So I didn't think I'd post this as I hadn't intended to be "leaked music central," but as the song keeps coming up on my iTunes playlist, I keep being bowled over by the sheer honesty of the electric guitar solo, the way that it's bashful and rock'n'roll at the same time. I haven't heard the whole album, but from what I have heard, A Ghost Is Born sounds like it's Wilco's Let It Be. Gone is the bounce and sparkle of Summerteeth, the silver gauze of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and instead - knit sweaters, cigarettes, drums, and men trying to express themselves the only way they know how.
The internet feels like it's home to more Wilco haters than lovers, but I'm one of those kids who fell in love with YHF, and while my crush has waned, I'm happy to be excited about the band again, happy that this song sounds so good to my ears. If you're still too sick of them, however, please feel free to skip ahead.
Wilco - "At Least That's What You Said". A voice and a piano, with flickers of guitar far, far in the background (memory). If it wasn't Tweedy, I might hate it - self-indulgent singer-songwriter crap. But (but!) there's an elegance to his simple, bittersweet vocals; there's the feeling he's sorry that this might sound trite, that he can't help it. I can hear the wounds, the vulnerability as he sings "mad," "serious." When the electric guitar stands up, begins to jam with piano and a simple drum-line, there's still an order to this, a self-conscious play-by-numbers. "Now we'll jam out." But things get out of control, things break down, things just break. I can hear the mess and the freedom and the regret. I can feel it. I turn up the volume and I wash myself in it. I scoar myself with it. And the shiny piano keeps on going (see Lambchop Aw C'mon/No You C'Mon), like the shiny kitchen and the shiny sun and the shiny grasses that still wave outside, regardless of you in your room, hands balled up, eyes squeezed shut. A clear cold glass of water that you pick up and drink.
Other songs that are like this song:
Elliott Smith - "A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to Be True"
OutKast - "Hey Ya!"
Kepler - "The Changing Light at Dawn"
Radiohead - "Just"
The Tragically Hip - "Grace, Too"
The Unicorns - "Thunder and Lightning"
Songs:Ohia - "The Lioness"
Modest Mouse - "Trailer Trash"
The Frames - "Fitzcarraldo"
The Beatles - "Helter Skelter"
Clinic - "Dj Shangri-La"
Arab Strap - "New Birds"
Dirty Three - "No Stranger Than That"
Nick Drake - "Pink Moon"
Sparklehorse - "Happy Pig"
And then, for those of you who don't and won't like the Wilco, or for those of you who need a shimmy-shammy right now (and not a hot flame), I bring you, from K Records (of all people), the finest song that C.O.C.O. have ever released:
C.O.C.O. - "Move On". Bass and drums pitch a devastatingly simple dance beat, a devastatingly simple lyrical hook, the sort of thing that should be played on vinyl, that should be danced to at a party in a loft on St-Denis, in black-lacquer shoes and stupid sunglasses. Oh - and a bowl of cherries nearby. Cherry cola, too, with those bendy straws. And a girlfriend.