#8: Wilco - 'A Ghost Is Born'

If Want Two won the prize for self-indulgence, Wilco gave Rufus a run for his money. AGiB was supposedly the big letdown after the band’s crowning breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But this record shows that Jeff Tweedy and his bandmates are actually absorbing something from the time spent with artists like Sonic Youth, and the continued evolution is still exciting. Like all great bands, you have to suffer through some experimental failures for the occasional glimpse of pure musical grandeur. But the latter still outweighs the former, and Wilco is seemingly years away from obsolescence. My friend Jason has taken to referring to Wilco as “art fags”, and while I’m sure he means it derisively, it’s a pretty high compliment for a band that was once considered a bunch of Midwestern country-rockers.