Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
|
Template:Album infobox Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a critically-acclaimed album by Wilco. It was originally rejected by the band's record label, to which the band reacted by making the album's tracks available on the Internet. There it was widely praised, and the album was finally commercially released by Nonesuch Records on April 23, 2002, charting at the then-all-time high for Wilco, #13. (This record would be beaten by A Ghost is Born two years later.) It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll.
Some of the making of the album was chronicled in Sam Jones's documentary film, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.
Though "Jesus, Etc." is sometimes thought to be in memory of the September 11th attacks, September 11, 2001 was in fact the original intended release date for the album.
The More Like the Moon EP (also called Bridge and Australian EP) was originally released a bonus disc to the Australian version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The band ended up releasing the EP to all their fans via the band's website in late 2004, but not before they had released it for about two years exclusively to all buyers of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
The building on the cover is Bertrand Goldberg's Marina Towers (a condominium built in 1964, currently hosting the House of Blues at the ground level) in the Chicago Loop.
The album features recordings from numbers stations: the track "Poor Places" closes with a looped recording of a mysterious female voice reciting "yankee hotel foxtrot" over and over. The clip sounds similar to the voice from an alleged Mossad numbers station broadcast.
Track listing
(All songs written by Wilco)
- "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" - 6:57
- "Kamera" - 3:29
- "Radio Cure" - 5:08
- "War on War" - 3:47
- "Jesus, Etc." - 3:50
- "Ashes of American Flags" - 4:43
- "Heavy Metal Drummer" - 3:08
- "I'm the Man Who Loves You" - 3:55
- "Pot Kettle Black" - 4:00
- "Poor Places" - 5:15
- "Reservations" - 7:22