[Editor's Note: I have enjoyed writing these series where I listen to a legacy artist's music album by album and write about them. The readers I care about the most (my friends who for some reason tolerate me) are into them too and so I will keep writing them!]
So far in my catalog-spanning collection of series on different music artists I have been sticking to the Boomers: Dylan, Springsteen, and McCartney. I wasn't going to write another one for awhile, but Wilco is coming to town and I want to see them again. That got me in the mood to relisten to their catalog. There are only a couple of other bands that have ever meant as much to me personally, and since I was there at the start of their career (unlike the other artists I've covered), this will also be an exercise memoir/shameless autobiography. Also, unlike those other series, I have listened to all of their albums already, many many times. This will be less a voyage of discovery and more a look into what one of my favorite acts means to me and why. I know that as a white, educated Gen X dad from the Midwest I am pretty much a walking stereotype when it comes to Wilco fandom, but I really think it's about more than that.
Also, a quick note: I will only be covering albums with the Wilco name on them. I am planning a couple of appendices, one on Uncle Tupelo, the other consisting of solo and side projects. My reasons are less than scientific; I just wanna hear all of their main records before I see the show and I've only got a week!
Alright, on with the show.
A.M., 1995
Before there was Wilco, there was Uncle Tupelo. I became a fan right at the end when I picked up Anondyne after reading an article about them in Request magazine. Here were a bunch of guys from the small town Midwest who loved both punk and roots music and had decidedly progressive politics. I knew right away that these were my people. I played Anondyne to death, and to this day it takes me right back to the spring of 1994 and my last weeks of high school.
When Uncle Tupelo broke up and Wilco emerged with Jeff Tweedy and Son Volt under Jay Farrar, the comparisons were inevitable. I bought this album and Son Volt's Trace on the same visit to the record store (in this case a Best Buy in Omaha), and immediately preferred the Son Volt record. I had liked Farrar's songs in Uncle Tupelo better, and still to this day "Tear Stained Eye" from Trace is one of my pantheon songs.
Once I stopped comparing those two records, and my Wilco fandom deepened with later releases, I returned to A.M. and realized I had missed a lot. It's more uneven than the records that follow, but the gems are truly glittering. "Casino Queen" is a barnstorming, foot-stomping rocker that I had the pleasure of hearing live back in the early 2000s. "Box Full of Letters" shows off Tweedy's punky roots with some gleefully crunchy guitars. "Passenger Side" hits on a traditional country theme (drunk driving) with both humor and melancholy. (When grad school friends get together and play guitars and sing it always gets featured.) There are some lovely ballads too, like John Stirrat's "Just That Simple" and Tweedy's "Blue Eyed Soul." Admittedly, there are also clunkers like "I Thought I Held You."
Listening to this album in 1995 I figured that Wilco were going to be one of many bands in the alt-country scene, carrying on where Uncle Tupelo left off. At the time my music tastes were starting to move away from roots more into the Bowie-Velvets-punk side and I put the CD aside after a few initial listens, unaware of what was coming next. After their next record no one would be making Son Volt comparisons ever again.
Rating: Four Tweedys
Being There, 1996
I hadn't given Wilco much thought but bought this CD after 1. seeing the video for "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" and 2. noticing that it sold at a discount because it was a double album priced as a single. I know I sound like Grandpa Simpson right now, but in those pre-streaming days these were real considerations.
The first seven songs on this album really throw down the gauntlet and announce that the band has grown a lot since their debut. I noticed right away with "Misunderstood" that Wilco's music still had rooty vibes, but was also sounding more experimental. "Far Far Away" gets more country, but has similar themes of small town isolation. In my 20s and 30s when I moved around a lot I would listen to this song as a newcomer in a strange town and feel a little comfort. All of a sudden from this relaxed, contemplative vibe we get two stone cold rockers, "Monday" and the aforementioned "Outtasite (Outta Mind.)" "Monday" sounds like a lost track from early Skynyrd (a big compliment in my book) and "Outtasite" brings in the punky feel of Uncle Tupelo's loudest bangers. After that we get a detour back to the country, and a good one, in "Forget the Flowers." Then comes "Red Eyed and Blue" backed with "I Got You," long a mainstay of the band's live shows and probably the highlight the first time I saw them back in 2002. The first song starts mellow, a rumination ont the rock and roll life that seems to ask if all of the effort and pain is worth it. (Yes, this is a Gen X band in the 90s, folks!) After that laconic reflection comes the stomping of "I Got You," as the band has decided that, nope, getting to rock is worth it! Awake, Lazarus!
The songs that close out the first disc aren't as thrilling, but they are still good. It's important to remember that this album was first envisioned and released as a double, with each disc having a different feel. For the longest time, I listened a lot to the first disc, and far less to the second. At a party in grad school a friend put the second disc on, saying it was his favorite, and I started listening to it differently after. (I will avoid the old man rant about how physical media allows us these moments of discovery.)
"Sunken Treasure" starts things off on a somber note similar to "Misunderstood" and like it a comment on being "out of tune" with the world. "Kingpin" is a hand-clapping, foot-stomping country trash classic, and one of the rare rockers on the second disc. If the first disc is the interstate, this one is more the backroads. It ends with "Dreamer of My Dreams," a raucous hoedown but also the last full-on country fried song the band would put out under their own name for twenty-five years.
Although the grunge explosion had happened, by 1996 it was fading and rock music's place in the pop music scene was well on its road to decline. I sometimes listen to this album as the last truly great classic rock record. As "I Got You" reminds us, it was the end of the century.
Rating: Five Tweedys
Mermaid Avenue, 1998 (with Billy Bragg)
I wasn't sure whether to include the Mermaid Avenue albums in this series or not, but I am because they are a kind of swan song for Wilco as a band that could be described as "alt-country." In case you don't know, on these albums Wilco partnered with Brit singer Billy Bragg to craft versions of unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs. In many respects it was a throwback to Uncle Tupelo and Jay Farrar's interest in the politics of the Popular Front era. The combination of Bragg, Wilco, and these Woody lyrics works incredibly well, which made this record a critical darling of the time. "California Stars" became a mainstay of Wilco's live shows and "I Guess I Planted" and "Way Down Yonder in a Minor Key" have become big favorites for me. The irony with this album is that artists often put out covers albums to familiarize themselves with the music that influenced them. In this case Wilco is giving it the old country try one more time before taking on far different musical adventures.
Rating: Four and a Half Tweedys
Mermaid Avenue Volume 2, 2000 (with Billy Bragg)
This album comes chronologically after Summerteeth, but it was recorded at the time of the first effort with Billy Bragg and fits this era of Wilco's development. (Sometimes the proper chronology is not a literal one when it comes to writing history!) It feels more like a helping of leftovers, but anyone who's eaten their Thanksgiving meal over and over again for a few days after knows that leftovers can be pretty damn good. There are not as many classics here, but I really enjoy "Airline to Heaven."
Of course, in between the first and second of these albums with Bragg, Wilco took a radical turn. More on that in my next installment.
Rating: Three and a half Tweedys
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