Like those two albums, "songs" float by awash with electronic bleeps and background synthesizer noodlings which do nothing for the big picture but clutter already skeletal arrangements with inconsequential trash. A faint acoustic guitar, a voice that struggles to sound like Thom Yorke, and squeaky sounds of post-modern life (oh, the irony) are for boring thirty-something MP3-heads whose main life goals are picking up their kids from soccer practice and getting the SUV detailed. "Well maybe buying this new Wilco CD will at least make me SEEM "alternative" and delay the onset of midlife crisis #8, I mean after all, it DID get a good review in SPIN!!!" Sorry, I prefer songs with direction and purpose and meaning and enthusiasm and excitement. I don't want my music to be any more boring than the 21st-century hellburbia existence I have already struggled to ignore. There are flashes of what might have been brilliant songs here and there, but they are buried under arrangements so trendy and "hip" that I don't want to listen to them ever again. It didn't work for REM or Radiohead when they doused their albums with electronica, and it doesn't work here, either.

Unfortunately, but fortunately for Jeff Tweedy, nobody out there seems to "get it". Wilco's rabid fans are eating it alive, of course, and therefore we have to kneel similarly to genius, I suppose. Having been dissed by corporate record execs (and then picked up by the same corporation, which leads one to suspect the entire thing might have even been an orchestrated media play), and coupled with the fact that it sounds alot like Radiohead, the emperor will parade around with no clothes throughout the coming summer, and will serve one magnificent purpose only: it keeps Ryan Adams off the front page. For that, we should be grateful, but if I wanted to party with mannequins, I'd go to Macy's.

Tweedy's Uncompromising Sonic Beauty
Since so many people have reviewed this album already, I have no illusions about saying something for the first time nor plan on repeating what has already expressed fully and well.
I do still -specially for those people reading this after listening to YFH's follow-up the also impressive "A Ghost Is Born- need to point to a couple of important things that this album show about Wilco's consistently surprising output.
This album clearly demonstrates that Jeff Tweedy's musical vision and commitment to shed songwriting skins is remarkable and an inspiration, specially in the current midst of so many Rock and Pop icons continuing to repeat themselves, who at best flavor their "butter" differently but go on churning the same formula, forgetting to take the kind of risks that made them important in the first place.
Now, unlike many people have mourned earlier, I don't think this album is an absolute departure from what Wilco has been hailed for before. Although this is not "Summerteeth" or "Being There," Tweedy's love for Pop has not been renounced, "Kamera," "Heavy Metal Drummer" and "Pot Kettle Black" proved that.
More than abandoning former song-glories, Tweedy has evolved, has taken all that he can do and pushed it further into a new atmosphere. Where Jay Bennet was so instrumental in what the albums that preceded this one sounded like, Jim O'Rourke is now Tweedy's full musical partner.
And O'Rourke is no Yoko breaking a great band -actually Yoko did not either!- but rather someone who helped Tweedy say well what he was already prepared to say. His production deepens and thrusts these songs to a higher level. " Ashes of American Flags," "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" and "Radio Cure" are magnificent examples of a composer and a producer making music together that reaches farther that either one would have managed on his own.
This is a great album, not the end of a certain Wilco but the evolution of a sound into brave, new and exciting new possibilities.

I'm the Man Who Loves YHF
Like most listeners, it took me several listens before I could even really tolerate many of the songs on YHF. Now I consider it brilliant and truly beautiful. I assure anyone concerned that people only like this album because it's different that my love for the album is genuine. Two years later and the songs still seem to connect more with each listen. The lyrics are sometimes cryptic but make more sense over time and have a distinctive flavor. The song-writing is not really as groundbreaking as some might proclaim, but the production of the songs is brilliant. Although the songwriting certainly comes from a different angle, I can't avoid the comparison to Pink Floyd with the incorporation of extraneous soundeffects into the flow of the songs. Ashes of American Flags is particularly brilliant in this regard, with two stunning but simple guitar parts cutting through out of the swirling static. The result of the production is that even lines of music that essentially amount to pop gain an otherworldly glow; Pot Kettle Black is another great example of this, as is I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. I would also be doing an injustice if I didn't mention how much I love I'm The Man Who Loves You, with its swelling conclusion. This is a collection of songs that would be good without the magical glow of the brilliant production, but which gains a unique appeal in its combination of swirling dissonances and common sense melodies. Buy this album! There's a decent chance you won't like it, but it will become a cherished possession if you do; it occupies a completely unique space in music and will move you more with each listen.

Greatness needs to be appreciated and encouraged
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have in our presence an album that breaks ground much the same way Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon" did. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a mind blowing experience that takes Wilco from alt-country to art. Finally burying the legacy of being a piece of the former Uncle Tupelo, this record works on all levels. The songs are well written and meaningful, except perhaps for Heavy Metal Drummer, but even intense drama needs a laugh to lighten the air. This is on my top ten of all time list along with The Beatles "Abbey Road", Pink Floyd's "Dark Side", The Replacements "Let It Be" and a few others. Buy this record!
Named in honor of the three-word codes used by short-wave radio operators, Wilco's fourth album sounds like a late-night broadcast of some weirdly wonderful pop station punctuated by static and the sonic bleed of competing signals. Songs that begin with simple, elegiac grace--"Ashes of American Flags" and "Poor Places"--end in a cathartic squall of distortion. The results can be initially jarring, but it's these tracks more than the sturdy jangle pop of "Kamera" or "Heavy Metal Drummer" that demand, and reward, repeated listens. Mixed by studio experimentalist Jim O'Rourke and produced by the band, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot harkens back to a time when the words "pop" and "sonic adventurism" weren't mutually exclusive. The Beatles and Kurt Cobain knew this, and clearly so do Jeff Tweedy and company. --Keith Moerer
11 songs about America that echo and update some of the themes heard on early albums by The Band, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young. Enhanced format features exclusive live footage, band photos, and a trailer for the film 'I Am Trying to Break Your Heart'. Slipcase. 2002.