Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2LP)

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 225/500

Wilco's legendary 4th studio album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was originally released on April 23, 2002. It delivered ten songs that have since become favorites among fans and critics alike. It scored a perfect 10 on Pitchfork, which hailed the album as "complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene...simply a masterpiece." And as the New York Times put it, Jeff Tweedy's songs "unfold in richly enigmatic arrangements."

This 2LP original album features the original eleven songs remastered by Bob Ludwig and cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering on black vinyl.

When Reprise Records refused to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco posted it for free on the internet. Two-hundred-thousand downloads later, Nonesuch Records (owned by the same company as Reprise) released the album, and it became critical and commercial gold. Its pretty acoustic-guitar melodies battled noise, skidded into dissonance, or got chopped off abruptly. Its lyrics pitted hope against doubt, with all bets off. 'You have to learn how to die,' crooned Jeff Tweedy, 'if you wanna...be alive.'