Album: Wilco

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Nonesuch

Originally due to be released last autumn, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the album that separated alt.country pioneers Wilco from Reprise, the label that put out their acclaimed Being There and Summerteeth albums. It was a classic case of that old bugbear, artistic control: expecting the album that might propel their charges into the mainstream, Reprise wastaken aback to receive one of the most depressing records ever made – a downer to compare with such classic wrist-slitters as Lou Reed's Berlin and Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate. What made it worse was the lack of any saving melodic grace. With both sides digging their heels in, Wilco were ushered to the exit; though ironically, they soon found shelter elsewhere under the WEA umbrella, signing with the corporation's artsy arm, Nonesuch.

The album sidles crab-like into earshot via grainy electronic noise and a tentative clutter of drums, over which the spindly piano part of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" collapses in on itself like songwriter Jeff Tweedy's mood as he surveys a doomed relationship: "I always thought that if I held you tightly/ you would always love me like you did back then," he sings, wanly. This turns out to be only the first of a vast tranche of open-heart emotional surgery, Tweedy's gaze glued to his own personal catastrophe as if to a car crash.

Emotional distress is one of the great motors of popular song, but rarely has it been as nakedly employed as here, for all the sensitive embellishment of piano, organ, strings, horns, marimba and synth. Nor as poetically wrought. Tweedy evokes distress with some marvellous images: "Voices escape singing sad sad songs/ Tuned to chords strung down your cheeks/ Bitter melodies turning your orbit around" ("Jesus, Etc"). But when the only glimmer of light comes from grimly burring organ, you're in glum territory.

The only release from the mood of depression is in "Heavy Metal Drummer", where Tweedy escapes from the present to the reassuring warmth of memory, a time when things were so much simpler – not least, his musical taste: "I miss the innocence I've known/ Playing Kiss covers/ beautiful and stoned". It's the most chipper piece on the album, but even here the reverie dissolves into a cloud of synthesiser bubbles as the pain returns.

Musically, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a brave attempt to effect a stylistic sea-change – one suspects that mix engineer Jim O'Rourke, doyen of the Chicago avant-garde, had a significant hand in the album's overall texture. But the paucity of compelling melodies leaves a nagging doubt that in their eagerness to change, Wilco have thrown the baby out with the bath water. The band seems to agree: since recording the album, they've all left, replaced by a new line-up. Let's hope that makes Tweedy a little happier.