week of 1/22/03
 
 
 

Wilco’s ‘YHF’ is a chaotic masterpiece
By Hunter Pope

When I first came upon Wilco’s fourth album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” I thought toilet paper derived from sawdust shavings sounded better. First of all, Reprise (Wilco’s record company at the time) and A&R representative Mio Vukovic deemed the band’s fourth album a “career ender” and asked Wilco “to make some changes.” Wilco declined, claiming the album finished. They left Reprise with a finished album that the public had yet to hear. Ironically, the original release date had been slated for Sept. 11, 2001.

The second unsavory factor was the theme of “YHF.” Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is originally a high traffic station on a network of short wave radio stations operated by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. Mossad communicates to its agents through three phonetic letter codes like “Echo Zulu India.” The voices are always synthesized and always female.

Main lyricist Jeff Tweedy became interested in short wave a couple of years before and even had a four-disc box set of intercepted transmissions. Former member Jay Bennett told Stephen Dowling of Music 365, “I remember that car ride to Chicago where Jeff played it. For the first 20 minutes it was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ And then after two hours ....”

It must have been an even duller shock to Bennett when Tweedy wanted to use their new album as a short wave metaphor — the idea of communication in a relationship.

A quick summary. Reprise rejects the album, essentially defining it as an overweight albatross. On top of that, “YHF” was scheduled to rear its head on one of the most doomed days in America’s history. The curdled whip cream on top was an album homage to short wave radios. Hmmm..

But the band under scrutiny happened to be one of Chicago’s finest. Their manager even confessed that Wilco could be sitting pretty by simply touring. Wilco began as a split of Uncle Tupelo, a band that summoned the term “alt-country.” Jay Farrar, the half leader of Tupelo, went on to form Son Volt. Jeff Tweedy, the other half of the mastermind, went on to help form Wilco. Their first two albums, “AM” and the double album, “Being There,” suggested a band searching for its roots beyond the alt-country label, and Tweedy’s lyrics showed a poetic portent for things to come.

Wilco took a sabbatical of sorts when Woody Guthrie’s daughter asked English angst rocker Billy Bragg to archive Guthrie’s writings (some slapdashed on fading notebook paper) and turn it into an album. Bragg recruited the Wilco boys to help transform the word to music. The results birthed “Mermaid Avenue, Volumes I and II”, and the critics (including myself) could not find enough variables for the word, “praise.”

1999’s “Summer Teeth” distanced Wilco even more from its original country label. Psychedelia pop, haunting feedbacks, and traces of Neil Young demonstrated that Wilco had put country on the roadside and given it a sign saying, “Will work for inspiration.”

The short wave muse rang heavy on lead man Tweedy as the work for “YHF” began. Luckily, Wilco had two of the best arrangers/mixers in the business — Jay Bennett (who left the band after the completion of the album) and co-producer Jim O’Rourke. They fashioned an album based on the fragility of human communication. Each person speaks in different “codes,” and a person’s verbal intent can sometimes get confused by other ears (much like a short wave radio). This rings true for relationships, politics, religion, and any incendiary subject that elevates emotion. On top of this, communication can be misread due to external influences, or metaphorically known (in Wilco’s sense) as radio static.

Obviously, Reprise did not get the code, and they asked the band to alter its oddities into mainstream fodder. If Reprise didn’t like the album, fine, they would just shop it around to another willing label. Wilco bought the record’s rights for a bargain ($50,000). The split became official on Aug. 14, and soon after Jay Bennett left the band. The rain became hail when Wilco decided to start their fall tour six days after the terrorist attacks. They had neither a label to support them, nor a new album to present to the masses.

Days before the tour began, Wilco decided to audiostream “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” on their website. The response was incredible. Wilco’s site had 3.5 million hits in September, along with 200,000 visitors. In addition, the story of Wilco battling it out with the “big bad corporate wolves” over recording independence had reached fabled proportions.

Finally, a record company named “Nonesuch” bit and decided to officially release “YHF” on April 22, 2002. The conspiracy theorists started squawking when it came to light that NoneSuch was a subdivision of AOL/TimeWarner, which also happened to own Reprise.

The album finally reached my hands at the beginning of 2003. I confess that I never heard the album’s history until after purchasing “YHF.” Ironically, radio waves from the great WNCW had lassoed my attention. Wilco’s album had reached #3 on WNCW’s 100 top albums, and with any album in the top 10, the radio station graciously played the record in its entirety. I understood “the code” immediately. The album blossomed with highs, lows, clarities, distortion, light, dark, beauty, ugliness, bleakness, and optimism. I intercepted the band’s messages like an anal code breaker, and the next day, I picked up a “dossier” at headquarters, aka, the local record store.

My above interpretations are completely theoretical. It’s just one cryptogram among a million others. Each listener will have his or her own system of code breaking “YHF,” and each will come up with a different solution.

The only thing I’m certain of is that “YHF” borders on brilliance. It’s a marquee for the chaotic time we baste in, and a translator for the warring emotions everyone feels. Let’s just hope that Wilco gets more confusing as they “mature.”