Ranked: Wilco | Under the Radar Magazine Under the Radar | Music Blog for the Indie Music Magazine
Friday, March 29th, 2024  

Ranked: Wilco

Sep 13, 2012
Bookmark and Share


Welcome to Ranked, our regular series in which one of our writers takes an artist’s catalogue and ranks all their official studio albums from best to worst. The order is decided by the individual writer, rather than our editors. If you disagree with our ranking then please let us know in the comments section. This time Dan Lucas ranks Wilco.

Since rising from the ashes of alt-country staples Uncle Tupelo, Chicago’s Wilco have emerged from their former incarnation’s shadow to become one of the most critically-adored bands of the past two decades. In between becoming game changers in the music industry and winning legions of fans over to the Americana genre, they’ve developed their sound and recorded some of the most gorgeous music never to make the radio.

Here are Wilco’s major releases, ranked from most essential to least.

Words by Dan Lucas

1

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

2002

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

is not only Wilco’s best album but one of the landmarks of the past 10 years, for a multitude reasons. It’s the record that saw them dismissed from Warner Bros. subsidiary Reprise and was hyped enough online to be picked up by Warner Bros. subsidiary Nonesuch just a few months later. The beautiful melodies and heartbreaking lyrics of the likes of “Jesus Etc.,” “Poor Places,” and “I am Trying to Break Your Heart”—“You were so right when you said I’d been drinking, what was I thinking when we said goodnight?”—are half-obfuscated by Jay Bennett and Jim O’Rourke’s clashing shards of noise and distortion. It sounds like a band being fractured and torn apart by tension, which is exactly what was happening with Bennett and Ken Coomer both ending up fired by singer Jeff Tweedy the end of the recording process. With such a weight of history behind the record, it almost seems like a bonus that there isn’t a weak track on here.

2

Summerteeth

1999

The nigh-on perfect blend of A.M. pop and west coast rock that characterised the band’s third album means that it can count itself very unlucky not to pip YHF

to first place in this list. Almost the calm before the storm, this is Wilco at their happiest. A warm breeze cascades through the saddest lyrics, from “The hope I had in a notebook full of white dry pages was all I tried to save” on “Via Chicago” through to “Every evening when he gets home, to make his supper and eat it alone, his black shirt cries while his shoes get cold” on the title track. Add to this the bouncing love-stricken mellotron on “I’m Always in Love” and the blend of ambiguous lyrics with Bennett’s box of tricks at their most organic on highlight “She’s a Jar” and you arguably have one of the best records of the 1990s.

3

The Whole Love

2011

This one might be a controversially high placing, but the fluctuating membership of the band inherently causes a shift in their dynamic. The current six-man incarnation is the longest-serving, and last year’s The Whole Love

is the best showcase of its collective and individual qualities—all of which is an ineloquent way of saying that this is the first real chance we get to hear the full force of lead guitarist Nels Cline. We don’t just get to hear him at his virtuoso best here, as on opener “Art of Almost,” but we get to hear the sheer variety of styles he incorporates into his playing: from adding subtle textures to “Whole Love” to jagged shards on “I Might” via double-necked e-bow shredding (yes!) on “Dawned on Me.” Not that this is an album of mere guitar wankery; the ambition that the band had been accused of having lost on their previous two records is back in abundance, and in 12-minute closer acoustic folk “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)” they produced the most beautiful song in their entire canon.

4

Being There

1996

Being There was inarguably Wilco’s breakthrough album: 300,000 sales might not be a groundbreaking amount, but it was more than twice as many sales as their debut A.M.

racked up. Lead single “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” (still their biggest chart hit) continued in the alt-country mold of their Uncle Tupelo-inspired debut, but this was more of a natural progression than retreading the same ground that Tweedy & Co. had been in their previous guise. Live favorite “Misunderstood” best showed the transition from comfy Americana to distorted alt-rock, with its dying guitars exhaling their final breaths over the refrain of “I’d like to thank you all for nothing… nothing… nothing… nothing at all.”

5

A Ghost is Born

2004

The follow-up to 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

isn’t so much a left turn as the sound of Wilco putting the steering wheel into full lock. It’s certainly their most ambitious album to date, as evidenced by the Krautrocky “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” although this tips over into self-indulgence on “Less Than You Think,” a song even Jeff Tweedy has claimed he can’t stand. The quiet-loud dynamic would be easy to fudge but hits the listener like a punch to the gut on opener “At Least That’s What You Said,” and few bands can do understated prettiness as well as these guys do on “Muzzle of Bees” or the epic “Handshake Drugs.” The album suffers though from perhaps being a bit too diverse—country rocker “The Late Greats” sticks out like a sore thumb at the end—and Jim O’Rourke’s lo-fi production can also grate; when the band is looking to be this experimental you often get the feeling it’d be nice to fully hear what they’re doing.

6

Wilco (The Album)

2009

This might be the greatest ever “Best Of” album consisting entirely of original songs. With the band’s fluctuating nature—both in terms of personnel and aesthetic—Wilco have been a lot of things over the years, all of which seem to be neatly packaged into this knowing, self-aware record. The country rock of the band’s first two records is packaged into “Solitaire” and “I’ll Fight,” the eerie experimentalism is there on “Deeper Down” and high water mark “Bull Black Nova” (“There’s blood in the sink, blood on the sofa…what have they found? I wonder if they know” could be straight out of “Via Chicago”’s enraged cousin), and the breezy pop beauty of Summerteeth is reflected on “Deeper Down” and “You and I.” Despite, or perhaps because of this, the album lacks its own defining character in contrast with the rest of Wilco’s oeuvre; the disparate recording process also means that it doesn’t have the same sense of holistic democracy as on its follow up The Whole Love

.

7

A.M.

1995

Uncle Tupelo, the former band of Wilco members Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Ken Coomer, and Max Johnston, played their last show together in June 1994; in the fall of that same year Wilco put the finishing touches to their debut album A.M.

It comes, therefore, as little surprise that this album is very much in the mold of its predecessors. It may be classed as an alt-country record, but in truth there is very little that’s alternative about this straight-up slice of Americana. Whilst there are some great soft rock songs—the likes of “Box Full of Letters,” “Passenger Side,” and “Pick Up the Change” have aged surprisingly well—it’s still the naïve sound of a band finding their feet very much in the shadow of another recently departed. Of course hindsight will show us that they would evolve and move on to become a great band in their own right, but this is a pleasant if inessential birthmark.

8

Sky Blue Sky

2007

Sky Blue Sky is often lazily described by fans and critics alike as Wilco’s “Dad Rock” album. As Tweedy has pointed out in interviews, this is a glib term, but there is a sense of comfort here and the band settling into their frontman’s neatly carved groove (think of the episode of The Simpsons

where Homer returns to find that his personal groove in the couch has been misshapen by someone else’s ass). There are some stunning moments—the sublime virtuosity of “Impossible Germany” or the soft-acoustics-meet-shredded-guitar-and-Hammond-organ etherealness of “You Are My Face,” but these highlights are all-too rare. Instead most of the band, including new members multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and jazz guitar god Nels Cline, are sidelined in favour of Tweedy in his singer/songwriter guise.

Bonus Selection: Kicking Television

2005

(The bonus selection includes albums and side projects that don’t quite neatly fit into the band’s studio discography, but will likely be of interest to fans of the band.) Wilco’s only full live album is a magnificent affair and the first introduction many rock fans will have had to the brilliance of Cline. Yes, it’s a long album, but it runs through the band’s canon from Being There up to A Ghost Is Born

. The songs from the latter really come alive on this album thanks to the addition of a sixth band member, and you can’t help but feel that this louder, meatier sound is how songs such as “Handshake Drugs” and “Hummingbird” were always meant to be.

Bonus Selection: Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions

2012

April of this year saw the combined release of all of the tracks from the 1998 Mermaid Avenue

sessions with Billy Bragg. It’s a neat collection of unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics found after his death and set to music by Wilco and the barking folk musician/political activist Bragg. It’s the former who seems to handle the task that bit more adeptly, as Tweedy turns songs such as “California Stars” and “One by One” very much into Wilco staples, so completely does he own the lyrics.

Comments

Submit your comment

Name Required

Email Required, will not be published

URL

Remember my personal information
Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below:

Matthew Caplan
September 22nd 2012
8:35pm

Put “A Ghost is Born” in second place and the list makes a whole lot more sense.  I think this album has some of Wilco’s strongest material, including one of my favorite three song stretches on any record: Muzzle of Bees—> Hummingbird—> Handshake Drugs.

Zach N.
September 24th 2012
11:52pm

Pretty solid list except, the only bone I have to pick with is “Sky Blue Sky” ranked as the worst. Why is it that so many people write off this record? I know there’s the whole “dad-rock” thing, but without it we wouldn’t have Impossible Germany, You Are My Face, Side with the Seeds, and Hate It Here. I’d say its better than Wilco (The Album) (besides Bull Black Nova and a few others). Other than that, pretty solid. I also agree that A Ghost is Born is a really underrated record.

Intern
October 18th 2012
7:06pm

The comedian Stewart Lee talks about being named the 43rd greatest stand up of all time being like the 43rd tallest dwarf: taller than all the others, but still a dwarf. For me the worst Wilco album is the opposite of that: the weakest thing they’ve ever done, but it’s still a Wilco album and as such better than most stuff out there.

Smedirtiets
November 17th 2012
4:40am

275212 http://happypaydayloans.pro/#575134 payday loan for 500 <a >Payday Loans</a> low apr payday loans

Jekyll
December 7th 2012
4:08pm

musical instrumentation w/out integrity is just sound. #occupynarcissism

Mike L.
December 19th 2012
9:22pm

I agree that Sky Blue Sky is way too low. Does an album have to be considered edgy or experimental to be great? I put it at the top. YHF is great but also too self-indulgent.

Frank Ritz
December 31st 2012
8:05pm

So very close to right. Wilco I would say is in my top 5 bands of all time… Definitely top 10, regardless I love them, and this is almost spot on.

1. Yankee Hotel (5/5)
2. Summerteeth (5/5)

Yankee and Summerteeth are neck and neck. They are two of my favorite albums of all time, close to Top 10 worthy, and it’s because they’re two perfect albums that are brilliant for different reasons, but the genius is there and seen by all. It was the height of their greatness but they never really faltered after, but if they could only have two albums, it’d be these two.

3. The Whole Love
4. Wilco the Album

Another two that are neck and neck in my mind. I don’t think Wilco the Album gets enough credit, I think it’s the ultimate pop album and it’s just so much fun it’s hard not to love it. Every song I just get happy and enjoy it, it is not revolutionary by any means, but it’s still fantastic. But yet, The Whole Love is slightly superior, and I think it’s almost their most puzzling. When I look at it I go, why do I love this album? But then I listen and the music takes over. Brilliance is there

5. Being There (4/5)
6. A Ghost Is Born (4/5)

Being There suffers from being two discs, it was ambitious but foolish. If you cut maybe 4 songs or 5 from it all, it would be a 5/5 album and even greater. A Ghost is Born took Wilco in an interesting direction that I was fond of, but nothing to fall in love with, though it does ooz with brilliance.

7. Sky Blue Sky (3.5/5)
8. A.M. (3 or 3.5/5)

Nothing is wrong with either of these albums, they’re good. But they bring the least to the table. There’s hardly anything to offer, some great songs, but nothing substantial. They are my least listened to Wilco albums.

Wilco is a diverse and brilliant band. That is all that can be said in the end. Jeff Tweedy is a genius.

Howard
March 13th 2013
3:23am

I also rank “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” and “Summerteeth” as the best.

shmoono2
June 28th 2013
9:47pm

A.M. is a masterpiece, Being There has a couple of good tracks, then I was out. Cool to see this perspective, though.

Scot Phillips
February 6th 2015
11:17am

A good list, mine would be a little different. Summerteeth is their best by a nose for me. With Being There and YHF in a close race for second. I have a soft spot for A.M. and think it’s criminally underrated. And while I think even the worst Wilco album is still really, really good, Wilco (The Album) brings up the rear for me.
So:
1. Summerteeth
2. Being There
3. YHF
4. A.M.
5. The Whole Love
6. A Ghost Is Born
7. Sky Blue Sky
8. Wilco (The Album)

diseño web alicante
June 16th 2015
11:32am

Mi lista favorita es:

1. YHF
2. Being There
3. Summerteeth
4. A.M.
5. The Whole Love
6. Sky Blue Sky
7. A Ghost Is Born
8. Wilco (The Album)

fundas para portatiles
June 16th 2015
11:37am

My favorite list is:

1. YHF
2. Being There
3. Summerteeth
4. A.M.
5. The Whole Love
6. Sky Blue Sky
7. A Ghost Is Born
8. Wilco (The Album)

promo codes for papa johns
February 4th 2016
6:19pm

Eight of them? Really interesting things going on right there.

Amaza Khan
November 30th 2016
11:51am

great list. sky blue sky :)

Arianna
December 9th 2018
11:14pm

I will share this stuff with my mates after mine <a >yosemite national park bus trips</a> and will get lots of opinions about this.

Freda
January 16th 2019
4:08am

This thread is very informative. I like reading the comments ans it really helps me a lot. It give me new ideas on this particular topic. I will apply all that I learn form this one. Keep on posting.  Visit also rpg horror games

Doris
May 9th 2019
2:06am

I will share this with others too after <a >weekend trips from las vegas</a> and will get my fellows opneions regarindg this shared article.

Doris
May 9th 2019
2:07am

I will share this with others too after DC trip and will get my fellows opneions regarindg this shared article.

hotel jakarta
May 19th 2019
10:17am

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born

magelang
June 10th 2019
5:46am

magelang

Doris
June 18th 2019
11:21pm

This stuff is so nice and infotmive to read. I like this and will share this with others too when will get back from my <a >grand canyon tours from las vegas</a>.

Lucas
June 19th 2019
5:22am

wll love to go for fun with <a >eastern usa tours</a> to see moer around me.

Professional Gamblers
June 22nd 2019
6:36am

You make so many great points here that I read your article a couple of times. Your views are in accordance with my own for the most part. This is great content for your readers.

Salman86
July 3rd 2019
4:46am

Thanks for sharing nice article this is https://heartsgameonline.net very interesting game I play to enjoy and fun to play.

Doris
August 26th 2019
5:33am

I will share this with mates after <a >affordable trips from nyc</a>.

Doris
August 26th 2019
5:35am

I will share this with mates after <a >affordable trips from nyc</a> and will get ther views.

Doris
September 13th 2019
6:03am

I will get views about this from my father after <a >cheap getaways from sfo</a>

Aalish
February 6th 2020
10:25pm

I want to say that I read your Blog I have no idea about this type of information. These days I will enjoy <a >cherry blossom day</a> tour. I am sure this will be a wonderful tour for me. After coming back from this tour you will share your personal experience here.

Doris
February 24th 2020
11:48pm

I will share after <a >chicago city tour bus</a> anfd will get intereisng views about this after that.

jimmy
March 10th 2020
4:31am

It is full of informat9ion article which is relly nice. I will take more informations when i complete my <a >bus tours to chicago</a>.

empire market
April 10th 2020
4:00pm

i never trust these yankees.

Michael Hove
October 14th 2020
8:02pm

Yankee and ghost are clearly the best albums Wilco ever made, but mermaid, schmilco and star wars are pretty great too. The rest are ok at best and downright boring at worst.

Fundas para portatil
November 14th 2020
12:38pm

woow!

in my list only have

1. Wilco (The Album)
2. Being There
3. YHF

Pat
January 19th 2021
9:33am

My husband packed out of the house to live with another lady who he met at the supermarket and went in a relationship with her. He sent me divorce papers. I did not accept the divorce because I love him very much. I don’t want my family to break apart. I was searching for tips on how i can save my marriage from divorce. I came across a comment on how to save marriage, i made a contact and my problem got solved. my husband back through the help of_______________________________ [robinsonbuckler11 @ gmail .com]