Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Anyone trying to make rock’n’roll that matters risks sounding like a pretentious ass. Thankfully, Wilco’s extraordinary Yankee Hotel Foxtrot pulls it off through determination, vision, and cojones the size of cannonballs. Here the warm guitar licks and welcoming pop hooks that marked Wilco of old are buried beneath an unsettling soundscape of weird tinkling pianos, skittering rhythms, and frontman Jeff Tweedy’s bleak musings. “You know it’s not OK,” he chants at the close of the country-pop shuffle “Kamera,” pretty much spelling out the album’s underlying message. If that’s not stark enough for you, “War on War,” “Jesus, etc.,” and “Ashes of American Flags” all reverberate with the chilling echoes of September 11 (despite being penned prior to it). Amazingly, like a latter-day White Album, the confusion and discontent cohere into something much more powerful than its downbeat parts. There are glimmers of hope buried deep in the album’s grooves, but Wilco make no apologies for their dark masterpiece, and neither will we.