Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Being There may remain my fave, but there's a confluence of reasons why YHF is special/notable.

check out some of the demos too if you have time

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb6ZwRcyxjc

cool, thanks, i'll listen to them when mad men's over

there's a bunch more shit out there but that's what i found in two seconds on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MSYgSSS-Lg

there are two different sets of demos for yankee hotel foxtrot floating around on the internet, one called something like "engineer's demos" or whatever. (do a quick google search for "yankee hotel foxtrot demos", and you'll find some shit.) the songs in the first two videos i posted above are, i think, probably from those volumes. the third song might be too, but it was also released by the band at some point.

this might be worth checking out: http://captainsdead.com/yankee-hotel-foxtrot-demos.html

For those who aren't from here, the building on the cover, btw, is Marina City, aka Corncob Towers, or Bike Handle Towers, which is just a condo building (designed by Bertrand Goldberg) overlooking the river downtown, right by the House of Blues and a bunch of touristy restaurants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWtZ_C0DS1s

The towers are famous in architecture circles.

Jesus, etc might be my favorite song of all time.

I heard it in the supermarket last week.

probably just on half of these songs are spectacular. have never quite unconditionally tapped into the merits of the final two tracks, and that's probably why i'd fall short of calling the album a masterpiece. it does hold a very dear place in my heart though. despite its devastating subject matter and those really unsettling metaphors that enliven everyday struggle with a kind of poetic gravitas, it's interestingly a less harrowing listen track by track than either Summerteeth or A Ghost is Born. but if i'm looking for a quick, abridged fix of YHF's virtues, i'll cut straight to "Kamera" or maybe "Pot Kettle Black" these days. sadly burnt out on some of the rest.

i really like this record -- summerteeth > YHF > a ghost is born is probably right, but a pretty great run of records however you rank em. i saw wilco several times on this tour and yeah, it was kind of a special thing, in that the band hadn't quite figured out how to play the YHF stuff onstage but they were reaching for greatness in an inspired way. there was a vulnerability there that the lineup these days (as powerful as they are) doesn't have.

I'm not a dad, but felt like one tonight while playing this record.

heard Kamera in a potbelly today

Has anybody an idea what Yankee Hotel Foxtrot stands for? My theory goes as follows. They are using the spelling alphabet in the title so those three words spell YHF. YHF stands for "You Have Failed". The reason being that Reprise refused to release the album and Wilco had to stream it on their website for free before they signed with Nonesuch.

nice theory, but wasn't the title in place before the label kicked it back to them?

They'd have had to change the end of Poor Places pretty quickly!

Check out the latest video from "everybody hides" for a nice YHF cover reference.

That's a pretty cute video. They should get a kickback from the Chicago tourism board.

i think it just sounds cool

re: the title

i always just assumed it was a reference to the static chatter one can hear when tuned into cb / ham radiowaves. isn't the entirety of the lyrics to 'poor places' just excerpts from random radio conversations?

That's what I always figured. I know Tweedy reading books about WWII (I?) was a big influence on the album, iirc.

Isn't the title just taken from one of the numbers stations recordings that got used?

That's what I always thought? Surprised to hear there was any other consideration to the title/meaning.

tweedy's lyrics really haven't aged well have they

Had the realization over the weekend that YHF is actually my least favorite of the Wilco albums from the 00s. Sky Blue Sky is the best.

""Yankee, hotel, foxtrot" can be heard in a woman's voice on YHF's penultimate track, "Poor Places." It was sampled from the fourth track on "The Conet Project," a collection of recordings from so-called numbers stations.

Numbers stations are generally understood to be used by intelligence agencies to transmit coded messages across long distances. As he discusses in "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," the documentary about the album's creation, Jeff Tweedy had heard "The Conet Project" in the run-up to recording "YHF" and was fascinated by it.

Including the "Conet" sample on the record wound up costing Wilco -- Irdial Records, which released it, sued for copyright infringement. The case was settled out of court."

all that does not explain what YHF is supposed to stand for originally. what is the transmitted coded message behind? if it comes from an intelligence agency it could of course also mean nothing at all, just be noise to confuse the enemy. i prefer my theory though there may be time issues with it. maybe the meaning was subconscious.

If it was part of a coded message, who knows what it may have meant?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTiQkXPtq1g

deciphering does not get easier when the message is repeated on and on and on. or does the number of repititions mean something? or is that just a loop? i cannot detect any variation in her pronunciation, stressing of syllables or voice volume.

https://www.answers.com/Q/Alpha_mike_foxtrot

this takes care of that rarities box anyway I guess

yhf =

yahoo! high five!

yikes, hit fastforward.

you highfalutin fucker.

yoooo, how fortuitous.

Man a bunch of bands sampled that Conet Project CD over the years, I wonder if they went after any of the others.

The 'Engineer's' demo of Poor Places is great, a little spookier because of a bunch of numbers stations woven throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FRg3CN7yM

Man, this needs an expanded reissue with all the discarded tracks, demos, etc. There's basically an entire extra album of early versions and radically different takes that's just as good.

Didn't they more or less do that already?

Among my favorite memories of this era was seeing a few (intense!) shows before the album was officially released and watching everyone singing along with the new stuff they'd already all heard.

Had the realization over the weekend that YHF is actually my least favorite of the Wilco albums from the 00s. Sky Blue Sky is the best.
― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Thursday, September 19, 2019 11:31 AM

hmm, interesting thought — even though i'd agree sky blue rates very high. i definitely think yhf is better than wilco the album tho.

overall, i'd have a tough time picking between sky blue, ghost is born, and the whole love.

Oh yeah, that's true. I was thinking Wilco The Album was 2010, but it's 09.

don't mean to bash wilco the album tho — it's p solid, e.g. 'bull black nova', 'everylasting everything', etc.

Jeff Tweedy's lyrics on this are NOT terrible.... they are beautiful, more clever than he ever was before

yeah - probably very uncool to say this but to me YHF towers easily above the rest of his oeuvre, esp lyrically.

he has some great moments on Summerteeth and AGIB but YHF is back to back awesome lyrically

"Heavy Metal Drummer" just showed up on a playlist. I've never heard this before. This ... sounds like Pavement? Was Wilco supposed to be a band that sounded like Pavement? I have never heard them identified as such. Obviously I mean "relaxed Gold Soundz / much of Brighten the Corners" type Pavement" not "Debris Slide pavement"

I don't really mean the production, just mostly, the way the vocal line sounds and the way the words fit into the lines?

it sounds a lot like cut your hair yeah

Right, it sounds like Cut Your Hair covered in the style of Range Life

It's kind of funny to me that you're enough of an indie fan to know the nuances of the types of Pavement songs but in all these years you've never encountered YHF? I'm not scoffing at it, but it's a little surprising- a hard album to avoid for this many years with all the worship it received in the indieverse.