Wilco - A Ghost Is Born (2LP)

Wilco’s fifth studio record arrives in June 2004 with a strange mix of nerves and nerve, the kind that makes a band sound newly awake. A Ghost Is Born followed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s mythology and label drama with something pricklier and more internal, and it worked. The album went on to win two Grammys the following year, including Best Alternative Music Album, which still feels like a neat bit of justice for a set of songs that fight their way into focus, then bloom.

It opens with a feint. At Least That’s What You Said tiptoes in on piano and a tangle of breath, then erupts into a guitar soliloquy that Jeff Tweedy plays like he has to get the electricity out of his system or it will hurt him. That push-pull sets the tone. Hell Is Chrome glistens with a patient, Sunday-morning shimmer, but Spiders Kidsmoke flips the table. It rides a stern motorik pulse that tips its hat to Neu!, then grinds itself into an ecstatic blur, all while Glenn Kotche’s drumming keeps the groove honest. The album is full of these contrasts. Hummingbird pirouettes with classic pop melody and a piano figure that would make McCartney smile. Company in My Back feels like a storm cloud made of bent guitar strings and whispers. The closing tune, The Late Greats, turns affection into a singalong about bands so good they never even get heard.

A big part of the record’s shape comes from Jim O’Rourke, who worked closely with the band and mixed the album at Sear Sound in New York. He coaxes the group’s weirder instincts into something crisp and immediate. You can hear it in the way the guitars occupy space, all clipped harmonics and wiry lines, and in the percussion choices that feel more like a painter’s brush than a rock kit. Kotche’s textures, in particular, reward close listening on headphones, but they hit nicely on a good set of speakers too. Handshake Drugs had been road-tested before it landed here, and you can tell. It unspools like a late-night walk, Chicago cold on your face, every streetlight giving you a new thought.

There is a point where the record goes quiet and then refuses to behave. Less Than You Think drifts into a lengthy drone built from tones and electronics, a decision Tweedy has said was tied to his migraines. It is divisive, sure, but it is also the kind of hard truth that makes the album feel lived in. Around the same period, Tweedy entered treatment for a painkiller dependency and Wilco postponed tour dates, and that context gives the album’s jittery calm its peculiar gravity. The playing never wallows, though. It strains toward light.

Line-up trainspotters will note that this was the end of an era and the start of another. Guitarist Leroy Bach would soon depart, and Nels Cline and Pat Sansone arrived not long after to reshape the live show. If you want a blast of how these songs flexed on stage once that new engine was installed, Kicking Television, recorded in Chicago in 2005, does the trick. On vinyl, those performances make Spiders Kidsmoke feel like a living machine.

For collectors and casual fans alike, A Ghost Is Born vinyl is the sweet spot. The album runs long, so the spread across wax gives the music room to breathe, and those chiming guitars really benefit from the format’s slightly softer edges. If you are crate-digging in a Melbourne record store or trying to buy Wilco records online, this is the one I nudge people toward when they ask which Wilco vinyl to start with after Yankee. It also sits neatly alongside other Wilco albums on vinyl, drawing a line between the restless experiments of the early 2000s and the warmer sweep of the records that followed. Even in the age of streams, there is something right about dropping the needle and hearing At Least That’s What You Said creep in from nothing, then feeling the room fill up.

Critical response at the time was strong, and time has been kind. What sounded anxious now feels purposeful. The songs are tuneful, but they keep their odd angles. The cover is a plain white egg on white, a wry little statement of intent. Simple on sight, complicated once you crack it. If you collect vinyl records Australia wide or you are just fixing a gap on your shelf, this album earns its space. It is the sound of a band pushing itself, then finding a way to turn that pressure into grace.