From alt-country to pop to art rock, Wilco breaks down musical barriers

By ALAN SCULLEY
Get Out

With each new CD, it seems like Wilco becomes more and more synonymous with its frontman, Jeff Tweedy.

Especially with the 2002 CD ‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’’ and the recently released follow-up ‘‘A Ghost Is Born,’’ the singer/ guitarist has become such a center of attention that at times it seems as if he is a solo artist and Wilco simply his backing band.

Bassist John Stirratt, who along with Tweedy is now the last remaining original member of the group, is well aware of this perception — and its lack of accuracy.

‘‘I think there are people who think that Jeff plays everything on the record or something, in Europe especially,’’ Stirratt says. ‘‘It's obviously not true. He definitely has his, I think, ‘authorship’ of it. Definitely lyrically and everything, it's really evident.

‘‘But, it is true that he's kept the band dynamic really intact, and we're the only ones that know it.’’

The extent of Tweedy's willingness to involve the other members of Wilco in the creative process is apparent in the craft of several songs on ‘‘A Ghost Is Born.’’

At one point during the sessions, Tweedy set up shop in one area of the studio, while the other band members were in another area. As Tweedy sang lines from notebooks of his lyrical ideas, the other members of Wilco invented musical parts to accompany the words. These free-form jams would continue for 30 minutes at a time, after which Tweedy took the tapes and picked various parts to start shaping into structured songs.

‘‘That actually produced some of the memorable stuff early on,’’ Stirratt says. ‘‘It was kind of this exercise in randomness or something like that, just hearing how songs maybe work together. That was really fun.’’

The focus on Tweedy, though, is understandable. In the late 1980s, he and guitarist/singer Jay Farrar shared frontman duties in Uncle Tupelo, the group credited with popularizing the alternative country scene. When Uncle Tupelo split in 1994, Farrar started the band Son Volt, while Tweedy went on to form Wilco, whose lineup has undergone considerable changes since then. Turmoil, during the ‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’’ sessions especially, helped foster the notion that Wilco was becoming essentially a solo vehicle for Tweedy.

At the outset of those sessions, drummer Ken Coomer was fired and replaced by Glenn Kotche. More notable was the departure of guitarist Jay Bennett, who had been a prime songwriting collaborator with Tweedy on the albums ‘‘Being There’’ (1996) and ‘‘Summerteeth’’ (1999).

The Bennett departure, of course, was only part of the drama surrounding ‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.’’ After the CD was completed, it was rejected by Wilco's label, Reprise Records, which deemed the record uncommercial.

Wilco split with Reprise and, ironically, signed with Nonesuch Records, which like Reprise, is part of the Warner Bros. family of labels. Upon its release, ‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’’ was greeted with rave reviews and the publicity that surrounded the Reprise situation helped make ‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’’ the best-selling CD of Wilco's career.

‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’’ took Wilco in an experimental, more abstract turn. The tunefulness of the band's music remained, but the songs featured more of a stark and atmospheric feel, as the band liberally mixed electronic tones and textures with conventional instrumentation.

‘‘A Ghost Is Born’’ shares much of the sparser, atmospheric feel of ‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.’’ But it is at times both more accessible and more extreme than the preceding album.

A conventional pop side of Wilco, which also includes keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, is represented by songs such as ‘‘The Late Greats,’’ ‘‘Hell Is Chrome’’ and ‘‘Hummingbird.’’

The experimental side is most obvious on ‘‘Spiders (Kidsmoke),’’ a 10- minute song that alternately builds into and retreats from an ultra-catchy guitar coda, and on ‘‘Less Than You Think,’’ a song that ends with a 10-minute droning soundscape.

Following the recording of ‘‘A Ghost Is Born,’’ Wilco faced yet another episode of drama when Tweedy checked into rehab to beat an addiction to pain- killers. The singer had for some time suffered from debilitating migraine headaches and was also prone to severe anxiety attacks. He had taken Vicodin to treat his migraines and benzodiazepine to control his panic attacks, but decided the medications were starting to do more harm than good.

Stirratt says Tweedy has emerged from rehab much healthier and happier, but he admits that for a time he worried that to maintain a healthy lifestyle, Tweedy might have to give up the band and the stresses that come with it.

‘‘I mean, huge things happen when people get sober,’’ Stirrat says. ‘‘Yeah, I knew the possibility of (Wilco ending) was totally there. But I have to say, just the way I feel about the band at this point, I feel like we're kind of in bonus territory at this point.

‘‘I don't want to say if it all ended right now I'd be happy. But I do feel like, if you know rock history, then this run has been great in terms of length of time.

‘‘I mean, there are records we still want to make, especially now with this new band (lineup) and everything, but I think the health of anyone in the band would be paramount to us continuing to make records.’’

Rating the Wilco CDs

‘‘A.M.’’ (1995): Singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy sets up shop with new band after the dissolution of alt-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo, but delivers an album not unlike those of his previous group. B

‘‘Being There’’ (1996): A sprawling double album that shows the first signs of the sonic experimentation that will leave Tweedy's alt-country past in so much creative dust. B+

‘‘Summerteeth’’ (1999): A complete reinvention of the band's sound finds Wilco performing majestic pop that's Beatle-esque in its breadth. Wedded to Tweedy's dark and haunting lyrics, it's stunning. A

‘‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’’ (2002): The masterpiece. Though written prior to the terrorist attacks, songs such as “War on War” presciently capture the zeitgeist of the country in the wake of Sept. 11. It topped Get Out's albums of the year chart. A+

‘‘A Ghost Is Born’’ (2004): After such amazing highs, the only place to go is down. Despite some strong songs, the experimentation has gone too far, low- lighted by 10 straight minutes of feedback near its end. B- — by

- Thomas Bond, Get Out

Wilco
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Marquee Theatre, 730 N. Mill Ave., Tempe
How much: $25
Info: