Wilco-A Ghost Is Born (2004)


 

Artist: Wilco

Title: A Ghost Is Born

Label: Nonesuch

Format:  CD

Cat #  79809-2

Year of Release: 2004

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 2004 slipcase

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 5/16/22

Sell Price: $2.99

Discogs Last Sold: 5/3/22 VG+/VG+ $2.00

Low: $0.99

Median: $2.99

Average: $2.93

High:$6.84

Current low price:$1.57

Current Number on Sale at Discogs:55

Have/Want: 1755/99

Where Sold: Redland, CA

Time it took to sell: 11 years

Where and When Bought: mail order new late 04 or 05

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B

Sad To See It Go: No

I saw Wilco recently for free at the United Palace uptown near where I used to live in Washington Heights for a couple years.   For whatever reason there were no shows I wanted to see there those couple years, but it was interesting to take that long A ride for the first time in a long while.  They were doing Yankee Foxtrot Hotel that night, but threw in "Hummingbird" from this album that I seriously had no memory of whatsoever even though I bought it brand new when it came out.  I suspect I got it catching up on "critic records" at the end of the year.  Wilco albums always made critic lists, but never mine and even though the CD's found their way onto my shelves through at least this one, they never seemed to have much impact with me.

Probably the best song for me here is "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" which is 10+ minutes and reminds me a little bit like Gang of Four's "Anthrax" in feel even with a mild electro pulse.  Jim O'Rourke made Wilco exponentially cooler, but this somehow didn't translate into me spending a ton of time with the albums or going through any effort to see them live since I saw them at a Roskilde festival in Demark around Being There in 1999.  They played with Dylan in a Park in Hoboken about a decade ago and that's the only other time I remember seeing them since their inception.

This album has gotten heavy live exposure according to setlist.fm, and the top tier include a couple others that stood out for me: "Handshake Drugs" and the closing  "The Late Greats" as well as the aforementioned "Spiders" and "Hummingbird."  When I saw them with Dylan, my thoughts were that they had acquired "jam band" overtones, and sure enough looking at their set lists over the years they tend to pull from a wide range of their catalog.  They even saw fit to pull out the epic ambient sleep fest "Less Than You Think" 73 times to date, so kudos to that.  "I'm A Wheel" reminds me of T. Rex, but Tweedy indeed wrote it.   "Company In My Back" is the one in this lot that I like the best with a mandolin punctuating the chorus.

Sometimes artful songcraft. 

    
                                  Wilco, New York, NY
                                  United Palace 4/20/22


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