Is Wilco’s ‘A Ghost Is Born’ Reissue the Perfect Box Set?

At one point during an extended group improvisation featured in the 20th-anniversary edition of Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, bandleader Jeff Tweedy sings, “I wish I could fuck you like he thinks he does.” When Tweedy spits the words up, they drip with resentment and venom. It’s an unusually caustic moment that contrasts sharply against his body of work in general, but it’s especially jarring against the gentle tone of the original album. That side of Tweedy never rears its head again throughout the six hours’ worth of studio outtakes included here. There are hints of the psychological fissure that loomed over the album’s making, but they don’t dominate the mood. 

Released in June of 2004, Wilco‘s highly-anticipated follow-up to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot arrived amidst considerable publicity around Tweedy’s hospitalization to treat his comorbid issues with addiction and mental health. Tweedy didn’t shy away from talking about those issues back then and doesn’t hold back in the new liner notes for this package. Penned by Bob Mehr, author of the Replacements biography Trouble Boys, the handsome coffee table book that houses Mehr’s essay begins with the title An Abyss in Motion: The Journey to (and Beyond) A Ghost Is Born. Everyone quoted in the text—producer Jim O’Rourke, bandmates past and present, and Tweedy’s spouse Sue Miller—tackles the subject head-on. 

Tweedy’s account of being stuck in “cognitive loops—repeating sequences of words, sounds or feelings, often hallucinatory in their intensity” reveals the precarious mental state he’d reached. He also repeats to Mehr what he’d already disclosed in his 2018 autobiography Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), which is that he felt perilously close to dying while recording A Ghost Is Born.

Can we read Tweedy’s noisy, brittle guitar leads as expressions of his inner turmoil? Sure. His solos slide off the songs like ice shards falling from the eaves of a house, shattering in explosions of notes. On the more assertive songs—”At Least That’s What You Said”, “I’m a Wheel” and “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”—the music aligns somewhat with the tension Tweedy brings to the table. 

Overall, though, as much as Tweedy’s distress defined the process, the music that made it to the finished version of the record comes across as remarkably unburdened, even when you squint to look for clues. Far from a gloomy affair, A Ghost Is Born contains some of the most serene moments in the entire Wilco catalog.

On seven of the 12 main tracks—”Wishful Thinking”, “Muzzle of Bees”, “Hummingbird”, “Hell Is Chrome”, “Less Than You Think”, “Handshake Drugs”, and “Company in My Back”—Wilco weave twinkling pianos, lilting guitars and soft electronic textures into a delicate lacework. Yet, A Ghost Is Born captures the attention with a grip the band has arguably never matched since. 

Compared to other Wilco albums that lean just as heavily on tenderness—2007’s Sky Blue Sky and 2022’s Cruel Country in particular—A Ghost Is Born percolates with urgency. Even though that urgency simmers at an understated level so that it never imposes itself on the listener, there’s always the sense that something’s at stake, which makes for a powerful experience. So much so that sitting through these songs several times in this new presentation never grows dull or exhausting. Where the extras from the deluxe Yankee Hotel required considerable labor to hack through, the surplus Ghost material unfolds with astonishing ease. 

Here, the various iterations of works in progress refract the songs, each alternate take like a light through the prism of an arrangement listeners have known for two decades. Acoustic guitar strumming, for example, occupies center stage on an earlier version of “Company in My Back”, which grew beyond the folk stylings at the core of its DNA.

Conversely, “Hummingbird” outtake veers into even spacier, more formless territory than what ended up on the record. Alternately, a late-stage incarnation of “Wishful Thinking” hearkens back to the Americana/alt-country approach Wilco had mostly eschewed by this point. We also see how “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” transformed from an almost military-style march with crunching rock guitars to pensive soft rock before finally being reworked as the krautrock/trance hybrid the band chose to release. 

Meanwhile, an album’s worth of songs that didn’t make the final cut reveal that the scope of beauty blossoming in the studio was even broader than A Ghost Is Born encompasses—which is saying a lot. Individual listeners can debate whether tunes like “The High Heat”, “More Like the Moon”, “Losing Interest”, “Diamond Claw”, “Leave Me (Like You Found Me)”, “Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard”, and three nascent versions of what would later see release as “Impossible Germany” were more or less deserving of inclusion than the songs we ultimately got, but there’s no denying the deep well of inspiration these songs all poured from. 

Time and again, this set shows that, despite Tweedy sinking to his lowest point, Wilco hit a formidable creative stride during this period. Throughout, drummer Glenn Kotche, bassist John Stirratt, O’Rourke, and multi-instrumentalists Leroy Bach and Mikael Jorgensen all shift their approaches to Tweedy’s songs in a dazzling game of musical chairs, switching instruments and tactics often while still serving the greater whole. Bach and Jorgensen, in particular, steal the show in their distinct ways, each outfitting the songs with all manner of instrumental flourish. 

One should be aware that these are rough mixes, which means the tracks are rife with awkward panning, muffed notes, lapses in direction, and dropouts. But, in too many places to count, the imperfections afford the music a naked, unpretentious appeal that creates a sense of intimacy with the material, as listeners can now work their way past the polished sheen of the finished album. Those imperfections move to the forefront during the last three and a half hours of the program, which consists of seven improvisations Wilco labeled as “Fundamentals”, each approximately a half-hour in length. 

Including crude, meandering jam sessions in this kind of unabridged format might seem like a case of not being able—or even bothering—to separate the wheat from the chaff. As Mehr writes about Stirratt’s impression, “Stirratt can’t recall if he gained anything musically substantive from the Fundamentals experience, ‘but I remember getting baked and sort of enjoying listening to it all’, he says laughing”.

Thankfully, Stirratt’s appraisal is somewhat misleading. Sure, the Fundamentals document Wilco groping in the dark, but it’s a revelation to hear embryonic skeletons of songs bobbing up to the surface from the dark depths of undefined sonic abstraction. Just like the other outtakes, the abundance of graceful moments justifies sitting through such a voluminous pile of material. 

At first glance, it might look like Tweedy and reissue producer Cheryl Pawelski simply threw the kitchen sink at a fanbase that’s eager to gobble up as much bonus material as it can get its hands on. It doesn’t take long to see just how careful Pawelski and Tweedy were about organizing the contents of this box.

On a recent episode of the Shoving Wilco podcast, Bob Mehr referred to the deluxe edition of A Ghost Is Born as “the Platonic ideal” of what a box set can be. Fans can debate whether or not that’s the case, but this package certainly re-traces how the album came together as a unique blend of acoustic-based songs, abstract electronic elements, and a unifying vision courtesy of Jim O’Rourke. 

In late January of 2004, six months before A Ghost Is Born hit shelves, it was announced that Leroy Bach had left the band. When the time came for Wilco to tour in support of the album, Tweedy settled on the six-piece lineup that’s held together to this day. Not incidentally, he also eased into a more grounded place in his personal life. While the band have continued to explore new ground, everything Wilco have done since Bach’s departure has lacked the disquiet and friction that made their music compelling in the first place.

Although Tweedy has repeatedly campaigned against the “myth” of the tortured artist, anyone looking to make a counter-argument need only point to A Ghost Is Born for proof—an argument only further bolstered by this exhaustive reissue. That most of the extras here gel into a cohesive listen is a hell of a triumph. That they entice enough for repeat listens is nothing short of a miracle.