Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

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Up until now, Wilco have plodded out a respectable career path as a middling alt. country group developing from their origins in the rootsier Uncle Tupelo through to their "Being There" and "Summerteeth" records in which they seemed to be closer in spirit to previous generations of fairly straightforward country rock bands than, say, Mercury Rev's sepia backwoods showtunes or Lambchop's low-volume high emotional intensity dramas. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot", however, sees them link up with leftfield polymath Jim O'Rourke, ditch (or be ditched by) their original label and sign up with the tastefully alternative Nonesuch and, apparently, split up. Whatever changes have or haven't happened, they have certainly managed to produce Wilco's finest record to date.

O'Rourke's influence is a spectral presence throughout the eleven tracks here, felt in terms of textures and arrangements, but never heavy-handedly obvious. Rather than impose his own character or ideas, O'Rourke seems to have managed to turn Wilco inside out, leaving them still a decidedly Midwestern rock band, but one with no trace of cliche, stodge or tiredness. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is a record suffused with memories of long dazed summers, of FM radio playing in big old cars, of syrupy guitars, chunky bass and drawled singing, of "playing Kiss covers, beautiful and stoned" (as "Heavy Metal Drummer" has it), yet sounding as deft, light and charming as any playful post-rockers. This sense of the past hitting the present, and vice versa, isn't just in the music, but is also picked up by the words, all the songs obliquely concerning the collapse of a relationship (that of the band itself?) and half-real, half-imagined memories of better times in the past.

The best tracks here combine mellifluous melodies with unexpected arrangements (the violin of "Jesus, etc." or the piano of "Pot Kettle Black") and underpin them with that classic fuzzy, drawling rock guitar sound, then embellish the whole thing with some deliciously unexpected noises - the antique synth on "War on War", the cheapo drum machine that introduces "Heavy Metal Drummer" or what sounds like an empty bottle solo in "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" are surely pure O'Rourke touches, and are highly welcome.
As a rock record, alongside Sonic Youth's "Murray Street" and the Notwist's "Neon Golden" it's probably as good as anything else you're going to get this year and as a piece of Americana it's almost as worthy as Mercury Rev's "Deserter's Songs", (though taking Aerosmith rather than The Band as its Seventies avatar). "Reservations" closes the record, ending with several minutes of what could be the dying echo of a sustained piano, shortwave radio intereference or some low level electronic murk. Whether this is O'Rourke's revenge or Wilco promising things to come isn't clear, given that now they apparently consist of mainman Jeff Tweedy alone. If there's no more where this came from, it'd really be a shame.