Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

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Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot cover
Studio album by Wilco
Released April 23, 2002
Recorded Autumn 2000
Chicago (The Loft)
Genre Indie rock
Length 51:51
Label Nonesuch
Producer(s) Jim O'Rourke, Wilco
Professional reviews
Wilco chronology
Summerteeth
(1999)		 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
(2002)		 More Like the Moon
(2003)


Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a 2002 album by Wilco.

After the album was completed, it was rejected by Reprise Records, then Wilco's record label; they judged it too unconventional to market to commercial rock radio stations. Towards the end of 2001, bootlegged copies of the album mysteriously leaked onto the internet (specifically on P2P file sharing networks) and created a stir at a time when neither the album nor the band were signed to a label. The band responded by streaming the entire album on the band's official website.

Following protracted contractual and legal wrangling (Wilco purchased the master tapes for $50,000), the album was finally commercially released by Nonesuch Records on April 23, 2002 (Reprise and Nonesuch are both Time Warner companies). The album hit the charts at an all-time high for Wilco at #13 (topped 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, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Some of the making of the album, the problems with Reprise and the departure of several band members (Jay Bennett and Ken Coomer) were chronicled in Sam Jones's documentary film, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.

Though "Jesus, Etc." and elements of other songs (in addition to the album cover itself) are sometimes thought to have been created in memory of the September 11th attacks, the entire album was completed before the 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.

[edit] Miscellanea

The building on the cover is Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City in Chicago, near the Loop.

The album features recordings from numbers stations, mysterious shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin believed to be operated by government agencies to communicate with spies "in the field", and is named after one of them; a looped recording at the end of "Poor Places" consists of a mechanized female voice reciting "yankee hotel foxtrot" repeatedly.

These samples put the band in some legal troubles; they were taken from The Conet Project, a four-CD collection of numbers station recordings. The collection's record label, Irdial, sued Wilco for copyright infringement. The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court with Irdial receiving some undisclosed royalties for the song [1].

Several collections of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos have been widely circulated via the internet. These feature several tracks in embryonic stages including multiple alternate takes of songs such as "Kamera" and "Poor Places", as well as songs that didn't to appear on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot including "Cars Can't Escape", "Venus Stopped the Train", "A Magazine Called Sunset", "Not For the Season" (later to appear as "Laminated Cat"), "Alone", "Nothing Up My Sleeve" and "Won't Let You Down". It is not known who leaked these demos.

In 2006 the album was voted the 100th Greatest Album of All Time in Q Magazine's top 100 poll of the same title.

[edit] Track listing

All words written by Jeff Tweedy. Music written by Jeff Tweedy with Jay Bennett except "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," "Heavy Metal Drummer," and "Reservations;" music by Jeff Tweedy.


  1. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" – 6:57
  2. "Kamera" – 3:29
  3. "Radio Cure" – 5:08
  4. "War on War" – 3:47
  5. "Jesus, Etc." – 3:50
  6. "Ashes of American Flags" – 4:43
  7. "Heavy Metal Drummer" – 3:08
  8. "I'm the Man Who Loves You" – 3:55
  9. "Pot Kettle Black" – 4:00
  10. "Poor Places" – 5:15
  11. "Reservations" – 7:22

[edit] Samples

Wilco
Jeff Tweedy | John Stirratt | Nels Cline | Glenn Kotche | Pat Sansone | Mikael Jorgensen
Ken Coomer | Max Johnston | Jay Bennett | Leroy Bach | Jim O'Rourke
Discography
Albums and extended plays: A.M. | Being There | Mermaid Avenue | Summerteeth | Mermaid Avenue Vol. II | Yankee Hotel Foxtrot | More Like the Moon | A Ghost Is Born | Kicking Television: Live in Chicago
Singles: Box Full of Letters | Outtasite (Outta Mind) | Can't Stand It | A Shot in the Arm | War on War
DVDs: Man in the Sand | I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Related articles
Uncle Tupelo | Billy Bragg | The Wilco Book | Loose Fur | Down With Wilco | Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest | Golden Smog
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