1) At Least That’s What You Said; 2) Hell Is Chrome; 3) Spiders (Kidsmoke); 4) Muzzle of Bees; 5) Hummingbird; 6) Handshake Drugs; 7) Wishful Thinking; 8) Company in My Back; 9) I’m a Wheel; 10) Theologians; 11) Less Than You Think; 12) The Late Greats
Special edition bonus CD: 1) Panthers; 2) At Least That’s What You Said (Live); 3) The Late Greats (Live); 4) Handshake Drugs (Live); 5) Kicking Television
Deeper dive into more experimental sonic textures and introspection. More Tweedy than anyone else, but it's Wilco at their most fascinating and captivating.
Key tracks: "At Least That's What You Said", "Wishful Thinking", "Theologians"
Jeff Tweedy is one of the most unassuming frontmen in modern rock. He looks like your uncle who retired to his farm years ago, and he speaks like your uncle who’s just come for a visit and quietly giggles and mumbles by his coffee cup. On the stage he stands still, delivers a dad joke or a wry observation between songs and when the music is actually on, he keeps focus on his role. These days, that role is mostly just the singing bit – the other guitarists in Wilco, especially the mighty Nels Cline, keep such a steady hold on the guitars that a good chunk of the time it’s hard to tell whether Tweedy’s playing something of just lazily strumming the air in front of his guitar. A great number of the songs he sings might be melancholy but the guy himself is a jolly man having a carefree time and acts almost like he just happened to stumble on the stage and behind the microphone. There’s a lot of heaviness in his heart and troubles in his past but you’d never know that from his light-hearted demeanor.
A Ghost Is Born is a Jeff Tweedy record. It says Wilco on the front but at this point Wilco were in a state of flux, in-between classic line-ups: after Jay Bennett had left and Jorgensen had joined, but before Cline and Pat Sansone had become a part of the crew. Tweedy’s always been Wilco’s heart and soul but he’s always had someone to play against to, an instrumental virtuoso of some kind that reins him in and has an equal presence in the music. This time it’s all about Tweedy; a very troubled Tweedy, both physically and mentally in ill health. So if he wants to have an 11-minute krautrock jam, so be it. If he wanted to tribute his crippling migraines with a 15-minute noise adventure, he could do so without any restrictions. Who’s going to stop him? At this stage the rest of Wilco were composed of John Stirratt who’s the poster boy for a loyal comrade-at-arms, Mikael Jorgensen who had only just joined and Glenn Kotche, the man who had seen with his own eyes just how easily Tweedy could sack someone who he saw was in the way of his vision, ie his predecessor drummer. And because someone has to do it, if someone has to play lead guitar then this time Tweedy’s just got to pick it up himself.
The guitars on A Ghost Is Born are amazing. Fascinating, even. They have a tendency to mostly just hang around with basic rhythmic patterns, and then suddenly and out of nowhere they wake up with an otherworldly scream. Jeff Tweedy, when fueled by migraines and painkillers, is an amazing guitarist. Erratic, but amazing. Wilco’s latter day output has often been characterised by Cline’s downright monstrous guitar treatments as he unleashes the most bewildering noises out of his electric guitar, but Wilco’s beginning as that kind of guitar band lies here. “At Least That’s What You Said” devotes half of its runtime to a full-on guitar solo that goes all the way from tasteful classic guitar licks to the sound of every single string exploding (and is one of my favourite guitar solos recorded, natch), the mellow “Hell Is Chrome” bursts out wailing electricity out of nowhere in the middle of the song and the monotonous, long verses of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” grow more and more frantic each time they appear as Tweedy’s guitar lines go progressively more unhinged as the song progresses. The guitars define A Ghost Is Born and possibly Tweedy himself during its creation: they exist in their own world, calmly doing their own thing until they suddenly have a panic attack, a freak out, a breakdown. A Ghost Is Born feels comfortable in its own skin and sounds pretty mellow, until suddenly it falls apart and reveals that maybe it’s not quite that after all. Underneath its mid-tempo, softly produced exterior is a pained atmosphere that doesn’t quite know how to stand still and which is growing wearier by the minute. Much like Tweedy himself.
Despite being such a no man’s land between Wilco’s most famous line-ups, A Ghost Is Born ends up sounding like Wilco in a microcosmos – maybe it’s because it’s defined by the man that’s the very center of Wilco. It has the sonic experimentations of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the hooks of Summerteeth, the subtler personality of the earlier albums and the mature rock vibe of the albums that would follow it. It mashes facets of the band wildly together, from having fun rock-out numbers like “I’m a Wheel” to the existential ballads like the breathtakingly glorious “Wishful Thinking”. The laidback “Theologians” and “Company in My Back” have that sort of alternate universe hit single feel the band has been displaying during its entire life, although for all of the latter’s hypnotic rhythms and earworm choruses it would never get airplay with its expletive-centered chorus. “At Least That’s What You Said” has the commandeering tone of Wilco’s past epic openers and sends life-affirming vibes through one’s spine, reminding once again why music can be so magical. Here and there there’s a piece of sweetness and loveliness like “Hummingbird”, making sure everything’s OK.
The most far-out moments are also the boldest on A Ghost Is Born and I’m glad they exist. The twitchy extended jam of “Spiders” gets its life force from how its loose rock-out choruses break the almost endless, repetitive verses, leaving behind an air of jubilation and excitement (and we’ve already discussed how brilliant the guitar in the verses is). “Less than You Think” spends the first few minutes of its life as a minimalist piano ballad and the next thirteen as a constantly evolving and ever-growing cacophony of static and noise, and is by its very design a definite opinion-splitter, but I’ve always found it a mystifyingly rewarding. For thirteen minutes it feels like you’re transported to a whole different realm of existence, where your mind is cleansed of all thoughts and resetting you into a zen-like existence. The transition between it fading away and the straightforward, feel-good rocker “The Late Greats” starting to play is marvellous: existential followed by simple fun, long followed by brief, experimentation followed by going back to basics. “Less Than You Think” takes you away and “The Late Greats” welcomes you back to Earth with a big hug. It’s a fantastic closure for the album and only really works perfectly if you take the time to go through the full “Less Than You Think” experience.
I’m convinced this is Wilco’s magnum opus. The amusing thing is that if you were to ask me classic Wilco songs, the ones that blow my mind repeatedly over and over again, I’d probably list a fair few titles before I’d get around anything on A Ghost Is Born (for the record, I’d definitely name for “At Least That’s What You Said” and “Wishful Thinking” among the first). But while the highest of highs might be found on other Wilco albums, A Ghost Is Born is the most consistent, perfectly flowing experience out of them all. It defines the band in so many ways and showcases many of their best qualities, the ones that make them such a rewarding band to listen to, and the way all the songs work together in one unit is outstandingly well done. And yet, for all that it still sounds like a completely unique work in their back catalogue. The sum of the parts is morphed into something new and different, powered by one man’s unbroken vision. And his migraines, I guess.
The version of the album I have comes with a bonus disc of goodies. The three live cuts are all great – Wilco is always a fantastic live band and it shows here as well – but they have zero to give if you already own Kicking Television, which is a full-concert documentation of the very same tour as these are from. The studio tracks are pretty obvious outtakes but entertaining in their own right. “Kicking Television” is another rocker in the vein of “I’m a Wheel” and sounds like a fun live moment that loses a little of its momentum in the studio. “Panthers” sounds gorgeous and is produced and arranged to perfection, but at the cost of songwriting – all beautiful sound, little in the way of a memorable melody. All of these can now be found on Alpha Mike Foxtrot as well, so I’ve little reason to put the disc on anymore or advise anyone to hunt it down.
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