Songbook: A Guide To Wilco’s Discography, From Alt-Country To Boundary-Shattering Experiments

As the axiom goes: surround yourself with people you can always learn from. This encapsulates the dynamic between Jeff Tweedy and Wilco. The beloved, enduring, four-time GRAMMY-winning group has been a vehicle for Tweedy's incisive songwriting for nearly 30 years.

Outside of Wilco, Tweedy is masterful: 2018's and 2019's raw-nerved, lived-in Warm and Warmer are proof positive of this. But although 99 percent of Wilco songs are Tweedy's, they've never been merely his backing band. Every incarnation of Wilco has contained visionaries and virtuosos.

Take the complicated and inventive Jay Bennett, Tweedy's foil for their first three masterpieces: Being There, Summerteeth, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Or Glenn Kotche, a key member since 2001 — not just a drummer and percussionist, but a 360° musical thinker.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Wilco's current lineup, solidified since 2005, is stacked with masters.

Such as bassist John Stirratt, who's provided their subtle emotional undercarriage since their formation. And Nels Cline, one of the preeminent experimental guitarists of the 21st century. With each release, guitarist Pat Sansone and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen's colors and shapes grow more iridescent.

On Sept. 29, Wilco will release their 13th album, Cousin — their second in just over a year, after 2022's Cruel Country. That self-consciously rootsy double album felt totally natural — essentially falling out of Tweedy's mouth and guitar.

But speaking to GRAMMY.com, Tweedy explained that Cousin would manifest like "an odd shape in the desert" — and it certainly does. Produced by consummate tinkerer Cate Le Bon, songs like "Infinite Surprise," "Levee" and "Meant to Be" coat Tweedy's rumpled, weatherbeaten tunes with a gently alien, digital feel.

As Tweedy put it in the press release, "Cate is very suspicious of sentiment, but she's not suspicious of human connection." Which makes her an ideal fit for a legacy band often preoccupied with distance, disorientation and loss in translation.

With Cousin on the horizon, GRAMMY.com took a spin through Wilco's discography — loosely trisected by era, and leaving out side projects and collaborative albums.

Uneasy Alt-Country (1994-2000)

A.M. (1995)

Yes, the title refers to the form of broadcasting — hence the vintage radio on the cover. But the sunny, uncomplicated A.M. feels like the dawning of an important American band.

At the time, A.M. was unfavorably compared to Trace, the debut album by Son Volt — led by Jay Farrar, Tweedy's partner in the band Uncle Tupelo. (When they split in 1994, Tweedy got multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston, bassist Stiratt, and drummer Ken Coomer in the divorce.)

But 28 years later, the story of this rivalry has lost its luster: A.M. is a perfectly solid American album. Today, rootsy, power-popping tracks like "I Must Be High," "Box Full of Letters" and "Passenger Side" are perfectly enjoyable on their own terms.

Twelve albums later, A.M. remains the first and last Wilco album to feature basically no experimentation — a model that would dramatically flip in the next calendar year.

Being There (1996)

Sure, a few cuts on the double-disc Being There could snugly fit on A.M. — like the burbling "Forget the Flowers," the swaggering "Kingpin" and the rollicking "Dreamer in My Dreams."

But on the main, Being There is their Rubber Soul; while it shares superficial characteristics with their earlier creations, the band's works abruptly accrued a sense of windswept majesty.

This is obvious from the jump: where A.M. began with a friendly drum fill and some steely twang, Being There's opener, "Misunderstood," fades in with booming toms, thunderclap crashes and clamorous feedback.

So many of its small-town images stick in your craw: the taste of cigarettes, the promise of a party, the state of being "short on long-term goals."

"Misunderstood" ends with that unforgettable repetition of "I'd like to thank you all for nothing! / Nothing! / Nothing!" et al: the 18 ensuing songs seem to emanate from that wellspring of lonesome beauty.

The banjo-led "What's the World Got in Store" is aching and lovely; the spare, seven-minute "Sunken Treasure" is a canyon of feeling; baroque-pop "Outta Mind (Outta Sight)" foreshadows Summerteeth.

All these nascent ideas would take flower on ensuing albums, but Being There retains its partisans for very good reasons.

Summerteeth (1999)

Summerteeth holds a unique distinction in Wilco's catalog: it's the most candy-coated and the most harrowing. Imagine Sgt. Pepper's with several variations on "I used to be cruel to my woman and beat her," and you're somewhere within spitting distance.

After zippy single "Can't Stand It" notes the arbitrary nature of divine blessings, the icy "She's a Jar" ends with a still-startling twist: "She begs me not to hit her."

The violence rolls on: "A Shot in the Arm" has a gory, hammering outro: "Something in my veins/ Bloodier than blood." At the top of centerpiece "Via Chicago," Tweedy has a recurring dream of committing homicide, and watching his victim bleed out.

But these lashings of aggression are well-timed, and in a vivid balance with the instrumentation: Summerteeth isn't an uncomfortably bleak listen, but an eclectic and unforgettable one.

"I'm Always in Love" is a sugar rush that threatens to shake apart. "My Darling," Bennett's ode to his niece in demo form, reads as a bedtime song from Tweedy to his son, and carries the paternal poignancy of John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy."

Despite the conspicuous advancements on Summerteeth, closer "In a Future Age" is its truest arrow to what was to come — despite it being a few chords, awash in atmosphere.

"Let's turn our prayers/ Into outrageous dares," Tweedy sings; the music feels like a blank page, ready for anything to be drafted on it.

Drummer Ken Coomer described Summerteeth as "two guys losing their minds in the studio," and that dynamic would come to a head very soon.

Uncharted Territory (2001-2006)

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

From interband drama to label warfare to 9/11 extrapolation, it seems like everything there is to write about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has been written.

But besides every outtake you can imagine being available — via the GRAMMY-winning 20th century deluxe edition — a documentary being made about it, the album's actual making feels paradoxically enigmatic.

"They were replacing parts all the way up into the mix," Cheryl Pawelski, the compilation producer for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: 20th Anniversary, tells GRAMMY.com. [Mixing engineer] Jim [O'Rourke] would send Glenn out and say, 'Play something like a marching band over the section.'"

The lush, abstracted production throughout Yankee Hotel Foxtrot gives it much of its character. But the spectacle wouldn't mean much without unforgettable songs.

Despite, or because of, its fragmented wordplay, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" digs into the center of your chest: a "Bible-black predawn" is many times more evocative than "early morning." "Radio Cure" is an extended hand through staticky space, a signal faintly perceptible in the noise.

From there, not a single track, or moment, feels out of place. The shivering, lovely "Jesus, Etc." is Wilco's most famous song for a reason. The admission "I know I would die if I could come back new," in "Ashes of American Flags," remains devastating.

It all ends with the astonishing "Reservations," one of Wilco's most vulnerable and guileless creations; the drone decays and decays, refusing to let go.

When Wilco played "Reservations" live for a run of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 20th anniversary shows, Tweedy was lain flat by the experience.

"The audience just really calmed itself down and stayed with it for this long, drawn out fade-out," he told American Drunkard. "And that was the whole point of the record ending that way. It's gone and you're left with your interior thoughts.

"That response made me really proud, but also, it made me sad," he continued. "Every night. I cried every night." Two decades later, "Reservations" — as with all of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — still reverberates through our bones.

A Ghost is Born (2004)

True to the album art — a single egg, balancing in a vacuum — Wilco followed their most visionary album with their most fragile: A Ghost is Born.

Counterweighing tunes of levity and light — like the bouncy, yearning "Hummingbird," the swinging, downtown-ish "Handshake Drugs" and the cult rock fan manifesto "The Late Greats" — are some of their most devastated, naked works.

"At Least That's What You Said" begins barely audibly, with Tweedy less singing than sleeptalking — then erupts into a seizure of electric guitar, performed with abandon by Tweedy himself.

If you subscribe to the Neil Young with Crazy Horse school of the instrument, A Ghost is Born is a treat: this is where we hear Tweedy let loose. "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" is their first true motorik workout; Tweedy's guitar punctures its even keel like a kitchen knife through office paper.

But as always with Wilco, the violence is counterweighed by a sighing beauty: "Muzzle of Bees" and "Wishful Thinking" are featherlight and swaddling; the side-eyed "Company in My Back" and punky "I'm a Wheel" are a reprieve from the album's tortured circumstances.

Speaking of: the most important moment of A Ghost is Born might also be the most skippable. At the end of the collapsed "Less Than You Think" is 13 minutes of noise, intended to represent Tweedy's migraines while addicted to painkillers.

"Even I don't want to listen to it every time I play through the album," Tweedy admitted. "But the times I do calm myself down and pay attention to it, I think it's valuable and moving and cathartic."

From here, the most outré Wilco fan may have braced themselves for a complete leap into the unknown. But Wilco would never pursue this degree of extremity again.

A Solidified Front (2007-present)

Sky Blue Sky (2007)

Featuring new guitarists Pat Sansone and Nels Cline, Wilco's heady, unwieldy 2005 live album Kicking Television whetted fans' thirst for even danker Wilco. As plenty of contemporaneous reviews groused: instead, they got Sky Blue Sky.

Granted, at the time, it felt like a retreat from the verge of something radical. Fueled by increasing suspicion of sound design, Tweedy sought a back-to-basics approach that harkened back to the classic rock that got Wilco going. (And via Nels Cline's chops, a helping of Tom Verlaine of Television.)

Sky Blue Sky is a pure, unadulterated listen — a window into the Wilco we know and love today.

Sometimes, the lyrics feel caught between abstracted musings ("You Are My Face") and quotidian imagery ("Hate it Here") — and when they're presented a la carte, they invite scrutiny.

But when the band simply lets it rip, they communicate more than words ever could; on "Impossible Germany" and "Side With the Seeds," Cline must be heard to be believed.

Wilco (The Album) (2009)

Sky Blue Sky welcomed in a new era of Wilco; as they approached their 15th anniversary, they decided to throw a party for themselves. (Hence the camel's birthday party on the cover.)

The choogling "Wilco (The Song)" remains something of a theme song for the band: the refrain "Wilco will love you, baby," a rallying cry.

What follows is a tour through the Wilco Museum: you get Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-level immersion ("Deeper Down"), a bloody fantasy worthy of Summerteeth ("Bull Black Nova") and a Stonesy rocker beamed from Being There ("Sonny Feeling").

Elsewhere, "You Never Know" is a highly commercial (and lovely) duet with Feist, suggesting a trajectory where A.M.'s simplicity remained the order of the day.

But like Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) peaks when the band takes flight, as on the majestic, lighters-up "One Wing" and the radiant, All Things Must Pass-like "You Never Know."

"Every generation thinks it's the end of the world," Tweedy sings in "You Never Know." Wilco (The Album) is permeated with that askance, self-referential attitude — which makes it right on time, another 15 years on.

The Whole Love (2011)

With The Whole Love, the new Wilco was now three albums in — and more simpatico than ever. Their sleek and jagged sides had found a rapprochement; Nils Cline played more in the shadows than on top of the others.

This synergy could suggest a lack of danger, which thrillingly pushed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born over the edge. If not for its first and last tunes in particular: "Art of Almost" and "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)."

The former is as arcane a composition as Wilco ever dreamt up: the undulating, unpredictable co-creation has shades of Can and electric Miles, and eventually erupts into a string-snapping showcase from Cline.

As for the latter: it shows Tweedy's incisiveness as a writer hadn't dimmed a bit.

In its account of a son's cracked relationship with his late father, "One Sunday Morning" unspools like peak Dylan: it's immediately recognizable to anyone grieving a complicated, controlling parent: "Bless my mind, I miss/ Being told how to live."

In between, Wilco try on various costumes to satisfying results: sleek new wavers ("Born Alone," "Standing O"), '60s-style classicists ("Sunloathe," "Capitol City") and close-miked folkies ("Open Mind," "Rising Red Lung").

Star Wars (2015)

The Whole Love struck a mature balance of eclecticism and cohesion: four years later, Wilco shattered that facade with a shot of irreverence and cheek.

Which starts with a hell of a title. "The album has nothing to do with Star Wars. It just makes me feel good," Tweedy said. "It makes me feel limitless and like there's still possibilities and still surprise in the world, you know?"

Across a tight 33 minutes, Wilco keep the proceedings fat-free, forward-thinking and relentlessly uptempo. "More…" is needle-sharp art-pop, "Random Name Generator" kicks the goofy Marc Bolan energy up to 10, and "You Satellite" builds a heavenbound momentum.

But when Wilco aren't in attack mode, Star Wars achieves an even greater resonance. "Taste the Ceiling" possesses the type of sticky melody that seems to naturally fall out of Tweedy's guitar, and poignantly broaches communication breakdown: "Try the words in sequence/ But that's never how its done."

And the push-pull closer "Magnetized" is plainly one of the most fascinating, emotionally incisive songs in their entire catalog: "I sleep underneath a picture that I keep of you next to me," Tweedy sings — and the swelling instrumentation is like a knot in your throat.

Schmilco (2016)

Imagine the irreverence of Star Wars translated to acoustic instrumentation, and you've got a good handle on Schmilco.

About that flippant, Nilssonesque title: "It's really, to me, inhibiting to take it so seriously, to treat it like it's so precious," Tweedy said at the time. I guess that's just a way to illustrate that, to some degree. Like, 'Hey, Wilco Schmilco, f—, I just wanna keep moving.'"

Schmilco feels like an intentionally minor effort — which isn't a flaw; it gives it an appealing je nais se quoi.

The hushed "If I Ever Was a Child" is a sunbeam gradually peeking over the horizon; "Common Sense" is charmingly lumpy, amelodic and disagreeable; "We Aren't the World (Safety Girl)" flips the cornball charity classic into a sarcastic missile.

Only the roving "Locator" goes electric — which reveals a shared DNA strand with its predecessor, and underlines its nature as something of a Star Wars companion album.

Ode to Joy (2019)

Even before the pandemic, racial spasms and Jan. 6 rattled the world, the news was fairly traumatizing. In response, Wilco made a rattled, whisper-quiet album about finding embers of love in a wasteland.

Several songs on Ode to Joy feel like ragged marches: behind the kit, Kotche opts not to flow, but trudge with grim resolve. Goes Tweedy's first line, from opener "Bright Leaves": "I don't like the way you're treating me." And man's inhumanity to man haunts everything in its wake.

"Remember when wars would end?" Tweedy sings gravely in "Before Us." "Now, when something's dead/ We try to kill it again." And Cline responds with a distant, ominous guitar scrape.

This haunted vibe makes Ode to Joy one of the most resonant latter-day Wilco albums. But levity does creep in — albeit with an implicit threat. "Everyone Hides" wittily prods at the flight side of "fight or flight."

And "Love is Everywhere (Beware)" carries a mightily resonant message: "The song is a reminder to myself to act with more love and courage and less outrage and anesthetized fear," Tweedy said.

Indeed, when world events inflamed our basest instincts, Tweedy dug deep within himself — and wrote a song that belongs in the Wilco time capsule.

Cruel Country (2022)

Cruel Country was cleverly marketed from the outset as "Wilco goes country"; its goofy advance single, "Falling Apart (Right Now)," was honky-tonk straight from the therapist's couch.

But when the album — their first double album since Being There — actually landed, it proved to be a more teeming and complicated beast.

Most of the material wasn't country at all: tunes like "The Empty Condor" and "Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull" were actually on Wilco's more outré end. And "Hearts Hard to Find" dealt in yet another side of Wilco: swoony folk-pop for a midsummer evening, a la "California Stars."

For all its multitudes, Cruel Country is a flowing, enveloping listen. And what binds this wealth of material is Tweedy's psychological incisiveness ("Tonight's the Day," "Tired of Taking it Out on You"), as well as commentary on America's Music and the nature of patriotism.

"It's really gratifying to feel like we made something that we very, very profoundly, deeply know we couldn't have made five years ago," Tweedy told GRAMMY.com at the time, "without all the miles that we've traveled together in between."

He then mentioned that the album's successor would contain "songs that really wouldn't fit into the Cruel Country landscape" — that they'd come across like "somebody dropped a weird shape into the desert."

And Tweedy was correct — partly thanks to a visionary outside producer.

Cousin (2023)

Wilco has been a self-contained enterprise for ages. In the congested music industry, they self-produce; record in their private wonderland, The Loft; and mostly disregard traditional album cycles.

Perhaps this could be a double-edged sword — Wilco could have fallen into old habits as their 30th anniversary loomed.

Whatever the case may be, for that "weird shape in the desert," the band drafted Welsh musician and producer Cate Le Bon — to give their tried-and-true aesthetic a refreshing twist.

This partnership paid off handsomely: while Tweedy's songwriting is still very much Tweedy, Cousin has a taste and feel that doesn't resemble any past Wilco album.

"Infinite Surprise" hangs in a droning, digital ether that puts it somewhere in the taxonomy of Joni Mitchell's Taming the Tiger; "Levee" shimmers and sparkles like Wilco songs haven't really in the past; "Pittsburgh" is a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-level mind movie.

With Cousin, Wilco prove they can still find new avenues and corridors in their three-decade trajectory. And the continual state of guessing is what makes it so rewarding to be a Wilco fan. Or, in their words: infinite surprise.

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