| A Ghost Is Born | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | June 22, 2004 | |||
| Recorded | November 2003 – March 2004 | |||
| Studio | Sear Sound (New York City),Soma EMS (Chicago) | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 67:26 | |||
| Label | Nonesuch | |||
| Producer | Wilco,Jim O'Rourke | |||
| Wilco chronology | ||||
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| Singles from A Ghost Is Born | ||||
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A Ghost Is Born is the fifthstudio album by the Americanrock bandWilco, released on June 22, 2004, byNonesuch Records. It features singerJeff Tweedy on lead guitar more than any previous Wilco album. The band streamed the album online free, and offered a five-songEP to purchasers.
Tweedy entered a rehab clinic shortly before the release of the album, delaying its release by two weeks. It also shortened its promotional tour. Despite this,A Ghost Is Born's opening week was the best sales week for the band at the time, and the album was met with positive reviews from major publications such asRolling Stone andPopMatters. The album earned Wilco aGrammy Award forBest Alternative Music Album.
Wilco signed a contract withNonesuch Records in November 2001 after a lengthy dispute withReprise Records over the release of the band's fourth albumYankee Hotel Foxtrot.[3]Foxtrot was welcomed with positive reviews fromThe Village Voice—where the album was rated by the critics as the best album of 2002—andRolling Stone.[4][5] It sold over 590,000 copies, earning a Gold certification by theRecording Industry Association of America.[6][7]
Recording for a new album began in November 2003 under the working titleWilco Happens. The album was produced byJim O'Rourke, who mixedFoxtrot and was a member of Wilco side projectLoose Fur. O'Rourke encouraged lead singerJeff Tweedy to develop his guitar skills for the album; Tweedy recently became the lead guitarist for the band due to the dismissal ofJay Bennett after theYankee Hotel Foxtrot recording sessions.[8][9] Tweedy sought to play solos on the album that were unlike those ofjam bands such asPhish andThe Grateful Dead. Instead, he performed composed solos influenced byTelevision such as the one during thecoda of "At Least That's What You Said".[10] Tweedy refers to the guitar solo at the end of the track as a "musical transcription" of one of hispanic attacks.[11]A Ghost Is Born was recorded in a manner different fromFoxtrot or 1999'sSummerteeth; whereas those recordings were performed live in the studio and then extensively de-constructed and arranged in Pro Tools,A Ghost Is Born was first performed live, edited and arranged inPro Tools, and then performed and re-recorded with minimal overdubbing. Tweedy was excited about writing an album this way:[10]
All those things you can do with Pro Tools and all the emotional buttons you can push with just purely sonic things I think can be done with just plain old music. I love all the possibilities that modern recording techniques allow, but I couldn't picture the idea of really wowing anyone with some crazy evolution of theYankee Hotel Foxtrot sound.
An unusual feature ofA Ghost Is Born is the fifteen-minute long track "Less Than You Think". The first part of the song begins as a ballad which referencesbelief systems andatheism which after 3 minutes, fades out. The second part consists ofelectronic drones andnoise, intended to audibly represent the migraines that lead singerJeff Tweedy had been suffering from while addicted to pain killers during the recording sessions forA Ghost Is Born. For the song, each band member created a synthesizer noise that mimicked an electronic sound. The installations were simultaneously activated in the room and recorded. The noise, which served as the coda to the song, was remixed to providedynamics to the track. Calling it "the track that everyone will hate," Tweedy defended the song's inclusion on the album:[12]
I know ninety-nine percent of our fans won't like that song, they'll say it's a ridiculous indulgence. Even I don't want to listen to it every time I play through the album. But the times I do calm myself down and pay attention to it, I think it's valuable and moving and cathartic. I wouldn't have put it on the record if I didn't think it was great … I wanted to make an album about identity, and within that is the idea of a higher power, the idea of randomness, and that anything can happen, and that we can't control it.
A Ghost Is Born was the first Wilco album with pianistMikael Jorgensen; he had previously worked as an engineer with the band ontheir collaboration withThe Minus 5. Jeff Tweedy provided lead vocals and acted as lead guitarist for the only time since the band formed. John Stirratt, the only original member aside from Tweedy, played bass and guitar.Glenn Kotche and Jim O'Rourke, Tweedy's associates from Loose Fur, acted as drummer and multi-instrumentalist, respectively.Leroy Bach played a variety of keyboards as well as bass guitar. All members of the band contributed with a synthesizer part on "Less Than You Think".[13]
Wilco began touring in support ofGhost even before the album had been released.Multi-instrumentalistLeroy Bach left the band after the recording sessions to join a theater production, so Wilco addedjazz rock guitaristNels Cline and multi-instrumentalistPat Sansone to replace him.[14][15] Sansone had been playing withThe Autumn Defense, a side project led by bassistJohn Stirratt. However, the tour to support the album had to be abridged. In May 2004, Tweedy checked himself into arehabilitation clinic inChicago,Illinois due to chronicmigraine headaches, anxiety attacks, andclinical depression. In the process of treating the ailments, Tweedy becameaddicted to prescription painkillers. His rehab led to the cancellation of the European stage of the tour and a delay in the album's release date. Intended for release on June 8, 2004, the album was officially released on June 22, 2004.[16]
The band also webcast the album in its entirety on theInternet in a promotion withApple Computer. Nonesuch was willing to allow theMPEG-4 broadcast due to the success of a similar broadcast in the promotion ofYankee Hotel Foxtrot. Additionally, Wilco offered a freeEP to purchasers of the album. The EP featured two outtakes from the album—"Panthers" and "Kicking Television"—and live versions of "At Least That's What You Said", "The Late Greats", and "Handshake Drugs". The EP was later packaged with the album and sold as a "deluxe version".[17]
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 81/100[18] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [19] |
| Entertainment Weekly | B[20] |
| The Guardian | [21] |
| Los Angeles Times |  [22] |
| NME | 6/10[23] |
| Pitchfork | 6.6/10 (2004)[24] 9.4/10 (2025)[25] |
| Q | [26] |
| Rolling Stone | [27] |
| Spin | B[28] |
| The Village Voice | B−[29] |
In its debut week,A Ghost Is Born peaked at number 8 on theBillboard 200 chart and sold over 81,000 copies, the highest US chart peak and best sales week ever attained by the band at that time.[30][31] The album was an international hit as well, peaking at number 24 in Norway, number 29 in Sweden, number 33 in New Zealand, number 34 in Belgium, and number 37 in Ireland.[32] As of April 13, 2007, the album has sold over 340,000 copies in the United States, according toNielsen SoundScan.[6]
LikeFoxtrot,A Ghost Is Born was well received by critics. OnMetacritic, the album holds a score of 81 out of 100 from 33 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[18]Jon Pareles ofRolling Stone calledA Ghost Is Born "as eerie as anything Wilco have recorded yet" and applauded Tweedy for offering "illuminating curiosity about what can happen in a song."[27]Billboard cited it as Wilco's "most difficult and uncompromising album to date."[33] Akiva Gottlieb ofStylus Magazine praisedA Ghost Is Born as being "even more brilliant" thanYankee Hotel Foxtrot,[34] a sentiment echoed by Michael Metevier ofPopMatters, who added that the album made him "surprised and delighted enough to last several lifetimes."[35] Keith Phipps ofThe A.V. Club wrote thatA Ghost Is Born "channels its shaggy sound into pop music" that "constantly threatens to erupt into noise or fade into silence, but it's still hard not to hum along."[36] James Hunter ofThe Village Voice felt that "Wilco's ideas are unremarkable, but are worked out with intelligence and striking conception. And as it happens, the new organic emphasis tables some of Wilco's lamer stylistic obsessions."[37]Q called the album "more meandering" thanYankee Hotel Foxtrot, but also "more confident, more coherent, yielding an all-enveloping warmth that's entirely resistant to any iPod shuffle function."[26]
Among mixed reviews, Rob Mitchum ofPitchfork criticizedA Ghost Is Born as "wildly uneven" and "less cohesive than any other Wilco release."[24]Village Voice criticRobert Christgau called it a "privileged self-indulgence" due to its extreme musical dynamics.[29]NME wrote of the album: "It's likeScissor Sisters on tranquilisers. With a bit ofELO. And a dash ofRamones. And, with this eclecticism, a worrying lack of focus."[23] Joshua Klein of theChicago Tribune felt that the album possessed an "incomplete" quality which nonetheless can be "quite intriguing, more of a side step than a forward leap, but a worthy experiment all the same."[38]Ann Powers ofBlender wrote that on first listen, the album is "rather monotonous, a bunch of moderately singable tunes with some noise piled up around the edges", but that it "starts to insinuate meaning" over subsequent listens.[39]
In 2005,A Ghost Is Born won twoGrammy Awards forBest Alternative Music Album andBest Recording Package. Although the band was nominated for Grammys for work on previous albums, this was the first time that they won one.[40] The band only won one award, as the winner for Best Recording Package is credited towards the creator of the artwork, not the performer.
All lyrics written byJeff Tweedy; all songs written by Jeff Tweedy except where noted.
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "At Least That's What You Said" | 5:33 | |
| 2. | "Hell Is Chrome" | Tweedy,Mikael Jorgensen | 4:38 |
| 3. | "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" | 10:46 | |
| 4. | "Muzzle of Bees" | 4:56 | |
| 5. | "Hummingbird" | 3:11 | |
| 6. | "Handshake Drugs" | 6:07 | |
| 7. | "Wishful Thinking" | Tweedy,Glenn Kotche | 4:41 |
| 8. | "Company in My Back" | 3:46 | |
| 9. | "I'm a Wheel" | 2:37 | |
| 10. | "Theologians" | Tweedy, Jorgensen, Chris Girard | 3:36 |
| 11. | "Less Than You Think" | Tweedy,John Stirratt, Kotche, Jorgensen,Leroy Bach,Jim O'Rourke | 15:04 |
| 12. | "The Late Greats" | 2:31 | |
| Total length: | 67:26 | ||
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Panthers" | 3:49 |
| 2. | "At Least That's What You Said" (Live) | 5:53 |
| 3. | "The Late Greats" (Live) | 2:39 |
| 4. | "Handshake Drugs" (Live) | 6:12 |
| 5. | "Kicking Television" | 2:49 |
| Total length: | 21:22 | |
| Chart (2004) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA)[41] | 43 |
| Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)[42] | 75 |
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[43] | 34 |
| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[44] | 94 |
| French Albums (SNEP)[45] | 186 |
| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[46] | 41 |
| Irish Albums (IRMA)[47] | 37 |
| Italian Albums (FIMI)[48] | 27 |
| New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[49] | 33 |
| Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[50] | 24 |
| Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[51] | 29 |
| UK Albums (OCC)[52] | 50 |
| USBillboard 200[53] | 8 |
| Chart (2025) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Hungarian Physical Albums (MAHASZ)[54] | 8 |
