AM - Wilco

Advantages: Exceptionally honest and adventurous music
Disadvantages: Might be a bit too adventurous for some

...Ever since that guy at Decca turned down the Beatles, record companies have excelled at getting it wrong. When Wilco’s old label, Reprise, refused to issue this album, they proved once again that the ‘biz’ rarely know a good thing when they hear it. Ironically, when the CD eventually appeared in May 2002, it was on Nonesuch, part of the same Warner music conglomerate as Reprise. You can only assume that the record company exec never got past the first track, I am Trying to Break Your Heart. It’s built upon seven minutes of random piano plinkings, assorted percussion and electrical noise. Drums crash into life, establish a groove, then collapse into silence. There’s something that sounds like a cheese grater being dragged across guitar strings. Over all this, Jeff Tweedy’s slurred voice – never the most tuneful of instruments... Read review

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Advantages: Soaring, beautiful folk-rock
Disadvantages: slightly biased toward new material

...The songs of folk-rock powerhouse Jeff Tweedy have never sounded so raw, intimate and ultimately rewarding as they do on this brilliant live LP. It's a thrilling journey on which to be taken, and one which never lacks humour, sadness, hope, vulnerability, bravery....the moods which are created by this album are seemingly endless. Older favourites such as Misundersood, Shot In The Arm and the apt Via Chicago are all given a new lease of life played live. Newer tracks lose their production shortcomings and are played with more passion than ever before. Even two tracks from the Mermaid Avenue albums (made with Billy Bragg and using lyrics by Woody Guthrie) make it into the setlists. The album is topped off by a heartwrenching track simply named Comment - music by Wilco wriiten for words by Charles Wright and Yusef Rahman. It's a sombre... Read review

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Advantages: Familiar, yet more adventurous
Disadvantages: Too much Bragg whining

...WHEN Nora Guthrie unearthed a stack of her father’s unrecorded lyrics, she took them to Billy Bragg, who, along with Wilco, recorded one of the finest albums of 1998, Mermaid Avenue. The lyrics dated from the period after World War II, when Woody Guthrie had returned from his service onboard a merchant vessel. They chronicle the period when the great folk singer was beginning to feel the effects of the Huntingdon’s disease which would eventually kill him. Mermaid Avenue revealed an unseen side of Guthrie, it saw him dreaming of sleeping with Hollywood celebrities on California Stars, talking nonsense to get his daughter to sleep on Hoodoo Voodoo and proposing to his wife on Hesitating Beauty. Wilco are basically the quintessential US rock band, coming across like a hybrid of the good-time sophistication of The Band together... Read review

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