Wilco

A Ghost Is Born

This is a Continuation of A. Bubul's Review, Credithervotes

Review Score:

(10/10)
At Least That's What You Said softly begins. It sounds sadder than ever, like everything is about to come to an end, desist and surrender to nothing. The pathos turns though, suddenly and startlingly, into a fatal guitar solo that transcends emotion. It is feral, vicious, unrelenting and absolutely rocking, a perfect introduction. Hell Is Chrome alights in a melancholy jaunt, but quickly steps back and slows down, silencing for Jeff's bone chilling opening lines, -when the devil came/he was not red/he was chrome and he said/come with me-. The discursive Kidsmoke follows this path paved in allure with a long, steady, rolling rhythm, and finally, exploding chords, an overflow of rock in the purest and most delicious form. Muzzle of Bees again starts things by switching moods. Sweet strumming and soft words swirl at the onset, but caterwauling guitars have the last word and break into a gorgeous, howling close to the song. Hummingbird stands as probably the most uniform and melodically friendly track of the album, but it still manages to proffer such incredible words as -in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans no one could hear him or anything-. Handshake Drugs is completely unreal. It's a rambling, distorted, hallucinatory, bass-laden and extremely infectious song, one of my favorites of the album. Wishful Thinking wishes gently, maintains a lovely pace and provides further stellar insight, -fill up your mind with all it can know/don't forget that your body will let it all go/fill up your mind with all it can know/what would we be without wishful thinking?- Company in My Back plangently creeps up, longingly portraying the desolation that Wilco seems to know so well. Staggered with obscure, yet very poignant lyrics and a flourishing refrain, it renders another very memorable piece of songwriting. I'm a Wheel immediately dissipates the eerie intimacy established through Company in My Back. It's an atomic number filled with rumbles, thrashes, and several wry, well-placed lines that may stick with you for weeks. Theologians is, unlike most of A Ghost, borderline cheery, and, like everything else from A Ghost, thoroughly enjoyable and in a way, incisive in its elusiveness...-illiterati lumen fedei/god is with us everyday/the illiterate light/is with us every night-. Less Than You Think serenely starts like a lullaby but by the end of this very lengthy number, you may feel like you are in a submarine with no air to breathe 50,000 feet under the water with radios everywhere tuned to deathly drones that completely estrange and deprive you of all feeling. This drawn out ghastliness is, in and of itself, a bit tiresome, but in the end, it makes the life-affirming coda The Late Greats all the more better. This song is the greatest ending to any album I've ever heard. It is glistening, joyous, triumphant, but but still retains a sense of regret, misfortune, and most of all, mortality, -the best songs will never get sung/the best life never leaves your lungs/so good you won't ever know/you'll never hear it on the radio/can't hear it on the radio.- It sends shivers down my spine.

A Ghost Is Born is a strange and beautiful body of music that will do something to you that very, very few recordings do, and that is change you. Taking all of it in, all the ponderous notions and fey-voiced glimmers, all the prophetical observations and gut-wrenching rocking, the dissonance, sadness, longing, it's all quite an undertaking. But it is, without a doubt, an experience that should be shared and cherished by all. This album will stay with you, so let it move you.

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