in November 2001, basing the decision on the label's small size and artist-friendly atmosphere. Wilco recorded and produced Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with Reprise, received the rights to the album for free, and then sold it back to a different AOL Time Warner affiliate.[13][22]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was commercially released by Nonesuch Records on April 23, 2002. The album sold 55,573 copies during its first week of release, peaking on the Billboard 200 album chart at number thirteen.[23][24] The album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and has sold over 590,000 units.[25][26]

The More Like the Moon EP (also called Bridge and Australian EP) was originally released as a bonus disc to the Australian version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The EP comprised six songs that were recorded but not released during the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions including a re-working of "Kamera". On the one-year anniversary of the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco uploaded the EP onto their official website, and offered it for free to anyone who purchased the album. The band would later allow anyone to download the EP for free off the website, regardless of whether they had purchased the full-length album.[27][28]

Reception

The album received positive reviews from media outlets such as Rolling Stone and BBC.[29][30] Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll.[31] Brent Sirota of Pitchfork Media gave the album a perfect 10.0 rating, noting that the album was "simply a masterpiece."[32] David Fricke of Rolling Stone praised its resemblance to psychedelia while Allmusic writer Zac Johnson lauded its musical complexity.[33][34]

Trouser Press was one of the few major media outlets that did not give the album a good review, stating that "more time spent in the songwriting lab might have yielded material more suitable to the evident studio effort invested and brought Wilco closer to making a truly great album."[35] Robert Christgau gave the album a one-star honorable mention rating, stating that he found the lyrics to be boring.[36]

Though Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was recorded before the September 11, 2001 attacks, critics perceived references in the album to the attacks. For example, Jeff Gordinier of Entertainment Weekly compared the two towers of Marina City to the World Trade Center towers.[37][38]

In 2008, Rolling Stone critic Tom Moon listed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot among the 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. In 2009, Rolling Stone ranked the album at #3 on its list of the 100 Best Albums of the Decade, that decade being the 2000s.[39] Pitchfork Media put the album at #4 on the Top 200 Albums of the 2000s. The album was voted as the 100th "Greatest Album Ever" in a 2006 Q Magazine poll.[40][41]

Personnel

Jeff Tweedy (vocals, guitar), Jay Bennett (guitar, keyboards, vocals, drums, bass), John Stirratt (bass guitar), and Ken Coomer were responsible for the conception of the album. Leroy Bach and Fred Lonberg-Holm provided additional instrumentation. Coomer is listed as a "collaborator", since his drum parts were replaced by those of Glenn Kotche. Bennett, Chris Brickley, and Jim O'Rourke provided engineering and mixing and Steve Rooke mastered the tapes. Wilco is named as the producer of the album, and Sam Jones took the photographs that were used in the insert of the album.[42]

Track listing

All lyrics by Jeff Tweedy. Music written by Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett except where noted.

  1. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" (Tweedy) – 6:57 Audio sampleⓘ
  2. "Kamera" – 3:29
  3. "Radio Cure" – 5:08
  4. "War on War" – 3:47
  5. "Jesus, Etc." – 3:50
  6. "Ashes of American Flags" – 4:43
  7. "Heavy Metal Drummer" (Tweedy) – 3:08
  8. "I'm the Man Who Loves You" – 3:55
  9. "Pot Kettle Black" – 4:00
  10. "Poor Places" – 5:15
  11. "Reservations" (Tweedy) – 7:22

Notes

  1. ^ Johnson, Zac. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". Allmusic. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
  2. ^ Phipps, Keith (April 29, 2002). "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". The A.V. Club. Retrieved July 15, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  3. ^ Jones, Chris (November 20, 2002). "Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Review". BBC. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
  4. ^ Christgau, Robert. "Wilco". Robert Christgau. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
  5. ^ Gordinier, Jeff (April 26, 2002). "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved July 15, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  6. ^ Robinson, John (April 16, 2002). "Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". NME. Retrieved July 15, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ Sirota, Brent S. (April 21, 2002). "Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
  8. ^ Dechert, S. Renee (April 26, 2002). "Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
  9. ^ Fricke, David (April 10, 2002). "Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 15, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  10. ^ Hoard, Christian (April 30, 2002). "'Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)'". The Village Voice. p. 75.
  11. ^ Kot 2004, p. 176-184
  12. ^ Kot 2004, p. 185-188
  13. ^ a b Jones, Sam. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco (DVD), Plexifilm, 2002.
  14. ^ Kot 2004, p. 195-199
  15. ^ Gupta, Jaya (June 25, 2004). "Wilco Settle Lawsuit". Filter Magazine.
  16. ^ Kot 2004, p. 199-200
  17. ^ I Am Trying to Break Your Heart liner notes.
  18. ^ "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Last accessed January 2, 2007.
  19. ^ Kot 2004, p. 201-206
  20. ^ Kot, Greg (August 15, 2001). "Wilco's shot in the arm". Chicago Tribune.
  21. ^ Kot 2004, p. 223-226
  22. ^ Kot 2004, p. 227-228
  23. ^ "The Billboard 200". Billboard. May 11, 2002.
  24. ^ Kot 2004, p. 228-229
  25. ^ "Gold and Platinum Database Search". Recording Industry Association of America. Last accessed January 2, 2007.
  26. ^ Cohen, Jonathan (April 13, 2007). "Wilco: In The Comfort Zone". Billboard. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
  27. ^ Kot 2004, p. 237
  28. ^ Unterberger, Andrew (September 1, 2003). "Wilco - More Like the Moon EP - Review". Stylus Magazine.
  29. ^ Fricke, David (May 9, 2002). "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: Review". Rolling Stone.
  30. ^ Jones, Chris. "Folk and Country Review - Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". BBC.
  31. ^ "Pazz & Jop 2002". The Village Voice. Last accessed January 2, 2007.
  32. ^ Sirota, Brent (April 22, 2002). "Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (review)". Last accessed July 6, 2007.
  33. ^ Fricke, David (May 9, 2002). "Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (review)". Rolling Stone. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) Last accessed July 6, 2007.
  34. ^ Johnson, Zac. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot > Overview". Allmusic. Last accessed July 6, 2007.
  35. ^ "Wilco". Trouser Press. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) Last accessed July 6, 2007.
  36. ^ Christgau, Robert. "CG: Wilco". robertchristgau.com. Last accessed July 6, 2007.
  37. ^ Gordinier, Jeff (April 22, 2002). "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (review)". Entertainment Weekly. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) Last accessed June 20, 2007.
  38. ^ Hultkrans, Andrew (September 2002). "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (review)". ArtForum. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) Last accessed June 20, 2007.
  39. ^ "#3 Wilco-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the Decade. 9 December 2009. Retrieved 10 December 2009.
  40. ^ Levy 2005, p. 216
  41. ^ "2006 Q Magazine Readers' 100 Greatest Albums Ever". Q. February 2006.
  42. ^ Yankee Hotel Foxtrot liner notes.

References

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