Records that Rocked the Aughts Part VII: Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

Years from now, when my son asks me what the 2000s sounded like, I will take him aside, sit him down, crack open a couple of cold Sierra Nevadas and put on the opening tumult to "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," the lead track from Wilco's 2001 masterpiece - and Rock Turtleneck's Album of the Decade - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.


Like much of the Aughts, little of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot seemed to make sense at first. What exactly is an "all-American aquarium drinker"? How exactly does one "assassin down the avenue"? Why do Chicago's Marina apartment buildings look so ominous on the cover? Why is that woman reciting letters from the NATO phonetic alphabet? Looks like a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

But the passage of time and many listens to the record revealed many truths. One, the Marina towers seemed to echo the fallen Twin Towers, only they hadn't fallen yet. Same goes for the lyrics from the gorgeous "Jesus, etc.": "Tall buildings shake/Voices escape singing sad sad songs."


And the saluting of the Ashes of American Flags? Back then, they were still flags, not ashes.


Perhaps Jeff Tweedy was somehow tuned in to the cosmic unconsciousness when he wrote those lyrics. Maybe they just came to him while he was driving his kids to school. In any case, the beauty of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is truly haunting - Y2K folk music with a disturbing undertow of electronic beeps and homemade sound effects. It's a perfectly paced record with a dramatic opening, a tuneful middle and heavy ending.

As my friend Alex, one of the biggest Wilco fans in the northeast said not long ago, "All of their albums are great, but Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is like a Beatles record."

As befits a masterpiece like YHF, their record label Reprise didn't hear any hits on the album and refused to release it. In a move from the Jeff Zucker playbook, they paid Wilco to get out of their contract, leaving them to shop YHF to the highest bidder.

In the meantime, Wilco, one of the first web-savvy bands, streamed the entire record free on their website, building serious buzz about this opus being squashed by The Man. Eventually, the boutique label Nonesuch picked up the record. In a perfect metaphor for the shambles that is the music industry, both labels are owned by Warner Music, meaning they paid for the same record twice. (This can all be seen, along with the ugly dismissal of the late Jay Bennett in the great documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.)

I could sit here all night discussing the richness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but I have to work in the morning. Leave it to say that this is a record full of joy, sadness, talent and wisdom, and if you aren't intimately familiar with it, I pity you.

But it's not too late. Pick it up or download it using the links below. Then pick up their other gems from the decade: A Ghost Is Born, Kicking Television (Live in Chicago), Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (the album). And once you've digested those, go see them live: they're on the road pretty much all the time.


Buy YHF on iTunes here