Pitchfork评测Wilco专辑Yankee Hotel Foxtrot（20周年豪华纪念版）

A sprawling new box set full of demos and alternate takes suggests a dazzling array of paths the Chicago group might have taken on their masterpiece.

一套庞大的新盒子，里面装满了演示和备用镜头，这表明芝加哥乐队可能对他们的杰作采取了一系列令人眼花缭乱的道路。

There’s an alternate universe where Wilco released their fourth album on Warner/Reprise as planned, got good reviews, landed on a few year-end lists, toured slightly bigger venues, and that’s it. They continued being a midlevel rock band rather than one of the most revered rock bands of the 21st century, which is what they did in our universe. And there’s another plane of existence where they broke up before that fourth album was even released, where both Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett became casualties of the pills they were popping in the studio. That means there’s also a world where Son Volt became the foremost chroniclers of modern American life.

在另一个宇宙中，Wilco按计划在Warner/Reprise上发行了他们的第四张专辑，获得了好评，登上了几个年终名单，巡演几个比较大的舞台，仅此而已。他们继续是一个中层摇滚乐队，而不是21世纪最受尊敬的摇滚乐队之一，这就是他们在我们的宇宙中所做的。在第四张专辑发行之前，他们就解散了，杰夫·特威迪和杰伊·贝内特都成了他们在录音室嗑药的牺牲品。这意味着在这个世界里，Son Volt成为现代美国生活中最重要的编年史家。

In retrospect, everything about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot feels astonishingly precarious. It’s an album that inspires endless what-ifs: What if it hadn’t been very good, or what if it had been extremely good but not in a way that captured the imaginations of so many listeners? What if Jim O’Rourke had been too busy to take Tweedy’s phone call and never connected them with Glenn Kotche or mixed the final album? What if Nonesuch had passed on the record, robbing us of the satisfying narrative that Wilco made Warner pay for the album twice? What if streaming it on their website had depleted sales rather than boosted them? What if a national tragedy hadn’t immediately given the music more gravity and relevance than even Wilco could have dreamed? Every hypothetical represents a new universe, a new world of possibilities.

回想起来，Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的一切都让人觉得非常不稳定。这是一张激发无尽假设的专辑：如果它不是很好，或者如果它非常好，但没有以一种能抓住这么多听众想象力的方式呢？如果Jim O'Rourke太忙了，没时间接Tweedy的电话，却从未将他们与Glenn Kotche联系起来，也从未混音过最后一张专辑呢？如果Nonesuch在唱片上流传下来，抢走了Wilco让华纳两次为专辑付费的令人满意的叙述?如果在他们的网站上播放会减少销量而不是提高销量呢?如果一场全国性的悲剧没有立即赋予这首音乐更多的重要性和相关性，就连Wilco也无法想象。每个假设都代表着一个新的宇宙，一个充满可能性的新世界。

But we live in this world, where all those decisions and actions aligned to make Yankee Hotel Foxtrot one of the defining rock albums of the 2000s. Twenty years along, we get this curious reissue, which provides evidence that Wilco have been thinking about all those what-ifs and possible Wilcoverses, too. When they boxed up their previous two albums, the band reveled in its fraught relationship with pop music as both profession and obsession, and it presented those albums as self-contained three-act plays: writing the songs and making demos, recording and assembling the final tracklist, and finally touring the album and letting the music live on its own. The Yankee Hotel Foxtrot anniversary set, however—in particular the massive 11xLP version—rejects that dramatic structure. Instead of presenting a story of gestation, birth, and life, the band offers alternatives: the album as it might have been, the album as it almost was, the album as it exists on different planes.

但我们生活在这个世界上，所有这些决定和行动都一致，使Yankee Hotel Foxtrot成为2000年代决定性的摇滚专辑之一。二十年来，我们得到了这个奇怪的再版，这证明Wilco也一直在考虑所有这些假设和可能的Wilcoverses。当他们把前两张专辑装箱时，这支乐队沉醉于自己与流行音乐之间充满矛盾的关系，既专注又痴迷，它把这些专辑呈现为独立的三幕戏剧：写歌和制作Demo，录制和组装最终曲目，最后巡演专辑，让音乐独立直播。然而，Yankee Hotel Foxtrot周年纪念套装——特别是巨大的11xLP版本——拒绝了这种戏剧性的结构。乐队没有讲述一个关于怀孕、出生和生活的故事，而是提供了另一种选择：本来可能出现的专辑，几乎存在的专辑，存在于不同层面上的专辑。

On the deluxe editions, Wilco have arranged all the usual demos and outtakes and radio interviews and live performances into different albums representing different sets of possibilities and outcomes, each with its own evocative title. There’s American Aquarium, rawer and weirder yet still mired in the pop palette of Summerteeth. There’s Here Comes Everybody, darker and slightly more caustic. There’s Lonely in the Deep End, which sounds like they’ve opened the door to an overstuffed closet: a tumble and crash of ideas. These iterations aren’t merely points on a timeline leading to a familiar destination; the creative process was far too messy for such a neat trajectory. Instead, they demonstrate that nothing about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was ever settled, not even its title. Even elements of the more modest 7xLP set (which includes the American Aquarium version) and 2xLP release (which presents the familiar songs in remastered form) gesture toward the album’s mutability.

在豪华版中，Wilco将所有通常的演示和片段以及电台采访和现场表演安排到不同的专辑中，代表不同的可能性和结果，每张专辑都有自己的令人回味的标题。有美国水族馆（American Aquarium），更原始、更奇怪，但仍然深陷在Summerteeth的流行调色板中。“Here Comes Everybody”，更黑暗，更苛刻。《Lonely in the Deep End》听起来像是他们打开了一个打开一个塞得满满的壁橱的门：思想的碰撞和碰撞。这些迭代不仅仅是通往熟悉目的地的时间线上的点；对于如此整洁的轨迹来说，创作过程太混乱了。相反，他们表明，关于Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的任何事情都没有解决，甚至连它的专辑标题都没有解决。即使是更温和的7xLP套装（包括美国水族馆版本）和2xLP发行（以重制形式呈现熟悉的歌曲）的元素也对专辑的可变性表示。

It’s a fascinating idea, especially for this album in particular, given how thoroughly and painstakingly the band pored over every song, every lyric, every note. “Kamera” sounds especially shaky, each version a completely different snapshot of the same vista. On American Aquarium it opens with a dramatic drum fanfare that plainly recalls Phil Spector, before launching into a measured gallop. It’s all build, no payoff. They deleted everything and started fresh on Here Comes Everybody, with keyboards like a barrelhouse harpsichord and a more insistent beat that taunts Tweedy. And then there’s the version on The Unified Theory of Everything that replaces it all with a fuzzed-out guitar and has Tweedy singing like he’s fronting that local band from “Heavy Metal Drummer.” What would have happened if the band had stopped with one of them instead of reinventing the song a few more times?

这是一个迷人的想法，特别是对于这张专辑来说，考虑到乐队对每首歌、每首歌词、每个音符都进行了彻底和艰苦的仔细研究。“Kamera”听起来特别摇摇欲坠，每个版本都是同一视野的完全不同的快照。在American Aquarium，它以戏剧性的鼓声大张旗鼓开场，这清楚地让人想起Phil Spector，在开始有节制的飞奔之前。这都是建造的，没有回报。他们删除了所有内容，并在Here Comes Everybody上重新开始，键盘像桶屋大键琴和更坚持的节拍，嘲弄Tweedy。然后是The Unified Theory of Everything的版本，用一把模糊的吉他取代了这一切，并让Tweedy唱歌，就像他在《Heavy Metal Drummer》中领导当地乐队一样。如果乐队停止了其中一人，而不是再重新创作这首歌几次，会发生什么？

That precariousness once clung to the album, which is perhaps why it was greeted with such enthusiasm, and even reverence, 20 years ago. The band was splintering, with longtime drummer Ken Coomer unceremoniously dismissed and Bennett playing a bigger role. There were new faces (Kotche, O’Rourke) and new challenges, most of which had to do with drugs. On some level we must have understood that the record came unfathomably close to not existing, at least not in this form, and the music on our version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot conveys that sense of almost wasn’t. We’re fortunate in this universe, because Wilco found a way to make their dogged explorations enhance rather than obscure the humanity in these songs. It’s a bleak album, certainly. When Tweedy sings about getting money out of an ATM to buy “Diet Coca-Cola and unlit cigarettes” (does anyone sell lit cigarettes?), the moment still sounds like a monumental sigh. When he sings about watching a heavy metal band take the stage “on the landing in the summer,” the memory still resonates with warmth and wonder. And when he sings about assassining down the avenue, it’s still just as confounding as ever. (Hearing him sing “I assassinate the avenue” on the American Aquarium version of the song doesn’t clear anything up.)

这种不稳定性曾经依附于这张专辑，这也许是20年前它受到如此热情甚至崇敬的原因。乐队正在分裂，长期鼓手Ken Coomer毫不客气地被解雇，Bennett扮演了更大的角色。有新的面孔（Kotche，O'Rourke）和新的挑战，其中大部分与du品有关。在某种程度上，我们一定明白，这张唱片深不可测地接近于不存在，至少不是以这种形式存在，而我们版本的Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的音乐传达了这种感觉几乎不存在。我们在这个宇宙中很幸运，因为Wilco找到了一种方法，让他们顽强的探索在这些歌曲中增强而不是掩盖人性。当然，这是一张黯淡的专辑。当Tweedy唱歌说要从自动取款机上取钱买“节食可口可乐和未点燃的香烟”（有人卖点燃的香烟吗？）时，这一刻听起来仍然像一个巨大的叹息。当他唱着看着一个重金属乐队“在夏天着陆”上台时，记忆仍然与温暖和惊奇产生共鸣。当他唱到大街上的暗杀时，它仍然一如既往地令人困惑。（听他在美国水族馆版本的这首歌中唱《I assassinate the avenue》并不能澄清任何事情。）

All of these different iterations of the same thing coalesce into a bold statement of uncertainty, a clear-headed portrayal of confusion, a joyful depiction of despair—all contradictions that make the music more relatable, more immersive, more malleable. This anniversary set is also a reminder that the album has become more settled over time, thanks to Sam Jones’ documentary, Greg Kot’s book, Tweedy’s book, and countless reviews, profiles, and interviews. It has become familiar, perhaps comfortingly so—a reminder of a time in America that in retrospect appears quaintly fucked up. The Sound Opinions interview, recorded just after 9/11, is not only a compelling artifact, but a demonstration of how Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was already out of the band’s control. There’s a very specific weariness in Tweedy’s voice that’ll be familiar to anyone who lived through that day, and Wilco play these songs on air like they no longer recognize the things they’ve created. This anniversary box set pushes the album back off its axis. The music wobbles again, reminding us that unease and confusion were its most relatable aspects.

所有这些对同一事物的不同迭代都凝聚成大胆的不确定性陈述，清晰地描绘混乱，快乐地描绘绝望——所有这些矛盾都使音乐更相关，更身临其境，更可塑。这个周年纪念套装也提醒我们，随着时间的推移，这张专辑在音乐地位上变得更加稳定，这要归功于Sam Jones的纪录片、Greg Kot的书、Tweedy的书以及无数的评论、简介和采访。它已经变得熟悉了，也许令人欣慰的是——这提醒了美国的一个时代，回想起来似乎被古怪地搞砸了。9/11之后录制的Sound Opinions采访不仅是一个引人注目的人工艺术品，而且证明了Yankee Hotel Foxtrot已经超出了乐队的控制范围。Tweedy的声音中有一种非常特殊的厌倦感，任何经历过那一天的人都会感到熟悉，Wilco在广播中播放这些歌曲，就像他们不再认识他们创造的东西一样。这个周年纪念盒套装将专辑推离了对称轴。音乐再次摇晃，提醒我们不安和困惑是其最相关的方面。

If Being There understood rock to be a fool’s errand and if Summerteeth presented rock as a fool’s consolation, then our Yankee Hotel Foxtrot shows how we fools (not just Tweedy, but you and me, too) desperately want music to reflect the world back to us. Even in those magical moments when a pop song does offer us a glimpse of something larger, it’s never enough. We want it to order the world, to make everything make sense, to throw senseless tragedies into reassuring relief. Music can’t do that. The world—not just this one, but each of the infinite other what-if worlds—is too gloriously, damnably messy for one band or one album or one song to capture. The world thwarts art, yet it’s all we have so we make do. That kernel of sadness and frustration persists in every universe and in every version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

如果在那里理解摇滚是傻瓜的差事，如果Summerteeth将摇滚作为傻瓜的安慰，那么我们的Yankee Hotel Foxtrot展示了我们傻瓜（不仅是Tweedy，还有你和我）如何迫切希望音乐将世界反映给我们。即使在那些神奇的时刻，一首流行歌曲确实让我们瞥见了更大的东西，这永远都不够。我们希望它让世界井然有序，让一切都变得有意义，把毫无意义的悲剧变成安慰。音乐做不到这一点。世界——不仅仅是这个，而是每个无限的其他世界——太辉煌了，太混乱了，一个乐队或一张专辑或一首歌都无法捕捉。世界阻碍了艺术，但这是我们所拥有的一切，所以我们做到了。这种悲伤和沮丧的核心存在于每个宇宙和每个版本的Yankee Hotel Foxtrot中。