Wilco's "A Ghost Is Born" At 20

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A few years back on a half-remembered episode of my late great Grateful Dead podcast 36 From The Vault, I went on a riff about the duality of bands with an “art gallery” side and a “county fair” side. I was referring to one of my favorite things about listening to any Dead tape — at some point there will be a hard pivot from an esoteric 20-minute improvisational jam that sounds like jazz fusion from outer space to a beach ball bouncy party tune like “Good Lovin’” or “Around And Around.” Now, if you happen to detest The Dead, this practice may very well be the thing you detest the most about them. But as a lover of The Dead, I appreciate how their brains do not overrule their hips, and vice versa. The key to their greatness is that art and entertainment get equal billing in their music. They can be the most challenging arena rock band ever one moment, and the most crowd-pleasing arena rock band the next. They blow your mind and wear out your feet, all in the same night.

In time, I realized that this duality exists in nearly all of my favorite music. Bruce Springsteen in concert will perform “The River,” and then he will kick into “Rosalita.” Bob Dylan at his shows will run through the labyrinthian verses of “Desolation Row,” and then launch into a dopey “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” for the millionth time. Neil Young sang about his alienation from the sixties dream and sad vampires on the classic On The Beach. R.E.M. once put “World Leader Pretend” and “Stand” on the same record. You catch my drift. This is giving the people a cheeseburger and asparagus on the same plate. It’s what you might call a well-balanced meal.

This duality also applies to what I call (more often than not these days) my favorite Wilco record. Released 20 years ago this week, A Ghost Is Born hit like a deep-freeze February gale off of Lake Michigan in the summer of 2004. Coming after the success of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot it was the band’s most anticipated record to date. But the reaction at the time felt muted, and the disappointment over the record’s brittle, chilly, and frequently punishing “live in the studio” sound was palatable. “Underwhelming” was how Pitchfork described it, and it’s fair to say that sullen adjective accurately summed up the contemporary consensus on A Ghost Is Born. That Jeff Tweedy entered rehab right before the release immediately colored it an “addiction record,” and that suited the slightly numb feeling of the songs. But the gnarly guitars, elliptical lyrics, and robotic tempos struck many as unfocused and obtuse-for-the-sake-of-obtuseness. Robert Christgau (no fan of Wilco even at their most critically acclaimed) zeroed in on the most infamous track, the 15-minute dronefest “Less Than You Think,” and dismissed it as “privileged self-indulgence” and the record overall as his “Dud Of The Month.” (On his way out the door Christgau also sneered at the “suckers who fell for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” in case you were still wondering what the world’s most esteemed Buck 65 fan really thinks of this band.)

The problem with A Ghost Is Born, in other words, was that it was too much “art gallery” and not enough “county fair.” Two decades on, however, it’s sort of incredible how much of a “bouncy beach ball” record Ghost has become. “The Late Greats,” “Theologians,” “I’m A Wheel” — these are all “late in the set” songs just as surely as “Casino Queen” or “Monday” are. And then you have “Handshake Drugs,” which balances “art gallery” vs. “county fair” Wilco as well as any track in the catalog. And there’s “Hummingbird,” the fractured pop tune now reserved for the “happily jogging in place” slot in in the show. Even “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” the winding guitar workout that must have also reeked of “privileged self-indulgence” for the Dean Of American Rock Critics, is now a reliable set closer, part “Marquee Moon” and part “Free Bird.”

I love A Ghost Is Born because it’s less difficult than you remember, and also because it remains one of the most harrowing depictions of slow and steady mental and spiritual deterioration in modern music. It’s a record you must absolutely play by yourself during a distressed time in your life, except when you want to play it for a group of friends on the patio during a cookout. To quote Pvt. Joker in Full Metal Jacket, this album is a textbook example of “the Jungian thing, sir.”

In the timeline of Wilco’s career, A Ghost Is Born is somewhat confused in retrospect with Kicking Television, the live album they put out almost a year and a half later. Kicking Television features many of the songs from Ghost, and in the minds of many fans (though not necessarily me) improves on them. And that’s because the band on Kicking Television is significantly different from the lineup on A Ghost Is Born. The band on the former is the Wilco as we have known them for the past 20 years, whereas the group on the latter only existed for A Ghost Is Born.

The most significant difference is that Tweedy, and not Nels Cline (who joined in time for Kicking Television), plays lead guitar throughout. This aspect of A Ghost Is Born immediately sets it apart from every other Wilco record, and it’s one of the things I love the most about it. Tweedy took over the role after the dismissal of Jay Bennett, who had previously disparaged Tweedy’s attempts to play lead on previous Wilco records, and with the encouragement of his friend and co-producer Jim O’Rourke, who had just joined up with Tweedy on the excellent self-titled debut by Loose Fur one year earlier.

A Ghost Is Born bears more than a passing resemblance to that Loose Fur record, which adds to the impression I’ve long had that — along with being Wilco’s “ditch” record i.e. the abrasive reaction to the indie fame brought on by Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — A Ghost Is Born is a quasi-solo LP for Tweedy. Not only does the narcotized vibe of the lyrics and music feel extra-specific to Tweedy’s headspace, but Tweedy’s voice and guitar playing are even more dominant than usual. The violent soloing on the album opening “At Least That What You Said” immediately sets the tone, placing you immediately in the middle of a typically visceral Jeff Tweedy panic attack. This carries over to the slow-build skronking of “Spiders,” in which the rest of Wilco lays back with an ultra-minimal musical bed for Tweedy to work out his issues with explosive, expressive blasts of noise.

It’s funny how many listeners have retconned these as triumphs for Cline, who for years has played these parts live. But Tweedy’s primal, intuitive work as a lead guitarist on A Ghost Is Born remains one of his most underrated achievements. For me, his most brilliant playing comes at the end of “Muzzle Of Bees,” where his squalling guitar slowly takes over the song and pushes it into the red, all the while swarming like, well, you know. I can’t count the times I have played and rewound and played and rewound that particular part. It might be the most simultaneously beautiful and terrifying moment on any Wilco record. I don’t know that there is a more effective musical evocation of what it feels like to be depressed — or to step outside your door on a cold winter day — than those 60 or so seconds. It’s “the Jungian thing, sir” through and through.

Self-Promotion Time

On Uproxx this week I wrote about the year in memory-holed albums. There’s been a lot of them so far this year! “Imagine I am holding a gun to your head. And imagine the gun is loaded. And imagine that I am the kind of maniac who will murder someone over a hypothetical scenario. Would you stake your life on guaranteeing — with 100 percent certainty — that Green Day put out a record in first half of 2024?” Choose wisely!

Also happy to announce a new book event: I’ll be at The Hideout in Chicago — a great music venue — on July 9. Joining me is Rob Mitchum, my 36 From The Vault co-host and the writer of that A Ghost Is Born review from Pitchfork. Will I confront him on stage? We’ll see!