Wilco may be one of the few bands in history to benefit from a dismissal on the eve of a new album. Since forming from the remnants of the great Uncle Tupelo in 1994, Wilco has issued five releases, two of them with British folk punker Billy Bragg. This summer had been marked to launch the follow-up to 1999’s Summerteeth, a record so acclaimed it made the Chicago Tribune “Best Albums of the Nineties” list before it was even released.
But in July, Wilco officially parted ways with AOL Time Warner-owned Reprise Records over the content of their new album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Reprise management recently changed hands, and the new suits doubted the commercial potential of Foxtrot.
The label asked for the album to be re-recorded. Wilco declined, bought out their own recording for a reported $50,000 and are now shopping it to more than thirty interested parties, independent and corporate, for an early 2002 release. In the meantime, the band is streaming the record over the internet from their Web site, www.wilco-world.com.
The mechanics of a major record label are not easily simplified, but Reprise’s decision reflects a growing conservatism in the industry. The recent economic dow-turn has inhibited many corporate players from taking risks on low-profit acts. Having never sold more than 200,000 records, Wilco grosses a fraction of what Reprise’s top sellers do. In the end, their artistic credibility and midsize following lost out to economics.
The schism has not necessarily hurt the band, however. Word of mouth suggests Wilco may be entering the most fruitful era of their career. Last May, VH1’s Bill Flanagan declared Wilco frontman/principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy ready to join Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen in the canon of great songwriting. Wilco’s fan base remains intact as well. At a free Fourth of July concert in Grant Park, supporters turned out in droves to cheer a revamped line-up playing a different style of music than the Wilco of old
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot itself is a stunning achievement. Tweedy’s past musical experiments have evolved to become the central thrust of his songwriting, creating complete unpredictability within the frame of his increasingly lyrical songs. Foxtrot finds Tweedy incorporating a more linear writing style, expanding beyond the verse-chorus-verse format he’s already mastered. New drummer Glen Kotche (formerly of Minus 5) gives a standout performance, enlivening the new material by adding soundscapes rather than just keeping time.
Despite Reprise’s assertions, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is not an inaccessible album. Like the aforementioned Springsteen, Tweedy’s lyrics simultaneously question and validate the lives of the kind of everyday people that come in just under radar. The music is exciting and different but the experiments never exceed the songs that contain them.
Wilco fans that can’t wait for a 2002 release date can take heart in another pending project.
