Tag Archives: yankee hotel foxtrot

#685: Wilco – Kamera

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It’s back. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. Been a month and a few weeks but I think I’m ready to come back to this. Nothing much has changed. I did pass my driving test at the end of January though. Six months of driving lessons that led up to it. I’m a grand less in wealth than I was before. But at least it’s all over now. This thing just continues to carry on though. And it’s time for the K’s. Like ‘J’, there aren’t a lot of songs to write about beginning with ‘K’ too. It just depends on how I’m feeling whether I can get these out on a regular schedule.

And so to kick it all off is ‘Kamera’, the second track from Wilco’s album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Remembering the time the track really clicked for me, I’d returned home at about 12pm after sleeping round a friend’s house after a birthday party. Got to my house, mother left for work, and I decided to listen to ‘Yankee’ on Spotify. So there I was, hungover, lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling with my headphones on and having an existential crisis when the noise that ends the album’s first track suddenly ended and the acoustic guitars for ‘Kamera’ came in.

The song is understated in its delivery and aesthetic. After seven minutes of ‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’, an ambitious opener that ends in a collage of noise, ‘Kamera’ arrives as a straight up acoustic-driven alt-rock tune. As the song goes on, it subtly builds and layers are added. Pretty synthesizer flourishes and keyboard melodies appear here and there interplaying with Jeff Tweedy’s vocal. The backing harmony vocals appear out of nowhere and only for a brief period in the final verse. Jeff Tweedy also double tracks his lower main vocal with one in a higher register in that last part too. Its ending seems to loop forever as the acoustic guitars play a climbing riff alongside a (I want to say) glockenspiel that plays a downward scale. And then just as the band get ready to play the last few chords, there’s a small ‘beep’ that appears to signify their cue to wrap things up.

I didn’t notice all of this when I was on the sofa that time. I think then, I was engaged by how happy it sounded even though there’s a hint of sadness to it that I can’t quite grasp. Several listens to it since then has revealed just how much goes on this song. It has become one of my favourites from the album after years of not caring that much about it.

#602: Wilco – I’m the Man Who Loves You

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‘I’m the Man Who Loves You’ is the eighth song on Wilco’s 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It, ‘Heavy Metal Drummer’, and ‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’ are the songs from that album that I’ve been listening to for the longest time. There was something about those three on first listen that just grabbed me for whatever reason. ‘I’m the Man’ is probably the most relaxed out of them, though begins with an erratic guitar freak-out by Jeff Tweedy that gets things off to an unsteady start before eventually switching into a chilled acoustic number.

The song’s name is sung at the end of ‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’ so you may think that it would be some sort of centerpiece of the album. I certainly did at first. Maybe it is but I’ve never noticed how. To me it’s just another great song on there. Generally, it’s about Tweedy’s (or anyone’s) inability to express their love for someone. The lyrics describe a narrator trying to write a love-letter and failing at it. Though they wish they could express themselves to their fullest, they know that sometimes it can take a simple action to let their significant other know how much they care for them. Like holding their hand, for example.

Like I said earlier, there’s a very laidback and brisk quality to the track. As it progresses there are little flourishes added here and there that prevent the track from falling into a lull. Little keyboard presses on the left channel, ‘ooh-ooh’ backing vocals and then the magnificent horn section that suddenly appears during the last verse and stay for the track’s long outro. It would be during the final minute and ten seconds that a producer would decide to fade it out but it rather comically comes to an abrupt halt with the drums coming to a sudden stop and the lead guitar doing whatever it pleases. Seems as if they didn’t really know how to close things out. Still makes for some great listening.

I regarded ‘I’m the Man’ as one of the more ‘radio-friendly’ tracks from that album in a post back in 2015. Upon more frequent listens of the album I’ve realised that there are a few other songs on there that you would be more likely to hear on your station. Not that that’s important in any way…. I just had time to listen to the album closely to really appreciate other tracks on there. Check out Yankee Hotel Foxtrot everyone.

My iPod #560: Wilco – I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

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The story goes that Wilco were going through some inner turmoil during the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, particularly between lead singer and guitarist Jeff Tweedy and fellow guitarist and composer Jay Bennett. Their original record label weren’t so impressed with the final result of their work, rejected it and told the band to get out of their faces, leaving them with an album to provide but no label to release it. Eventually things all fell into place. Wilco got signed again. The album, originally slated for September 2001, was physically released to the masses months later in May 2002. Critics ate it up, fans loved it. Still do to this day. It has gone down as one of the best albums of the opening decade of this century.

‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’ is the album’s opener. It’s seven minutes long. It takes about a minute of that time for the song’s main chord progression to make itself known after a sort of instrumental prelude of pianos, percussion and organs. Tweedy’s mellow voice comes in with the album’s first (and possibly most quoted) lines “I am an American aquarium drinker/I assassin down the avenue/I’m hiding out in the big city blinking/What was I thinking when I let go of you?”, and it all goes on from there really. You have to listen to it for that full experience.

Tweedy doesn’t have the greatest singing voice. Not soulful, or belting from the stomach or whatever. But it’s just perfect for the whole mood of the track. And the album in general. The vocal melody is the most simple thing. But it’s great. It will get in your head. And accompanied by the very full mix provided by Jim O’Rourke, it’s an enrapturing listen. It’s hard to not find yourself in a bit of a trance when hearing this. You probably won’t feel it on your first listen. It’ll sink in.

Above is the supposed demo of the tune, as recorded by Jay Bennett before it went through remixing for the album. Some prominent smooth Rhodes(?) piano in there, but not quite the same.

My iPod #505: Wilco – Heavy Metal Drummer

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Both this track and “I Am the Man Who Loves You” jumped out to me as being the radio-friendly hits from Wilco’s well-respected album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Though the album did go through a ton executive meddling that pushed back its initial release and forced it to be distributed on a completely label altogether, all of which was pleasantly documented, it could have been commercially represented by singles which I think would have been very popular. But what do I know?

“Heavy Metal Drummer” is one of the brighter, and lighter sounding tracks on the album. Faking you out with a boom-box drum beat for the first few seconds, the song suddenly bursts with a delightful piano line and brisk acoustic guitars amidst a general perky beat provided by drummer Glenn Kotche. The mix is then filled with bubbly synthesizers for the majority of the track as Jeff Tweedy recounts memories of the past from the heavy metal bands to personally playing Kiss covers whilst high.

You can’t help but feel the melancholic undertone when Tweedy sings “I miss the innocence I’ve known”. He yearns for the times when life wasn’t so hard and everything was alright. But the music’s uplifting and sometimes child-like playfulness overtakes that lingering sadness.