A Ghost Is Born [Enhanced]

Jeff Tweedy's voice rises mournfully at the start of the gentle "At Least That's What You Said," which rises up into majestic rock heights before blossoming into the solid "Hell is Chrome" and slyly infectious "Spiders (Kidsmoke)." There's a more bluesy-country flavor to "Muzzle of Bees" and "Company on My Back," followed by the mournful "Wishful Thinking," the road-rocker "I'm A Wheel," and the fifteen-minute surrealist jam of "Less Than You Think."

The biggest flaw in "Ghost is Born" is that it has little internal cohesion -- we go from fun, satirical songs to melancholy piano-rock in the space of a few minutes. It's a bit confusing. But despite the disjointed setup, each song taken individually flows quite well.

Jeff Tweedy's plaintive voice can switch from sweet to scratchy. And his music is just as flexible -- acoustic and electric guitars are backed by bass, and in turn backed by delicate piano melodies, organ and dulcimer. "Less Than You Think" is particularly complicated, an engrossing interweaving of synths, loops, and acoustic instruments.

Certainly Tweedy and Co. haven't lost their touch for songwriting. "Company on My Back" and "I'm A Wheel" are pretty nonsensical, but the rest of the songs are beautifully written. "Fill up your mind with all it can know/'cause what would love be without wishful thinking?" Tweedy asks us. The greatest triumph is pop satire "Late Greats," with the barbed lyrics: "The greatest singer in rock'n'roll/would have to be Romeo/his vocal chords are made of gold/he just looks a little too old."

While Wilco has strayed from the turf of their classic "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," their latest album is engaging and beautifully crafted. Pensive, innovative, and almost entirely engaging.

There are three things which make me hit the stop button:

1) The droning/dead space in Less than You Think --- it didn't fit on the Beatles White Album, why try it here? This isn't "sonic landscaping" like on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it's just inconsiderate.

2) Questionable Lyrics: E.g. I'm A Wheel -- "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, once in Germany someone said 'nein'!" This is by far the STUPIDEST LYRIC IN HISTORY, and every time I hear it, I vow not to buy the next Wilco CD.

3) Electric Guitar Overload: 5 minutes of jarring electric guitar solos per song is a little much, and is especially heavy at the beginning of the album. There isn't much sonic texture to these moments, feedback excluded.

4) Pace: I can dig slow and understated pieces, but these should be at the back end of the album. This may be some "concept" or "inversion of expectations" that I don't quite get, but I like to settle into 20 minutes of solid material before yielding to experimentation.

I'm not hearkening back for an earlier Wilco, but it'd be nice if the songs were center stage. The best stuff is buried so deep in dung that you don't even want to start digging.