Reviews
 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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Wilco
Remember the good old days when a good song meant a few guys singing like crazy while bashing out a few really good chords? Well, there are still a few bands who do that (Stripes, Strokes, Vines, yadda yadda…) but Wilco is no longer one of them. Wilco has joined the kitchen sink brigade, delivering an album with eleven songs that feel as though they could veer off in virtually any direction at any time. Granted, there is no shortage of bands who are doing this nowadays, but Wilco is surely the only band from the retro-country/punkish "No Depression" movement who qualify. In more than one way, this trend toward studio-created iconoclasm is quite reminiscent of sixties psychedelia, because 1) anything goes, and 2) if abused, it can be really, really painful. Also, mind-altering substances could aid in your appreciation of either style.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was made under extreme duress. The band was dropped by their label, who rejected the album wholesale as a commercial loser, and they were plagued with key personnel changes as well (Jay Bennett, we’ll miss you…unless you don’t go). For these reasons, the album seemed predestined to failure before it was even finished. Maintaining their vision and their integrity in a manner that would have made Vincent Van Gogh proud, the band chose to follow their muse, even when the path before them had vanished. The result is one of the strangest albums of 2002, but also what is perhaps one of the most visionary and deliberately artistic albums of the year.
The opening number, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" (which is also the name of a movie that documents the making of this album) tells you all that you need to know about this record’s inherent weirdness. Seven minutes of surreal images are delivered in a laconic manner, until the song falls apart in a soup of feedback and distortion. The (comparably) straightforward and pleasant Kamera then follows it. There’s a sort of symmetry here – track one is weird, track to is ‘normal’, track three is weird, etc., etc. It’s not quite that exact, but there’s a 50/50 ratio where each exaggerates the traits of the other. "Heavy Metal Drummer" is the most easily likeable song here, playing it straight while getting all gooey and romantic, reminiscing about losing the girl to a drummer, getting stoned and playing Kiss covers.
Throughout, the lyrics are either intriguing or ridiculous, depending on how you hear them. Frankly, "Take off your band-aid cuz I don’t believe in touchdowns" (from "I’m Trying to Break Your Heart") leaves me scratching my head, but a few couplets qualify as all-time favorites, like this one from "Poor Places";
"There’s bourbon on the breath of the singer you love so much.
He takes all his words from the books you don’t read anyway."
This is not an album for casual listening. In one sense, I can understand why someone with a corporate hack mentality would find the album objectionable. It breaks rules, it’s challenging…it sounds like a bit of a mess, actually. But, it’s an intriguing, deliberately arranged (a-ha!) mess, and it grows on you. Is it a work of genius? Probably not. But who cares about that? The real question is, does it stand up to repeat listening, and the answer is absolutely yes…with lagniappe*. (*New Orleans-speak for ‘a bit extra’)
Grade: 
 
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