Wilco
A Ghost Is Born
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Wilco
A Ghost Is Born
Nonesuch, 2004
RiYL: Pavement, Grateful Dead, Ornette Coleman |
Then came YHF, an album with a mythic reputation months before its belated release. I avoided it for as long as I could, assuming there was no way it could match up to the hype. I was kind of right. Foxtrot is quite lovely, with its strings, horns, and laptops seldom distracting from the acoustic core of most of the songs. Those songs, however, seemed insubstantial in the face of heavy scrutiny, and the way Jeff Tweedy sings them, dropping so low in his register that he can barely stay in key, sounds like the cadence of a man with something he's afraid to lay bare.
A Ghost Is Born, ironically, is Tweedy laying himself bare, despite the fact that it's Wilco's most baroque release yet. The music never stays in one place too long, and although there are pretentious bits, repetitive bits, and some downright annoying bits, the overall effect is much greater than the sum of its parts. The reason is Tweedy's vocals, which (sometimes very directly) address his drug problems and the continuing love of his wife in the face of them.
There are some bleak moments, but no maudlin ones, and very many exquisite ambiguities. Throughout, Tweedy makes it obvious that the titular ghost is himself, unsure he's still a complete man after all he's been through. His "goal in life [is] to be an echo," he sings on "Hummingbird," and continues, "remember to remember me." A Ghost Is Born is a record about destroying yourself -- with drugs, with codependence, with noise guitar -- until all that remains is what others see you as -- an echo, a reflection, a ghost. It's also light years better than any other record released so far in 2004.
"At Least That's What You Said" opens the album minimally, with its lovely (and a tad overmixed) vocals serving as a bit of misdirection for what's to come. After the song proper is over, a longer jam section begins, the rhythm section working a syncopated two-chord vamp while Tweedy uncorks the first of many of his interchangeable feedback solos.
If Ghost has a weakness it's this early fixation on atonal, scrabble-and-scratch guitar passages. These frazzled interludes do serve some sort of a narrative purpose -- like Tweedy's narrator, they're unable to settle, constantly changing directions and pointedly refusing to conform to one mindset/key. It doesn't help that most of the skronking occurs over the record's first three tracks. By the end of the album, you'll probably have forgotten about how annoying it was, since longer and even more irritating passages of noise await.
"Spiders (Kidsmoke)" is the first Wilco song that you could reasonably compare to Kraftwerk, and it settles into a weird No Krautrock vibe that overstays its welcome only by about, oh, six minutes or so. After a strong and reasonable shift from an analog synth groove to riff rock (and another guitar solo which might as well be the same one from "At Least..." overdubbed over the new backing track) the song questionably comes back for an unnecessary final verse and another four minutes exactly repeating the middle section. That's the second-to-last bad decision on the record. (Nearly) everything after this one smokes.
"Muzzle Of Bees" opens up with a finger-picked guitar that sounds like something from side two of Led Zeppelin III, and that's a good thing. The lyrics on the surface paint an idle picture of a happy couple enjoying the great outdoors, but hint at underlying issues. "Half of it's you, half is me," Tweedy sings, not explaining what "it" is. "Muzzle" then organically shifts into a textural instrumental section reminiscent of David Grubbs' recent work, with the guitar scraping providing friction rather than focus.
"Handshake Drugs" disorientingly features a Motown vibe, with bassist John Stirratt providing James Jamerson-styled licks. "If I ever was myself, I wasn't that night," Tweedy says, refusing to elaborate. There's even some tonality creeping into the guitar leads by this point. The song's coda, however, is a bit on the pretentious side -- but it might be deliberate. While on Yankee Tweedy and his band used the brush of the studio for support, on Ghost they aim more to subvert -- and I would argue that the album is all the better for it.
"Wishful Thinking" is an (almost) stripped-down number that features some of the most incisive lyrics on the record. "Hell in a nutshell / is any song worth singing / if it doesn't tell," one verse closes. Over a subtly disruptive bed of electronically altered percussion, he continues, "[I] thank my lucky stars that you're not me." This is an unsettling line -- does he need his lover simply because he hates himself? Indeed, it would take more space than I have to even begin to delve into the psychology of A Ghost Is Born.
"Company In My Back" seems straight out of Being There land, except for the harpsichord. It's pretty, but kind of a minor track, as is the rocker "I'm A Wheel," which boasts a nifty riff but suffers from some lazy lyric-writing. "Theologians," on the other hand, is more than it first appears. Over a slight, piano-driven backing, Tweedy laments that even the experts have nothing to save his soul, and he finishes by invoking the album's title repeatedly.
"Less You Think" seems to be designed to infuriate listeners -- it's a barely-there ballad, followed by some eight minutes of random noise. I get its thematic purpose -- having finally admitted to the world, his lover, and himself that there is no easy solution for his problems, the narrator becomes completely invisible, his individual voice lost in a cacophony of unhelpful suggestions. A lot of people have claimed that dead relatives have communicated to them over untuned radios -- perhaps that's why A Ghost Is Born essentially ends with static. As I said, I get it thematically. I don't, however, want to listen to eight minutes of noise ever again -- I guess that means no more Mogwai concerts.
"The Late Greats," the final song, appears essentially as a bonus track; it's so thematically and stylistically separated from everything else, it's odd that it's on here at all. Perhaps Wilco felt it was too good a tune to abandon to MP3-dom. Sort of a country-tinged update of The Replacements' "Left Of The Dial," "Late Greats" pays tribute to an amazing band that "never even played a show," with Tweedy taking the opportunity to get some digs in at the record industry.
There is one ominous line -- "the best laugh never leaves your lungs" -- that ties back to the suite that precedes the song; in this sense, maybe "The Late Greats" belong on the album after all. It's never as bad as you make it out to be, Tweedy is suggesting, and as difficult as my life is, at least I'm getting paid to make music. There are a lot of bands, maybe even bands better than mine, that will never make a dime.
I've been waiting for those terrible moan-metal bands like Linkin Park and Staind to record a song like "The Late Greats" for years. Yeah, sure, life is hard, drugs are bad, but you're a ROCK STAR. Smile once in a while. And there, circuitously, is the key to the greatness A Ghost Is Born -- it doesn't elicit just one reaction. Over the course of this album, you may laugh, frown, cry, cover your ears, or reach for the remote to fast-forward. But then you'll want to listen to it again. This is where Tweedy and company prove worthy of the status that has already been conferred upon them -- they are one of the best American bands active right now.
MARK DONOHUE | Known to some as "Western Homes," Mark is a graduate of UC Berkeley, a starving musician, and a Cubs fan. Be afraid. Very afraid.