When Uncle Tupelo, the band that defined ’90s alt-country, split into two camps, Jay Farrar’s Son Volt took the relatively arty road while Jeff Tweedy upped the rock & roll grit quotient with Wilco. On Wilco’s debut album, the band sounds righteously ragged, charging along behind Tweedy in a manner suggestive of the rootsier moments of the Stones and/or the Replacements. The occasional appearance of acoustic guitar, banjo or a 2/4 beat serves to remind us of Tweedy’s roots. Still, A.M. has the sound of a band already well on their way to the gloriously chaotic rock & roll nirvana they would reach on the follow-up BEING THERE.

Tracklisting
1. I Must Be High
2. Casino Queen
3. Box Full Of Letters
4. Shouldn’t Be Ashamed
5. Pick Up The Change
6. I Thought I Held You
7. That’s Not The Issue
8. It’s Just That Simple
9. Should’ve Been In Love
10. Passenger Side
11. Dash 7
12. Blue Eyed Soul
13. Too Far Apart

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (4/6/95, pp.62-64) – 3.5 Stars – Very Good – “…Wilco have made one hell of a country-guts debut….Just as classic country tells of…real life in everyday language…so does Tweedy’s small-town worldview have an Everyman honesty…”

Entertainment Weekly (4/7/95, pp.89-90) – “…Though [Wilco has] a ’90s bleakness far removed from the sunny romanticism of the Byrds and Poco, [they] are following the same urge as those earlier acts: the need to sink roots into something more nourishing than mere rock & roll flash without losing their edge…” – Rating: B+

Q (9/00, p.135) – Included in Q’s “Best Alt.Country Albums Of All Time” – “…A soundtrack for Midwestern teenagers out doing no good.”

Option (7-8/95, p.146) – “…The vocals are laidback and sometimes even strained, but the delivery only adds to the friendly familiarity of the album….Herein lies evidence that A.M. is as sound lyrically as it is musically…”

Village Voice (2/20/96) – Ranked #34 in Village Voice’s 1995 Pazz & Jop Critics’ Poll.

Moving beyond A.M.’s Uncle Tupelo-oriented country-rock, Wilco’s double-length BEING THERE explored the sonic vistas of the Stones and Big Star. SUMMERTEETH takes things a step further. A loose, inspired masterwork of rootsy power-pop in the grand mid-’70s tradition, it’s the greatest album Alex Chilton never made. With perfect pop melodies and a knack for throwing things askew via left-field sonic elements, this is as far from the country as Wilco could be.

Jeff Tweedy’s ragged-but-right voice is the essence of rock & roll – the travails detailed in the lyrics seem undeniably his own. Though his days of paying homage to Acuff-Rose seem long gone, Tweedy and his compatriots still sound engagingly organic on SUMMERTEETH. Even if they’re closer to Badfinger after a few beers than to the post-Tupelo alt-country of Tweedy’s former partner and Son Volt leader Jay Farrar, Wilco are still treading the same path they started years ago, obviously headed in the right direction.

Tracklisting
1. Can’t Stand It
2. She’s A Jar
3. A Shot In The Arm
4. We’re Just Friends
5. I’m Always In Love
6. Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (Again)
7. Pieholden Suite
8. How To Fight Loneliness
9. Via Chicago
10. Elt
11. My Darling
12. When You Wake Up Feeling Old
13. Summer Teeth
14. In A Future Age
15. 23 Seconds Of Silence
16. Candyfloss (Hidden Track)
17. A Shot In The Arm (Hidden Track)

Professional Reviews
Spin (4/99, p.160) – 7 (out of 10) – “…built from pieces found rusting by the roadside of the Americana Dream, seemingly at random….Tweedy’s best songs are sweet as ever….”

Entertainment Weekly (3/12/99, p.70) – “…TEETH is packed with poignant mid-tempo ballads that would’ve seemed right at home on a top 10 list in 1975. These days, though, pronouncing them merely transcendent will have to suffice.” – Rating: A

Q (1/00, p.86) – Included in Q Magazine’s “50 Best Albums of 1999.”

Q (4/99, p.107) – 4 Stars (out of 5) – “…Wilco’s chiming bells, echoey piano, feedbacking guitar, mellotrons, handclaps, wafting strings, lounging horns, masteruflly directed harmonies and psychedelic swirls shoe-horned into three-minute symphonies…”

CMJ (1/10/00, p.3) – “…propels Jeff Tweedy & Co. out of rootsw rock canon and into the classic pop milieu, smartly investigating rock’n'roll’s past…to elegantly invigorate its future. A complex, beautifully bedraggled masterpiece.”

Mojo (Publisher) (3/99, p.87) – “Another winner from Wilco….Exuberant, uplifting and elegant all at once, SUMMER TEETH sounds like the perfect soundtrack for the coming spring.”

NME (Magazine) (4/3/99, p.41) – “Perhaps the most cheerful record about dreaming of killing your girlfriend ever made…”

MERMAID AVENUE is a collection of previously unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics exhumed from the Woody Guthrie Archives and set to music by Billy Bragg and Wilco at the invitation of Guthrie’s daughter Nora.

Woody Guthrie’s gift to the world of music cannot be overstated. His songwriting helped to define folk music as we know it, as an instrument not only of musical creation, but of social change. Among those troubadours who carry on his tradition, England’s Billy Bragg stands proud, for his musical talent and his social awareness alike. In 1995, Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, approached Bragg to set to music some of the hundreds of songs that the legend had left unfinished. The result, MERMAID AVENUE, recorded by Bragg with Chicago band Wilco, is equal parts tribute and collaboration.

Joined by guest stars such as Natalie Merchant, slide guitarist Corey Harris, and violinist Eliza Carthy, Bragg more than does justice to the Guthrie legacy. From the rollicking opener, “Walt Whitman’s Niece” to dreamy double-tracking of “She Came Along To Me,” Bragg’s gift for matching melody and lyric highlights the universality of Guthrie’s music. Merchant’s fragile vocal work on “Birds And Ships” is a thing of sublime beauty, while Jeff Tweedy’s plaintive, rough timbre lends a particularly heart-rending quality to such tracks as “At My Window Sad And Lonely” and “Hoodoo Voodoo.”

MERMAID AVENUE was nominated for a 1999 Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Tracklisting
1. Walt Whitman’s Niece
2. California Stars
3. Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key
4. Birds And Ships
5. Hoodoo Voodoo
6. She Came Along To Me
7. At My Window Sad And Lonely
8. Ingrid Bergman
9. Christ For President
10. I Guess I Planted
11. One By One
12. Eisler On The Go
13. Hesitating Beauty
14. Another Man’s Done Gone
15. Unwelcome Guest

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.65) – Included in Rolling Stone’s “Essential Recordings of the 90’s.”

Spin (1/99, p.91) – Ranked #8 on Spin’s list of “Top 20 Albums of ‘98.”

Spin (9/98, p.184) – 8 (out of 10) – “…The combination feels nostalgic and contemporary at once, like a good rabble-rousing speech–or a snatch of Americana suddenly recalled years after you thought it’d passed forever from memory.”

Entertainment Weekly (9/4/98, p.84) – “…Bragg and the otherwise callow Wilco make the many moods of Woody spring to life with boozy, woozy roughhouse folk-rock. It may feel like school, but at least the classroom’s rollicking.” – Rating: B+

CMJ (1/11/99, p.3) – “…The varied arrangements uncover Guthrie’s knack for evoking many moods with simple words, making for one of the year’s most memorable and inspired albums…”