Wilco’s Summerteeth was the second of the band’s that I listened to in full. Besteveralbums.com showed that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was considered to be the group’s best work, and when I’d heard that and grown familiar with it, the logical step was to move onto the record that was apparently considered to be their next best. Think it was a couple of years or so between Yankee and Summerteeth that I decided to listen to the latter. For what reason, I don’t know. Things just get in the way to prevent you from listening to albums on the regular. But I distinctly remember doing so when I was interning at a music magazine in 2015/16. It was in either of those two years. And I think ‘She’s a Jar’, the second song on the album, was one that I liked quite a bit after only the first hearing.

Coming after the somewhat groovy and spirited opener of ‘Can’t Stand It’, a song I would have written about had I known it at the time the C’s were going on. ‘Candyfloss’ too, while we’re at it. ‘She’s a Jar’ brings the album into a more reflective, slower mood. To this day I haven’t got my head around the lyrics all too well, but from what I can gather it’s from the perspective of someone in a relationship who’s essentially laying down an examination of their other half to the listener. A lot of lyrical metaphors are in there, so it’s difficult to properly suss out. At least to me. And there’s generally many words in there to remember. And I think to compensate for that, the song has something of a very easy structure that it keeps to. Each verse almost runs into the next, utilising the same vocal melody over a three-chord progression, before that eventually changes up for the “Just climb aboard” choruses that are capped off with a memorable harmonica “solo”.

And while the musicality of the track may be considered to be quite easily understood, multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett’s work on the keyboards and Mellotron is a different conversation. While Jeff Tweedy, John Stiratt and Ken Coomer lay down the song’s foundation, Bennett’s magic on the keys is the highlight, very much taking the majority of the soundscape filling in the would-be empty spaces with fills and melodic riffs that take the proceedings to another level. The song’s also known for its ending in which the song’s first verse is repeated but with the devastating switch-up on the very last line. “She begs me not to miss her” all of a sudden becomes “She begs me not to hit her”. It’s a bit of a “Hold up, what?” moment, for sure. But Jeff Tweedy once said we should consider that it isn’t actually the narrator enacting the physical violence. I can get with that. I have no large opinion on it. I just think it’s a good song.