the SUMMERTEETH poll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctMKP0B7DGA

ah curmudgeon already mentioned this i guess, but still. there's the ad!

Jeff Tweedy ain't no poet and he doesn't know it. So while I'm basically a pretty big fan of his band, Wilco songs that put lyrics first often make me wince. What's so great about the passive-aggressive bad dream of "Via Chicago"? Give me the title track of this album any day, another bad dream song saved by kaleidoscope arrangement, murmured delivery, and "it doesn't seem to mean anything". "ELT," meanwhile, envelops another passive-aggressive murder fantasy with juicy harmonies and the kind of insistent forward motion that "Via Chicago" steadfastly refuses. Two best songs on the album, for me. Wonder why they didn't get any votes - I guess preferring their uptempo stuff is atypical.

i dunno, i think you answered your question -- "What's so great about the passive-aggressive bad dream of "Via Chicago"?" I always liked the way it was kind of answered back by the title track.

wilco 1999-2004 was the best wilco y'all

I wonder if they're making more money from that Sprint ad using “I’m Always in Love," than they have from the entire sales of "Summerteeth." I think it's my fave Wilco album.

yeah, it's my fave. as good as the band tweedy has now is, jay bennett really rose to the occasion with this album. when it came out, i remember being a little shocked at how good it was!

it's easily and by far the best wilco album. i like all the others too to differing degrees but this is a pop masterpiece. maybe people don't want their wilco to be a pop band.

Gotta agree with Markers, though I adore "Being There" as well. I prefer them channeling the Beach Boys rather than the Grateful Dead.

if you told me in 1999 that 13 years later "I'm Always In Love" would be sung by 100 people in a smartphone ad, I would have said "excuse me, they call things 'smartphones' in the future?"

"Shot in the Arm" though also got 9 votes

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, June 5, 2012 4:22 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love "Shot in the Arm". This album is great, yes. I did a double-take when I saw this commercial for the first time.

wtf @ zero votes for the title track. ILM wilco fans be trippin

20 years old tomorrow

something in my veins bloodier than blood

would've given a vote to "elt"

this was the most important album in the world to me in high school

so many great songs. when you wake up feeling old is is aural xanax, in a good way. how to fight loneliness is so tremendously executed that it doesn't matter how cliche it could've been. i'm always in love is the best power pop song since the '70s, and it almost definitely would've gotten my vote.

think this is still my fave wilco ... i remember being kind of shocked at how good it was when it came out!

this is def my favorite wilco. not even close.

bridge in "nothing's" is so weird and perfect

there should be more power-pop albums this sonically adventurous in the world

my fave album of '99 and it still is!

I don't think they ever bettered this

bridge in "nothing's" is so weird and perfect

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, March 8, 2019 12:35 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A watch that ticks is wrapped around my wrist
I'm a bomb regardless

when it came out, i remember being a little shocked at how good it was!

― tylerw, Wednesday, June 13, 2012 4:22 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

think this is still my fave wilco ... i remember being kind of shocked at how good it was when it came out!

― tylerw, Friday, March 8, 2019 5:04 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol at least i'm consistent (or just super boring)

...Just like Wilco!

Wow, 20 years. I still remember picking this up the Friday of that week at Borders. I'd just gotten onboard thanks to Mermaid Ave., and wanted to check out what their original stuff sounded like.

My sister had a friend who used to bring us Austin newspapers, and I may also have been swayed by a Michael Coccoran piece about Tweedy being "Artist of The Decade" based partially off an advance copy of ST he'd heard.

My fave Wilco album too

Underwhelming and overcooked. Where they jumped the shark

Bought this album on the strength of Instant Street by dEUS, which I thought was by Wilco

yeah this is probably my favorite too

I have a complicated relationship with this record as I remember feeling at the time that it was a bit of a comedown from the scrappy, expansive Being There (not to mentioned that it seemed to signal the direction they were going to head in for the rest of their career), but its high points are absolutely gorgeous: "A Shot in the Arm," "ELT," "In a Future Age," "Candy Floss" and "She's a Jar," the final line of which is still, um, jarring.

has always been my second favourite wilco album, but it's sounding better than ever to me at the moment

really miss what bennett brought to the band with the psych pop-tinged keys etc

she's a jar

https://www.theringer.com/music/2019/7/30/20746562/wilco-summerteeth-best-album-1999

The woozy tropicalia of “How to Fight Loneliness” is like a narcotized Os Mutantes fronting Raymond Carver

I suppose she's just responding to the strumming pattern of the acoustic guitar? Do others hear tropicalia here?

there are vague flourishes that make me understand that comparison, like the way the drum pattern is accented, the ethereal organ, and the chord progression, but it reminds me more of something tejano than tropicalia.

like calexico could do a mean cover of that song

Some interesting comments in the excellent TapeOp interview:

Do you feel like there was ever a time where some of your work got tainted by production or recording styles?

JT: I think Wilco's Summerteeth is probably the closest to having some sensation like that. I definitely have things I wish I had done differently on some records. The overall drum sound on Wilco (The Album) I feel is muscular and uncharacteristic. It was weird that that was the decision being made at the time, but I think we were playing so much. I think we had gotten used to the sound of (being) pummeled (by) live drums. It was hard to hear them any other way in the studio. I don't really understand it. But Summerteeth definitely has some of the earmarks of us transitioning from analog to digital recording.

It feels different to me. It came after (Wilco's second album) Being There, right?

JT: Yeah.

That's much more spacious and open sounding.

JT: It's all rough mixes, too. We had mixed the whole record at Ocean Way (Recording). When I was at the mastering studio with Bob Ludwig (Tape Op #105), we'd mastered the whole record from the original, finished mixes. I'd booked two days, because it's a double record. I came back the next day and said, "I don't like this record as much as when I used to listen to it on my cassettes." Bob said, "Well, let me hear the mixes you like." He helped me pick all of the mixes from cassettes and DATs.

That's awesome.

ST: He's so nice.

JT: He agreed with me. He said, "These feel better. They're not better sonically. They feel better." That was a big moment for me, affirmation-wise, to have him supportive of that decision. We'd spent a fair amount of money on those other mixes!

There's no way you were getting out of Ocean Way for cheap.

JT: There're a couple of David Kahne mixes on Summerteeth. He was mixing Sugar Ray and people like that at the time. That makes it more contemporary-sounding than anything else we ever did, probably.

Right. Don't take this the wrong way, in any sense, but that record always pushed me away sonically. I'd always think, "Why do I keep going to Being There or the records that followed?" That record always sounds more pushy and abrasive.

ST: It's cold.

JT: I don't really know. I feel like the material on that record has continued to be something that people want to hear when we play live. So not very many of the songs have disappeared from our consciousness, which is more important to me.

Yeah, as long as the songs stick around.

JT: Yeah. People get excited when we start playing one. I love making that connection. I don't know how much of it is from the record anymore or if it's from Wilco being a live act for so long that people are perhaps more familiar with the live version of any one of those songs.

https://tapeop.com/interviews/132/jeff-tweedy/

sorry to be a bore and bump every wilco thread but this is the '90s odessey and oracle

It's a really good record. At the time, for some stupid reason, I remember not liking it as much after "Being There," and now ... I mean, I heard I think "Via Chicago" on the radio the other month, and I thought, huh, I wonder what version of this it is? Some radio session or something? And then I Shazamed it, and it said "Summerteeth." And I thought, huh, must have been close enough to fuck up Shazam! So I did it again a minute later and got the same results, and thought, huh, I guess I'll try to figure out which version it was when I get home. And no, it's the album version all right. It had just been so long, and I was so used to hearing it live, I guess.

what you once were isn't what you wanna be anymore

i've heard that comparison before, brad. i retort to it with, "ya, but that album had 'time of the season.'"

i like this album just fine, but it does lack that one big highlight. i don't know what i would have voted for here, but the fact that it ended in a tie kind of validates my thought. bennett fans have a lot to love about this album. definitely great arrangements throughout.

If I’m honest this is my favorite Wilco record.

i genuinely can't believe the songs that got 0 votes got 0 votes lol

i will go back in time and vote for "candy floss" or the title track or "elt"

the '90s odessey and oracle

that's dusk at cubist castle! this album still rules though

the storm section on "via chicago" live is tremendous, the studio version only really hints at it in comparison. really hard to get past it and "a shot in the arm" here, as good as the rest of it is

yeah i would’ve voted for the title track, beautiful little ditty