I will make a daily feature called "Over/Under," in which I look at one overrated album and one underrated album. Today will be my first entry.
Overrated:
Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Nonesuch, 2002)
I have tried to like Wilco longer and harder than I have tried to like any other band; hell, they even hail from my current home city. My persistence, however, has not paid off. Wilco are an average band that was briefly elevated to above-average by the presence of Jay Bennett on three albums spanning the late 1990s and early 2000s. They were mediocre prior to his arrival (debut "A.M." being a sub-Uncle Tupelo rehash) and went right on back to being so after his departure (see any of the band's exhausted/exhausting late 2000s albums). "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is the finale of a loose trilogy which began with 1996's 70s-loving "Being There" and then continued through 1999's synth-happy "Summerteeth." Contrary to the conventional narrative that Wilco "reinvented" its sound with each album, YHF (as I will call "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" from hereon) is actually a reconstruction of the band's previous two epics, "Misunderstood" and "Sunken Treasure" which began Discs 1 and 2, respectively, of "Being There." Hence my usage of the "trilogy" construct.
Jim O'Rourke's fanciful, spacey mix definitely helps to differentiate the material on YHF from those two earthen cuts from its 1996 predecessor, and even from the pop of "Summerteeth," but it does not fully disguise how ordinary and bland much of the underlying material is. If you have read anything about YHF, you likely know its legendary backstory: how it was rejected as "too un-commercial" by long-time label Reprise Records, how the band refused to change it and instead shopped it around, and how Nonesuch picked it up and turned it into Wilco's career best-seller and a mainstay of "Best of the Decade" lists. Its coincidentally topical lyrics, which seem to refer obliquely to 9/11, also help in that regard.
What's baffling, however, especially for longtime listeners of Wilco, is what exactly alarmed Reprise and made them reject it: after all, to these ears, it really is not much more than a more sleekly produced "Being There," and much of its material is straightforward guitar-pop a la Gin Blossoms.
Let's take a look at it track by track.
1. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
The most famous cut by far, containing the band's most memorable lyric, and the basis for the title of a documentary about the band. It begins its 7+ minutes with some electronic sounds which herald another change of artistic direction for a band already known for its restlessness: will this be Wilco's "Kid A"? The opener, however, is a red herring in two ways, firstly in that it is not nearly as daring or as obtuse as its opening would portend, and secondly in that it really says precious little about what will follow it on the album.
Glen Kotche's drums shuffle and oscillate (one of the few instances where he's given something to do with his considerable chops), the same few notes repeat ad nauseam, and frontman Jeff Tweedy intones that he's an American aquarium drinker etc. What does it all mean? It's "Misunderstood" mk. II, only hollowed out and filled up with awkward phrasings and hamfisted cacophony. The song itself isn't much beyond its layers of processed noise. 420+ seconds pass, the digital dust settles, and we are left trying to figure out whose heart was broken and why. Was he just "misunderstood," indeed? Whatever its aftermath, the song's title, so paradoxically full of cheekiness and self-seriousness, seems to indicate that we have stumbled upon an Important Album. Let's move on...
2. Kamera
After making it through the opener's storm, we're treated to this slice of purely conventional pop. Chimey guitars bounce, the rhythm bobs, and Tweedy muses about his camera. I should note that the sequencing choice here reflects an annoying tendency by Wilco, dating all the way back to 1996 and continuing even to the present: that is, juxtaposing a "difficult" song with an "easy" song. Hence "Being There" followed "Misunderstood" with a string of Stones-y rockers, and 2004's "A Ghost Is Born" followed the unlistenable "Less Than You Think" with the disarming "Late Greats."
In any case, "Kamera" is so lightweight it just drifts away.
3. Radio Cure
Back to the seriousness drawing-board. "Radio Cure" is leaden, slow, and boring. It does not even possess the interesting motifs that nearly salvaged the "I Am Trying..." trainwreck. Its refrain ("Distance has no way of making love understandable") hints at an album-long concern with communication breakdown, but the message loses much of its coherence due to the interjection of songs like, well, "Kamera," and the weakeness of material inherent in songs like "Radio Cure."
4. War On War
A more cheerful rocker, despite its title and lyrics attempting to up the seriousness quotient again. Some warbly synths intrude near the end. Not much else to say about this one, other than I enjoy it more than most other cuts here.
5. Jesus, Etc.
Violins! This song has a nice melody and some tender, plaintive lyrics that reinforce the tangential 9/11 theme I alluded to earlier. But at this point, let's take stock of what's happened so far (since we are about halfway through, after all):
-Cumbersome, overlong red-herring opener "(I Am Trying...)"
-String of conventional gentle pop ("Kamera," "War On War," "Jesus, Etc.")
-Forgettable dirge ("Radio Cure")
6. "Ashes Of American Flags"
Shapeless and tuneless. It swirls, contracts, expands, and goes nowhere. Like "I Am Trying..." it suffers from a deficient melody attempting to hide under too many effects. Lyrics are ok, however.
7. "Heavy Metal Drummer"
The most hated song, natch, since it is the most blatantly commercial. What's odd, though, is that it really is a more accurate portrait of this album than "I Am Trying..." or "Ashes..." are. Clean guitar lines, a touch of synth, and cheeky lyrics: this is quintessential YHF. It is enjoyable, but it won't change the world.
8. "I Am The Man Who Loves You"
Ugh. My least favorite cut. Uncomfortable, fuzzy guitar line ripped from the "White Album" or maybe a Pavement demo, awkward lyrics, and a cumbersome attempt at a solo (which alas heralded the band's fascination with sub-Neil Young shredding on later albums).
9. "Pot Kettle Black"
Another chimey, no-frills pop rocker. A nice brush of pedal steel, melodic acoustic work, and clever lyrics. However enjoyable, though, it really does not mesh with the hagiographic reviews of this album as a seminal, wholly innovative achievement...
10. "Poor Places"
The most "difficult" cut, which reprises the cacophony of the opener with a full-on descent into aural chaos and radio waves. It has a slightly better tune than its stylistic predecessor, however.
11. "Reservations"
Another very long song, but extremely conventional. It is a soft, plaintive ballad which tacks on 2 minutes of useless organ noise/studio ambling. With that, the album rides off into the sunset.
I do not dislike this album (overrated =/= bad) but I do not understand the hype at all. It is a guitar pop album that makes a few isolated attempts at artsy "experimental" rock which is not that experimental at all. It sells itself short on two fronts, by first making its experiments too serious and overwrought, when the band simply does not excel in that regard, and second by making its conventional pop songs all too conventional and predictable, as if out of pity for the staid Wilco listener who has to also sit through the experiments. Accordingly, the album's coherence suffers and it succeeds at being both derivative as a derivative album and derivative as an "experimental" album.
Underrated: Arctic Monkeys, Humbug (Domino, 2009)
Arctic Monkeys' first two albums were hyperkinetic teenage barnstormers strung barely to the earth by the biting, lucid lyrical poetry of frontman Alex Turner. But with their third album, almost to the oblivion of the music press, the band transformed into a sinister dark-pop outfit with range and maturity far beyond its years. Turner's range on this record is breathtaking. He melds his Sheffield accent with a new weapon in the form of a Edwyn Collins-esque bass voice. Guitar solos shoot out of nowhere and then promptly high-tail it back into the wilderness. The drumming is superhuman in spots. This is the reinvention that The Strokes, The White Stripes...hell, all the The bands of the 00s, never accomplished. And all from a ragtag bunch that hasn't even turned 25 yet.
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