Unfairly Maligned: Wilco's A.M.

Wilco

A.M.

1995 (Sire)

On Wilco:

The only thing left to say about Wilco in 2013 is, “What happened?”

Has Jeff Tweedy always been a dad-rocker masquerading as an alt-country -->
pop-rock --> indie rock genius, or did Wilco simply lose its way?

Whatever the case, this is a band which has now undergone roughly three transformations in the past 15 years and produced a plentiful catalog of good-to-great albums along the way.

We’ll always have that.

The Album

The reason for this column. The beginning of a joyous and depressing, strange yet somehow familiar journey for one of Chicago’s very finest.

It was part one of Jeff Tweedy’s post-Tupelo catharses – shorter, lighter, and tighter than its bloated follow-up (Being There). From the opening verse of “I Must Be High”, A.M. was easy to write off as run-of-the-mill alt-country rock/pop, rendered more worthless by arch-rival Jay Farrar’s ‘superior’ debut by way of Son Volt’s Trace, released just months later. The consensus was that Farrar and Son Volt were the winners of the Uncle Tupelo breakup, while Tweedy’s Wilco became an afterthought – that band with the ‘other guy’ from UT. Time has seemingly changed nothing about the general perception of A.M. It remains the Pablo Honey of Wilco’s catalog – the ‘album you don’t need to hear’, because it’s ‘the album before they became great’.

But that tends to be the problem with these albums ‘you don’t need to hear’: people don’t hear them. An important note: any Wilco fan who has invested an hour and a half into A.M. and finds it unworthy has every right to say so. Taste is taste, so long as you know what you’re spitting out.

Otherwise, let’s give this forgotten debut its proper due.

I Get It

The honky-tonk turd that is “Casino Queen”. The cookie-cutter guitar riffs. The pre – “I am an American aquarium drinker” lyrics. The apparent crystal clarity of Tweedy’s doe-eyed approach and vocal delivery. There’s nothing special here; what you hear (at first) is what you get. The songs are simple and innocuous, nowhere near the full range of Being There, the pure pop greatness of Summerteeth (Wilco's best album), or the layered density of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

So…

So what is A.M.? Well, if you are turned off by the rather dubious sub-genre of rock endearingly labeled “alternative country” – if the Old 97s, Bottle Rockets, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Silver Jews, Jayhawks, Drive-By Truckers, and Ryan Adams mean nothing to you, or worse – then read and listen no further. If you are open to it, then put A.M. on repeat, and listen to Tweedy incorporate the catchiest and most lovable qualities of alternative-country into one, tight, precocious little package.

I would go so far as to say that, for those with open ears and open minds, it is impossible not to, at the very least, enjoy this album. Not in the way you would enjoy YHFT for its impressive depth, but in the way “Box Full of Letters” makes you want to sing along with the windows down Every Single Time. And the album is full of “Box Full of Letters”; it’s one three-minute blast of near-perfect pop after another, and it functions as good pop music should: catchy, simple, earnest lyrics wound together by the kind of satisfying guitar riffs that take nothing away from what the album was meant to be. A.M. doesn’t demand any more than that. It is not here to push or challenge us; it just wants us to sing along.

I’m fairly certain that in the same way Thom Yorke likes to pretend Pablo Honey never happened, Tweedy is embarrassed about this. He wishes he had set his sights a little higher, spread his range a little further, and maybe kicked off the Wilco legacy with an album like Being There – not something so linear and straightforward as A.M.

I think that’s a shame. For the short time that Tweedy dabbled in the genre, cleaning out the gutters of his alt-country past, he conquered it.

Conclusion

A.M. is not a great album and is by no means perfect (did I mention how bad "That's Not the Issue" is?). It’s not a statement or a triumph. It’s a collection of leftovers which proved that Tweedy had always been the melody to Farrar's Guthrie-esque charm, and suggested that – going forward – Wilco would thrive on songs over narratives, however much Tweedy would improve on the latter. Though Tweedy’s limitations as a songwriter have never been so evident, the strengths of his melodies are the album’s bedrock, and they shine ever so brightly throughout the album (did I mention how good "Passenger Side" is?).

So where does A.M. fall among Wilco’s vaunted body of work? It’s hard to say. Wilco became a ‘serious’ band soon hereafter, so pairing A.M. with anything post-A.M. is arguably an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Let’s just say that for a brief time in this well-traveled band’s history, they were nothing more than a simple alt-country pop band. And a damn good one at that.

TK

* * *

Why I'm Wrong: A Wilco Fan's Response

It’s been said more than once that “The Long Cut” off Uncle Tupelo’s final album Anodyne was the ‘first Wilco song.’  Although us Wilco fans, especially those of the sunshine pop of Summerteeth, wish that was the case, the actual first Wilco song was “I Must Be High” or any one of the 13 generic alt-country tracks off of the band’s debut album A.M.

To call A.M. a great disappointment in 1995 based solely off the momentum built from Tweedy penned Tupelo songs would be a gross overreaction.  However, when one connects the dots almost two decades later, you can’t help but secretly wish that A.M. was released as a Jeff Tweedy solo album and the group actually started off with the great, yet bloated Being There.  To these ears, A.M. sounds like the desperate attempt of an eager, yet green songwriter destined to strike out on his own and become a roaring success, all before figuring out what he actually wants to be and what he will even say.  The competition with ex-band mate Jay Farrar might have pressed Tweedy too much to force him to rush this record’ release date.

Musically, this album is nothing special…the same tired chord progressions played in the same tired way.  Take a trip to Nashville and you can hear this same, cookie-cutter  music up and down the main drag at any one of a dozen honky tonks being played by musicians who know deep down that these tunes only sound good to tourists who want to experience “culture”.  If Muzak started to publish alt-country songs, this is probably what it would sound like…generic tunes played semi-audibly in the background as we go about our daily routines, hardly noticing their presence in elevators and waiting rooms across the U.S.

Being There, which may on the surface sound similar to A.M., finds Wilco in a more musically deeper and challenging place.  From the haunting “Misunderstood” to the hopeless “Sunken Treasure”, the group suggests that all might not be right in Middle America.  With this set of songs, Tweedy is starting to find his true voice as a lyricist and songwriter.  Gone are the vanilla topics of sappy romance and lost love explored in so many songs of this genre that A.M. is chalked full of.  Being There positioned Wilco as a “band to watch” and set the course for Wilco to become one of the most consistently great American bands of the last twenty years.

In sum, A.M. may be a lighthearted, fun, if not neutered attempt at alt-country pop songs.  I have no problem with people giving this disc a spin while ticking off the miles on a cross-country road trip (“Too Far Apart” specifically is a great song for this exact purpose).  But to actually sit down and enjoy this record as you would other Wilco albums is pushing things a little too far.  Trying to discern the difference in quality between these tracks is akin to arguing over which is the better light beer…Coors or Budlight…there really is no difference.  Do yourself a favor and skip right to the craft beer section, the memories will last longer and the buzz is a bit stronger.

AW


2.10.13