Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: Favorite Track

I'd probably vote for all of the above, but for right now I'll vote for "Reservations."

The track is so ethereal and great, but what makes it sublime is the moment where Tweedy's voice fades away into feedback. One of the most perfectly executed, beautiful moments of music I've ever heard.

"Jesus etc.," def.

"Poor Places", with "IATTBYH" a tiny smidgen behind. Both achieve syntheses of organic and technological beauty that leave my jaw hanging.

Very easy for me: "Jesus, Etc." Still shakes me every time I hear it.

"I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" is really embarrassing, what were we thinking in 2001?

dude

My mom won't listen to "Poor Places" cuz she says it's too sad. It's probably my favorite track, though, with "Jesus, Etc." a close second. Closer to the album's release, I think I would've gone for "Pot Kettle Black".

as always, the real question is "why doesn't more music sound like this?", and the answer is "jesus that's a terrible question"

ranking: Poor Places / IATTBYH / Pot Kettle Black / Kamera / AOAF / Radio Cure / HMD / Reservations / Jesus, Etc / War On War / ITMWLY

IATTBYH, if only for the cascading piano part that comes in the last part.

I like heavy metal drummer. It's a nice moment in an album that often takes itself too seriously.

"I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" is really embarrassing, what were we thinking in 2001?

That's the point, it's the ultimate drunken awkward emotion embarrassing your sober self kind of song.

"Kamera", which along with "Poor Places" is all that still speaks to me in 2007...but that guitar tone on "Kamera" is so fantastic

That's the point, it's the ultimate drunken awkward emotion embarrassing your sober self kind of song.

I thought that was "Grudge Fuck" by the Scud Mountain Boys.

kamera, but i don't particularly like this record

Heavy Metal Drummer was the only fun part of this bullshit slog of an album. This is the sort of crap that Uncut tried to fob off as representative of America, our version of the boring later-day Radiohead albums.

Inevitably, once a year a friend tries to get me into it, and I have a hard time holding back the absolute disdain. He keeps assuming that I just have to become more mature and stop listening to noise in order to "get it," but all it makes me want to do is listen to something else, anything else. Anything that's got real noise or grit in the production, anything that's real country, anything that Wilco put out before it.

"Jesus etc.," def.

Yes.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Very easy for me: "Jesus, Etc." Still shakes me every time I hear it.

Absolutely. Wasn't this song was written before 09.11? It seems to predict that tragedy.

I like the demos. Alone (Shakin' Sugar).

the 9/11 foreshadowing is still pretty weird. You couldn't have written a better song after it happened for it would've been too aware of itself or something.

hmmmm surprising lack of love for 'i'm the man who loves you', but it's probably a lot of people's 2nd and 3rd favourite track on the album

WHAT

it's by far the worst song here

It's a great tune, Louis. Your lack of heart is what fails you most.

what

It's still a good song, on a fucking superb album. That horn break is neat, climactic, the lot! Too much solo and too little song, though, IMO.

The key thing about that song, and Reservations too, is the sentiment, though.

I love the sentiment in Reservations, because the song succeeds in putting it across that but better than in ITMWLY. Plus, I can actually hear all the lyrics. :p

These accusations that I don't have 'heart'...they don't really square with the acres of passionate, emotional praise I've dished out here on ILX, do they?

Heart and passion are different things, dude.

Just ask Dr. Jarvik.

Would I really have gone so totally bananas, on an emotional level, for Talk Talk's last two three albums, if I didn't have any heart? Would I have created two lengthy playlists on my iTunes dedicated solely to 'melancholy' if I didn't have any heart? I really think this is an isolated incident.

lol.

would there really be blood flowing through my body right now if i didn't have a heart?

Jarvik can't make a grown man weep.

Didn't know about this poll. Probably would've voted for radio cure, and it would not have to feel so bad.

lol Radio Cure. I love that song.

Um, somebody said upthread that they were going to vote for Radio Cure.

I would have.

IT'S SO PWITTY

The Albums That Never Were does YHF

would vote Poor Places

I'd take the 6 tracks with <3 or fewer votes over the 5 with >3. Do love "Kamera" though.

strike "or fewer"

Said another way, the poll is heavily skewed toward "Side A" when the real magic for me is the "Side B" momentum/build up of Ashes -> Drummer -> Man Who Loves You -> Pot Kettle Black, followed by the release of Poor Places -> Reservations.

Fucking hell I haven’t heard this album in I guess it must be almost twenty years but it must be a great album if I can still kinda sing some of the lyrics in my head after all these years: “playing kiss covers beautiful and stoned.” “jesus don’t cry you can rely on me honey.” “take off your band aid cause i don’t believe in touchdowns.” “i need a camera to my eyes.” “calling a pot kettle black every one is a little bit later.” I don’t remember “Poor Places” at all though.

I got this 'bonus disc' from a blog at some point, it's really quite a worthy addition:

Kamera (rock version)
Radio Cure (early version)
Cars Can't Escape (piano demo)
Shakin' Sugar
Laminated Cat
Venus Stopped The Train
Nothing Up My Sleeve
Won't Let You Down
Should've Been In Love (acoustic)

I don’t think I would’ve voted for “Radio Cure,” but it sa bummer that no one did.

that 'bonus disc' is almost certainly just a selection from the two sets of yhf demos that have been widely bootlegged, there's much more out there than those tracks

https://100greatestbootlegs.blogspot.com/2016/08/61-wilco-yankee-hotel-foxtrot-demos-flac.html there's a detailed overview of the material here

kinda bummed “Cars Can’t Escape” couldn’t find a home on YHF or even AGIB. Fits the vibe of that pair.

Y’all got me starting the day with this record, which I probably haven’t listened to in full in years.

I adored this in the year of release but probably burned myself out on it.

This record is the epitome of the whole being greater than the parts; there's only three songs I really like on it, but the excellent, dramatic sequencing gives it the feeling of being a lot more monumental than it is. I'd have voted "Poor Places".

feel like it's more like a bunch of dope songs that are all about as great as each other and they're sequenced really well

"pot kettle black" would've been my vote tho it is astonishing to me that "radio cure" got nothing

I also burned out on this back in the day but have revisited it a few times over the last few years and was happy to discover that after all the time away it still sounded fresh and holds up. My only note is that "Poor Places" is so good and such a perfect ending to the album that "Reservations" has always felt slight and totally redundant, I pretty much retconned it off of the album after the first few listens.

Even though it's Tweedy in full portentous sage mode, my vote would be Ashes, followed by Poor Places. I haven't listened to the whole album in probably 10 years but I reckon once a week I say 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' in the crazy short-wave radio announcement voice.

This is one of those albums whose universal praise and adulation seemed so OTT that the backlash was even more OTT and even more stupid, because it's a great album and when you go back and listen to it it's still a great album, and clearly so, and you have to make a real effort to pretend otherwise, imo.

I feel like I hear "Jesus, Etc." literally every week because Spotify and Pandora fit it into so many playlists that end up in coffee shops, bars, stores, etc.

OEO, agreed. “Reservations” almost felt like a bonus track.

i like "reservations," the sighing conclusion after the dramatic denouement is a trope that works for me

see also: jordan the comeback

This is one of those albums whose universal praise and adulation seemed so OTT that the backlash was even more OTT and even more stupid, because it's a great album and when you go back and listen to it it's still a great album, and clearly so, and you have to make a real effort to pretend otherwise, imo.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, February 2, 2022 11:23 AM

it's a good album that made a big impact on a lot of people because of what was going on in the world at the time of its release. That also contributed to the backlash I think, just a lot of emotions about this record imo

I'm not that fond of "Reservations", but ending the album on the noise of "Poor Places" seems really foreign to the emotional arc they're trying for.

"War on War" and "Camera" are top tier jangle pop. "Radio Cure" definitely feels like the kind of music berthed by R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi — darn good, just hard to stick out on an album this solid! Favorite song associated with this album is probably always going to be "More Like the Moon." So dreamy and just plain old beautiful.

Must agree with the sentiment that a lot of the hype around this album reflected the times. Don't really think about backlash much. Seems more appropriate to say that I overplayed it in my initial enthusiasm and then promptly ignored it for about a decade. These days it still sounds as good as I remember it 20 years ago.

For all the brouhah made about its production, when I put it on I'm always struck by how spare it is, tbh.

xxp agreed, "Poor Places" needs a lift afterward and "Reservations" does a great job of accomplishing that.

"reservations" is a perfect song

sighing conclusion after the dramatic denouement

Its funny, normally I'm a fan of this kind of album closer too, and I dont even dislike the song "Reservations" in and of itself. But (this being one of those albums that I only listen to straight-through) the finale of "Poor Places" is just so cathartic, the way the song and the sounds and the album all exploding and collapsing into each other at the same time, its just such a hard act to follow. Its feels like if "Good Night" followed "A Day in the Life" on a Beatles album.

Favorite song associated with this album is probably always going to be "More Like the Moon." So dreamy and just plain old beautiful.

I pulled that EP out yesterday & yeah love that song, as well as "Woodgrain", which might be a top 10 Wilco track for me.

or maybe if “Good Night” followed “Revolution #9”

now thats just crazytalk

YHF fans ought to check out the Minus 5's Down With Wilco, which features McCaughey & Buck backed by the YHF road band (it was recorded when YHF was in limbo during the summer & fall of 2001) and it's kind of a Bubblegum version of YHF.

YHF!

Down With Wilco and the Loose Fur album are indeed both great companion pieces to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. In the hype building up to A Ghost is Born, I made an alternate tracklist of YHF that incorporated "Laminated Cat" and a couple songs from More Like the Moon and that was my preferred way of hearing the album for a few years.

Used to listen to the Jeff Tweedy Sunken Treasure DVD audio a lot, which has a few of those tracks - "The Ruling Class," "Laminated Cat," "The Thanks I Get" - and is worth tracking down.

Thats a fun idea to mix those in with YFH, I'm gonna try that. I loved that first Loose Fur album and how spaced-out & jammy it was. I was a bit disappointed the 2nd one wasn't more like that (although I really like "Ruling Class" and a few of the other tracks.)

Agreed RE: Born Again in the USA. There was a song on that album that I thought was outstanding at the time — but now I can't even remember the title. Oh well.

(Just went and looked it up. Song was "Wreckroom." Of course I preferred the long jammy epic.)

It’s really hitting me how GREAT the lyrics to “Ashes of American Flag” are, particularly the opening verses

That imagery!

Ashes in particular, didn't Tweedy say he was reading a specific WWII book at the time he was writing some of the lyrics?

Yes the lyrics on this album are super vivid; and he uses a mixture of colorful, abstruse lines that are likely meant to just sound cool / evoke some image in your head, along with plain spoken, rather introspective and vulnerable lines, sometimes in the same song and even stanza (e.g., Picking apples for kings and queens of things I have never seen/ Oh, distance has no way of making love understandable).

Yeah Ashes is one of my favourite songs to sing along to, it’s so vivid and hits its emotional notes hard

there are a bunch of old ilm posts that are like "i hate jeff tweedy's lyrics but" and i can't relate less. he's even still good

always wondered where he's getting a diet coke and cigs for only $3.63

'I wonder why we listen to poets when nobody gives a fuck' is on the nose but it's a great line. The whole song is quotable imho.

i've also been revisiting this lately, what a beautiful and timeless record. i am pro-Reservations, think it's a perfect comedown

always wondered where he's getting a diet coke and cigs for only $3.63

Well, that was 20+ years ago; I don't know about the smokes, but back then you could get a can of Diet Coke from a WalMart vending machine for 35¢ (and the WalMart brand for a quarter).

In the early/mid 1990s, yes, you could get a pack of smokes for a dollar in Maryland. (They wouldn't be good, but.)

but were they unlit?

i always forget that cigarettes in NY are way more expensive than the rest of the US. I think when YHF came out I was paying $5.

A pack of 20 Marlboro in Australia is currently $28.50

I keep wondering what David Berman's reaction was the first time he heard this record.

tweedy's abstractions always scan so well and sound so natural, he's excellent at that

He says in his songwriting book that the alchemy of connecting words to a melody is the most important thing for him, the meaning of the lyrics comes to him later or never.

https://pitchfork.com/news/wilco-announce-yankee-hotel-foxtrot-anniversary-shows/

04-15 New York, NY - United Palace
04-16 New York, NY - United Palace
04-17 New York, NY - United Palace
04-19 New York, NY - United Palace
04-22 Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre
04-23 Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre

would vote Poor Places
― alpine static, Monday, September 7, 2015 10:09 AM

So looking forward to whatever box set they put out for this.