Wilco “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel” (Best of the Decade)
Before they decided they wanted to sound like the Eagles with Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album), Wilco’s musical catalog could be nicely cut into two distinct sections. The first part was the mellow, scattered alt-country of their early recordings, highlighted by the excellent AM. The second section was their noisy, more avant-garde sounding music shown best on A Ghost is Born. In the middle however, where they found that perfect mix of the two divergent sounds, Wilco created one of the best albums of the decade with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. While the trials of tribulations of the disc have been sifted over endlessly, in the end it is Jeff Tweedy’s mesmerizing songs that make this such a timeless album. YFH commands your attention from start to finish and features what I consider the best Wilco lineup (mainly the resident genius Jay Bennett, who left after the album came out). While their entire catalog deserves respect (even if I may not quite “get” their last two discs), Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was such an outstanding album that I don’t see Wilco (or many other bands, for that matter) making a disc more deserving to be called one of the “best of the decade.”
