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LIFE has never been easy for Wilco. The soap opera that surrounded their last album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, all of it documented in the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, would have been enough to make many a songwriter sick of the music industry for good. Jeff Tweedy is made of sterner stuff, eve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWeekend Australian
Main Author Iain Shedden, Kate Mackenzie, Peter Lalor, Tom Jellett, Kevin Jones, Sean Rabin
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Canberra, A.C.T News Limited 26.06.2004
Subjects
Hale, Christopher
Tweedy, Jeff
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Summary:LIFE has never been easy for Wilco. The soap opera that surrounded their last album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, all of it documented in the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, would have been enough to make many a songwriter sick of the music industry for good. Jeff Tweedy is made of sterner stuff, even if he's a sensitive soul as well. If YHF was Tweedy's Pet Sounds, the follow-up is more of a disparate beast, with elements of Neil Young, latter-day Beatles and a distinctly sombre folk music rubbing shoulders. Tweedy has just been in rehab, under treatment for his addiction to painkillers, and although the lyrical strain of A Ghost is Born would have preceded his hospitalisation, one could easily interpret some of the lines here as representing his pain. Hell is Chrome, for example, one of several piano-based tracks, with its repeated line of "come with me", could be a cry for help, but most likely is a poetic meeting with the grim reaper. The opening At Least That's What You Said is a brutal relationship breakdown that starts off in restrained acoustic mode and turns into an angry anthem, Tweedy's achingly beautiful, discordant guitar wails underpinned by intense drumming. Spiders (Kidsmoke) goes off on another tangent, 10 minutes long and sounding more like something from their poppy album Summerteeth, with its insistent pulse and Tweedy's almost breezy vocal. The album is hard to pin down, much like its predecessor. It's like Tweedy is playing games, refusing to be pinned down, refusing to acknowledge any one style. The intoxicating Handshake Drugs is the best example of that, incorporating an array of instruments and styles and ending up a weird hybrid of folk and pop. Overall, A Ghost is Born continues where Yankee Hotel Foxtrot left off. It's dark and dangerous, but with just enough light to draw you into its intoxicating web.