Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

All-time fave

the kind of album, that makes me rethink most of my other 5-star picks

In my mind, Wilco is very country-ish, so I might not make it through this album.

OK, well, not as country-ish as I thought, though there was some suspicious slide guitar usage at points, but it's still kind of mumbly and unmotivating. I don't get why this is beloved.

I listened to this years ago and didn't get the hype at the time.

On relisten, I hear it a bit more than in 2017, but it's an album with pretty muted peaks and troughs.

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart clearly stands out to fans. The drum breaks are cool, and the dismantling and crumbling instrumentals are super well executed. Nice way to start the album. Most of the middle of the album is good/great, but Poor Places really snaps attention back when the name of the album starts repeating in the background - very cool. Reservations is then a fine somber end.

I just wish there were a moment or two that really grabbed my attention more in the middle of the album. Still, great overall. 3.7/5 -> 4/5

An album that is idolised within indie rock spheres and which has a legendary mythos surrounding it given the issues with its creation and subsequent label rejection. By default it has that "album for the weird kids" feel before you even dive into the music.

On that subject, this is just about the only album resembling americana which I have any time for as this is essentially a systematic dismantling of the genre. It's indie-americana fed through radio interference, static and avant garde mixing, with a real attention paid to the sound design. There's a wealth of textures on offer here which only reveal themselves more and more with repeat listens, and the production is wonderfully warm and radiant.

You get a chaotic impression immediately from the opening track "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart", but it's a controlled chaos where beneath the avant-garde experimentation, Jeff Tweedy also has a knack for penning pop hooks, which prevents this from feeling completely detached despite the album's deliberate pacing, fragmented structures and dense layers requiring a specific, patient mood to fully digest.

I thought I had most of their albums but only have one. Well, this album definitely has made me want to explore their back catalogue. With syncopated percussion and beautiful lo – fi vocals speaking honest thoughts, it almost sounds like it’s an impromptu jam in a parents garage back when the band were not well known.

It’s hard for me to call myself a Wilco fan, although they have written some of my favorite songs of all time. Their very nature is change and, because of this, they move through so many styles from one album to the next, and at times from one song to the next, they sound like a different band. In places, YHF sounds like Bright Eyes, Radiohead, Bruce Springsteen or The War on Drugs. If you don’t like a song, just wait. This is not Sky Blue Sky or Summerteeth, by design of course, but it is brilliant in its own way. Easy to hate on this with it’s cacophony of background sounds, but try it again and see if you aren’t just singing along to Jesus, etc. or Reservations.

It was ok, I would have given it 3 but for the whiny static noise on several songs. Was very unpleasant!

I love rock and i was looking forward to listening to this when i saw the cover art, BUT OH MY STARS THIS IS SO BORING! I'm sorry, it's only good for background noise while you edit pictures on Canva

Unsure how this is "art rock" because this reminds me more of their alt-country-rock sound. "Heavy Metal Drummer" does sound different.

This is an evening/late-night album as it carries an introspective mood. Its slow pace though makes for a boring but tolerable listen. I much prefer "Being There" as at least it had more spunk and energy. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for something introspective, I do too much of that already (2.5-3).

Love that this album delivery service has provided another lovely Sunday album to me. Never heard of Wilco (other than the deceased shop, so sad) so had no expectations, but song after song impressed me. Really nice music where you can hear each instrument individually. Strange, melancholic, but also fun and inventive. Had a real struggle deciding which songs to add to my list, so think that shows that it's well good x

I think I’m learning after receiving two of their albums so far that they are just not for me.

Instrumentation-wise, this is pretty nice. But then the singer opens his mouth. It's not that he's bad, it's that he sounds bored out of his mind. On half the tracks here, the guy moans more than he sings (Radio Cure is particularly egregious in that aspect). There's also the fact that there's this amateurish quality to some of the songs, à la anti-folk, but with none of the charm and wit of someone like Kimya Dawson. Despite all this, the music is mostly pleasing and an easy listen, and it makes an interesting use of radio noises without sounding irritating, which I'm sure is hard to do.

"i didn't HATE this album, but..." (<- bad sign)

it's fine. there were a couple tracks i liked more than the others but not enough to remember which ones. and not enough to listen again.

would be interesting if it weren't so dull. would at least be pleasant background music if it weren't so unexpectedly abrasive. a better album would make that whiplash work. here it just feels like the worst of both worlds. the titular sample in particular is just really annoying.

maybe it just hit me in the wrong mood.

Basic Indie Rock, hatte gute Momente, aber auch wiederrum nicht spannend genug für 4 Sterne

I just instinctively groan when I see 2000s indie rock albums pop up on here... And this one has a country twang to it! I don't know if that's better or worse. It's not either of those things, as this is another mediocre indie rock album. It has some passably good songs, but most of it is just barely perceptible background noise. Lyrics are basic and unremarkable, just like everything else about this album. I know that Wilco have a pretty good reputation with indie heads, but those guys and me have very different tastes. This is just another mediocre album in a sea of mediocre albums.

This album is ranked #5 of 17 albums for 2001. Other 2001 albums rated by me:
Is This It(1/17)-4
Gorillaz(3/17)-3
Vespertine(8/17)-4
Gold(15/17)-1
Southern Rock Opera(16/17)-3
Bright Flight(17/17)-3

Great, when I first listened to it 20 years ago. Still great now.

Start with great folk songs then try your best to ruin them by adding…
-a bunch of weird drones
-Tempo which drifts all over the place
-Lyrics bordering on non-sensical
-Vocals which consistently sound strained and miss every note
-Synths which clip the mixing desk
-Guitar solos in a different key to everything else
-Drums which sound like a jazz drummer from a completely different band who just happened to be recording next door
-Piano thuds about twice the volume any sane producer would mix them
-shortwave radio samples

The result is an even better album than you started with. A standout in the era of quantised snap-to-grid, compressed to hell “professional” recordings. The kind of thing AI would never create.

And I bloody love it.

A guitar, three chords and a rhyming dictionary.

Recorded in a time of band tension, this is Country Punk with experimental overtones.

Not my favourite, but not the worst I've heard either.

Raw and weird collection of country adjacent rock songs that sometimes gets a little too weird but almost always makes up for it

Jesus etc is a damn near perfect song

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