Album Facts
Wilco - Yankkee Hotel Foxtrot (2022 Creamy White Color) Vinyl LP
20th anniversary of widely acclaimed album
Price $39.00
Format 2xLP
Label Nonesuch
UPC 075597909951
Color Creamy White
Year September 30 2022
Condition
Album Facts
20th anniversary of widely acclaimed album
Price $39.00
Format 2xLP
Label Nonesuch
UPC 075597909951
Color Creamy White
Year September 30 2022
Condition
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was widely acclaimed as one of 2002âs best albums, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NME, Q, Rolling Stone, and Uncut, among many others. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot also was featured in multiple decade-end lists, with Rolling Stone naming it #3 Album of the 2000s, as well as many Greatest Albums of All Time lists, including in the NME.Among Yankeeâs inspirations was a recording Tweedy bought at Tower Records in the late 1990s, The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. As Bob Mehr points out in his new album note, the record got âdeep under Tweedyâs skin.â Tweedy said in his 2017 memoir, Letâs Go (So We Can Get Back), âIt was as fascinating to me as anything being made by actual musicians using actual instruments ⌠I wanted to know why it was so hypnotic to me. Why could I listen to hours of this stuff, even though I had no clue what any of them were saying. That question became the foundation for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot ⌠the way people communicated or ultimately failed to communicate.â The album takes its title from a haunting recording of a woman repeating those words that is included in The Conet Project; that recording is sampled in the penultimate song on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, âPoor Places.ââConceptually, Tweedy had decided to focus on a big idea for the next album: the state of America. His lyricsâoften distilled from scribbled pages of free verse or poetryâbecame a form of inquiry,â Mehr continues. Tweedy said, in 2004, âI wanted to write about the stuff right in front of my eyes, microscopically looking at America and asking questions about each little thing ⌠How can there be all these good things and things that I love about America, alongside all of these things that Iâm ashamed of? And that was an internal question, too; I think I felt that way about myself.âMehr says, âExploring those questions, while weaving in strands of Eastern philosophy and bits of autobiographyâYankee lyrics would be loaded with the pained imagery of someone suffering from migraines and mental health issuesâTweedy would conjure a deep examination of both country and self.âDescribing the uncanny, strangely prescient feeling of the album, which Wilco began offering as a free stream on its website in 2001, Mehr notes: âIn the wake of 9/11, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would be burdened with unintended meaning. The disc had originally been scheduled for a September 11 release. Its coverâa Sam Jones-shot image of Chicagoâs twin Marina Towers angled in looming fashionâbore an eerie resemblance to the felled World Trade Center towers. And the songsâwith titles like âAshes of American Flagsâ and âWar on War,â and lyrics about how âtall buildings shake, sad voices escapeââtook on a terrible new resonance.â