Wilco and Yo La Tengo

Wilco has been influenced by a wide variety of musical styles including folk, rock, country, punk and experimental music and each album they make seems to reflect its unique influences. The band formed in 1994 and released their debut album “A.M.” just a year after their formation. “A.M” is the band’s most alternative country sounding album to date and songs like “Passenger Side” clearly convey the band’s influence of power pop bands like Big Star as well as country rock musicians like Neil Young and Gram Parsons.

The band’s second album “Being There” showed Wilco incorporating more experimental sounds into their music, which would continue throughout their career and would play a huge impact on their most critically acclaimed album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”.

Not only was “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” a landmark album for Wilco that launched the band into the mainstream, but it was a landmark album for music history. Rolling Stone has labeled the album the third best album of the 2000’s and has included it on the list of top 500 albums of all time. Other publications have also highly praised the album such as Pitchfork who called it the fourth best album of the 2000’s. The album contains many of Wilco’s best songs to date including “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, “War on War”, and “Jesus, Etc.” “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is also relevant for being the last album that guitarist Jay Bennett would perform on and the first album that would include the drummer Glenn Kotche.

After the release of Wilco’s Grammy award wining album, “A Ghost Is Born”, they would stabilize their lineup with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and avant-garde jazz guitarist Nels Cline. Although one might expect Wilco’s sound to become even more experimental with the addition of an avant-garde guitarist, in fact their next album “Sky Blue Sky” showed Wilco moving further away from experimentation and following a style that was deeply rooted in the folk and Americana genres, which conveyed inspiration from artists like The Byrds and Bob Dylan. The Grammy nominated album showed that Wilco could perfect the sound of ‘70s soft rock and broadened the diversity of Wilco’s audience.

Wilco continues to release high quality albums and have appeared on many notable television shows such as Late Show with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live. In their free time the band also enjoys working on their side projects. Jeff Tweedy has been involved with the band Loose Fur, which features Jim O’Rourke and Glenn Kotche, and is also involved in the band Tweedy with his son. Pat Sansone and John Stirratt have released several albums under their soft-rock band The Autumn Defense and Nels Cline is involved with his solo material.

Wilco has become one of America’s best regarded indie rock bands and their influence can be seen all over modern music from bands such as The National. They are also well regarded for their Solid Sound Festival, which they curate and headline. Wilco has already established themselves as legends and their music continues to keep critics and fans in complete awe.

The name Yo La Tengo means “I have it” or “I’ve got her” in Spanish and is due to the band not wanting a name with any English connotations.

The band’s first two LP entitled “Ride The Tiger” and “New Wave Hot Dogs” released on Coyote Records were the first glimpse of real potential for the band, and their follow up to it “President Yo La Tengo” almost sealed their fate in becoming a seriously well-acclaimed band.

The band is defined by their experimentation, their unwillingness to repeat past successes, their proclivity for space-rock drone sounds, jagged guitar, and unorthodox covers. They epitomise the obscure complexities of garage rock without any of the pretence familiar with indie-bands attempting to achieve cult status.

In 1993 Yo La Tengo joined forces with Matador Records and their first album on the new label “Painful” was produced by Roger Moutenot, who continued to produce all of their subsequent albums until 2013’s “Fade.” It was also the first album to feature James McNew on all of the songs. James McNew had been drumming solo under the moniker Dump before joining Yo La Tengo and his arrival gave the band a new emphasis, taking them to new heights.

After more than 30 years Yo La Tengo's albums have hit double figures, most of which were received with universal critical acclaim, yet the band are still challenging themselves, finding new ground to tread and new perspectives to view from.