Wilco

It’s hard to believe Reprise Records rejected this, the fourth album from Wilco. Because Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is nothing short of brilliant, a modern-day classic, the kind of disc you might hear playing at someone’s house that motivates you to run immediately to the nearest record store for your own copy. Whether it’s what sounds like an upbeat, off-planet collaboration between George Harrison and Pavement (“War on War”), a dissipated lament worthy of disintegrating Big Star (“Radio Cure”), a languid, string-laced, Steely Dan-style countrypolitan ballad (“Jesus, Etc.”), an elegiac post-Bach dirge that devolves into a maelstrom of “A Day in the Life”-like noise (“Ashes of American Flags”), this 11-song album, recorded in Chicago by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and company with sonic texturalist Jim O’Rourke, never fails to deliver. Album of the year material? Perhaps. It’s certainly that exceptional.