I really liked Wilco's song "Jesus, etc." and I thought I'd give an album a try. A Ghost is Born was the first album available for check out at my local library. I disliked the album almost immediately. The most noticeable disappointment is the poor mixing. The opening lyrics are nearly inaudible unless you turn up your stereo. This is unfortunate, because when the guitar and drums come in, you'll get blasted.

The jam session quality of most of the songs is also frustrating. Almost every song sports a monotonous or irritating simplistic rhythm over which a guitar is tortured into pseudo-experimentation. Other songs belabor an otherwise interesting tune, either putting it to sleep with boring and sometimes out-of-tune vocals or destroying it with a highly distorted guitar. And then there's the song "Spiders (Kidsmoke)." The four-note electronic rhythm is repeated for nearly eleven mind numbing minutes; I cannot make it through that song.

I hope A Ghost is Born is not representative of Wilco's music. I'll give them another chance before I turn away for good. Stay away from this disc. It was a mistake.

I'm going back to add some reviews for some of my favorite albums. A Ghost Is Born is now one of my favorite albums, but at the time it was released I was a bit disappointed. There were some instantly likeable songs, like 'Hummingbird', 'Hell Is Chrome', 'Company In My Back', and 'I'm A Wheel'. These songs had the familiar Wilco sound attached to them: catchy melody, story-like lyrics, piano/guitar/bass/drums instrumentation. But others, like 'Spiders(kidsmoke)', 'Wishful Thinking', 'Muzzle Of Bees', 'Handshake Drugs', and 'At Least That's What You Said' were harder for me to grasp on the first, second, even third listen. The whole album really didn't click for me till I saw them live touring for A Ghost Is Born. The true beauty and majesty of the whole concept of this album really came to light in a live atmosphere. Trying to find an identity in a world increasingly becoming less personal, less individually based. The hypnotic rhythm of 'Spiders', the longing for happiness in 'Wishful Thinking', the heartbreak of a broken relationship in 'At Least That's What You Said'. All of these shone their beauty once I'd seen them performed live. So, if this album is a 'I'm just not sure of this' kind of album for you, do yourself a favor and see them live, or get 'Kicking Television', their live album recorded at the Vic Theatre in Chicago. The majority of A Ghost Is Born is played live on here, and it's a great way to experience these songs. Then go back to 'Ghost', and see if it works for you. It did for me.

My friend told me about Wilco I got the summer teeth cd and that cd is cool but my favorite is Wilco A ghost is born. Spiders is one of my favorite songs .

After the challenging but successful YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT, Wilco pushes even harder on the experimentation with A GHOST IS BORN; this time the experiment is not as successful. Many songs suffer from a commitment to jarring feed beck and sonic shifts that do nothing but interrupt the melody, and lyrics that are often impenetrable in their obtuseness. Lines like, "chambers of chains with red plastic mouths" and "I attack with love, pure bug beauty, curl my lips and crawl up to you," are left to the listener to perceive as pearls of wisdom rather than just bizarre images. Songs shift from gentle to strident without reason, other than the whim of the band. It often reminds me of Robyn Hitchcock's work, without the saving grace of humor and whimsy. I guess this was a natural extension of YHF's sensibilities, but it proves to be a fruitless one.

3 1/2

A solid follow-up to Wilco's triumphant Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finds the band expanding on both of it's complimentary sides of pop-rock and experimental, producing a solid whole album to an effective degree. While it might not hold all the same dramatic highlights found in that previous disc, A Ghost Is Born proved that much of the resounding critical praise was correct.