Recent User Reviews
Critic's Review
Mark Deming, All Music Guide
It's hard not to wonder if Wilco's breakthrough 2002 release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, would have been such a critical success and so eagerly embraced by the indie rock community if it hadn't become such a cause célèbre thanks to the band being unceremoniously dropped by Reprise Records, and then signed by Nonesuch after the album had become a hot item on the Internet. Much of the critical reaction to the album, while almost uniformly enthusiastic (and rightly so), had an odd undertow that suggested the writers were not especially familiar with Wilco's body of work, registering a frequent sense of surprise that an "alt-country" band would make such an adventurous album while ignoring the creative shape-shifting that had been so much a part of Jeff Tweedy and company's approach on Being There and Summerteeth. The irony is that 2004's A Ghost Is Born, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is also the Wilco album with the strongest stylistic link to its immediate predecessor, as if their new fans are being given a moment to catch up. A Ghost Is Born hardly sounds like a retread of YHF, but the languid, ghostly song structures, the periodic forays into dissonance, and the pained, hesitant vocals from Jeff Tweedy that were so much a part of that album also take center stage here. But while much of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot had a cool and slightly removed feeling, A Ghost Is Born is considerably warmer and more organic; the extended instrumental breaks in several of the songs (two cuts are over ten minutes long) sound more like a group in full flight than the Pro Tools-assembled structures of YHF. And while Wilco's former secret weapon, Jay Bennett, is now out of the picture, the rest of the group (especially multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, and guitarist/co-producer Jim O'Rourke) fill the gaps with admirable grace and strength. If A Ghost Is Born has a flaw, it's in the songwriting; while this album is a "grower" if there ever was one, revealing more of its unexpected complexities with each spin, there are no songs here as immediately engaging as "War On War," "Heavy Metal Drummer," or "I'm the Man Who Loves You" from YHF, and while "Hummingbirds," "Handshake Drugs," and "Wishful Thinking" are tuneful and charming, they lack the resonance and emotional impact of Tweedy's strongest work. And the album's most purely enjoyable tune, the witty "The Late Greats," closes out the disc after the 15-minute drone dirge of "Less Than You Think," dramatically blunting its effectiveness. A Ghost Is Born confirms what old fans and recent converts already know -- that Wilco is one of America's most interesting and imaginative bands -- and it's brave and compelling listening. But if you're expecting another genre-defying masterpiece, well, maybe we'll get one of those next time.
Critic Blurbs
People, July 26, 2004
Wilco is in a rut called Radiohead, a once-excellent band now intent on paring its audience down until it contains only mopey gead students.
- Kyle Smith | Jul 26, 2004
Amid all the metronomic rhythms, hypnotic melodies, noodling noises and shrieking guitar solos, Tweedy's substance seems to slip away.
- Jason Moon Wilkins | Jul 8, 2004
Rolling Stone Magazine, July 08, 2004
where Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sounded dense and surreal, the bulk of Ghost is spare and earthy, with streaks of Crazy Horse, the Band, the Beatles and the Replacements.
- John Pareles | Jul 8, 2004
Entertainment Weekly, June 25, 2004
As the intermittent highs of a ghost is born prove, Tweedy can have the whole world in his hands, as long as he wants it.
- David Browne | Jun 25, 2004
True, it's pop music that constantly threatens to erupt into noise or fade into silence, but it's still hard not to hum along.
- Keith Phipps | Jun 23, 2004
"A Ghost is Born is a collection of muscular, guitar-driven rock songs that wrestle with questions of faith (in one's self, in one's God, in one's relationships, in one's future -- well, you get the idea)."
- Laurence Station | Jun 22, 2004
Less cohesive than any other Wilco release, Ghost fulfills all the stereotypes of the album-after-the-breakthrough: So you've played the band reinvention card, what next?
- Rob Mitchum | Jun 22, 2004
Over a Neu!-inspired metronomic pulse (and between a series of mangled guitar solos) Tweedy sings about tax returns, private beaches in Michigan, and microscopic homes.
- Tyler Wilcox | Jun 22, 2004
A Ghost Is Born is a sequel of sorts, another album of odd and beautiful Jeff Tweedy compositions that materialize out of the sonic fog like apparitions to dance in our imaginations and then disappear again.
- Jason Warburg | Jun 22, 2004
Never a band to shy away from following its muse, Wilco delivers its most difficult and uncompromising album to date.
- Staff | Jun 21, 2004
While Wilco's follow up to the plaudit-winning Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is, on all levels, a worthy successor, it may leave many of the band's newer fans a little non-plussed.
- Chris Jones | Jun 21, 2004
If the album has a unifying theme, it’s the casual descent of beauty into chaos; a number of songs start quietly and end in complete disorder—a form of musical entropy—perhaps inspired by Tweedy’s lifelong battle with unpredictable migraine headaches.
- Akiva Gottlieb | Jun 21, 2004
n A Ghost Is Born, Wilco skip the Radiohead Americana that fans sensed the band heroically ascended to on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
- James Hunter | Jun 21, 2004
Throughout the course of this album I had caught myself mentally wandering quite often, only to click back into it and realise it was the music taking me away.
- Tim Cashmere | Jun 18, 2004
We expect 'A Ghost Is Born' to be a triumph of alt.country/folk/americana in the great experimental slacker tradition.
- Andy Barding | Jun 14, 2004
There's a sense that every note and sound on Ghost, even the spontaneous ones, have been selected for private but rigorous reasons.
- John Pareles | Jun 8, 2004
It's appropriate that the album is titled A Ghost Is Born because it rests firmly between the cradle and grave as the band's most mature musical statement.
- Michael Metivier | May 21, 2004
If the album weren't so agreeably off-kilter--short, whispery tunes alternate with long, rambling epics--its mix of guitars and piano would almost seem like the stuff you'd hear on rockers like Layla or Abbey Road.
"The first thing that Wilco's newest album, A Ghost Is Born, calls to mind is Neil Young."
- Christopher Hickman |
The band’s experimental side is in full flow on A Ghost Is Born.
- John Murphy |
