Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Review

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a 2002 album by Wilco.

After the album was completed, it was rejected by Reprise Records, then Wilco's record label; they judged it too strange and uncommercial. The band responded by making the album's tracks available on the Internet.

Following protracted contractual and legal wrangling (Wilco purchased the master tapes for $50,000), the album was finally commercially released by Nonesuch Records on April 23, 2002 (ironically, Reprise and Nonesuch are both Time Warner companies.) The album hit the charts at an all-time high for Wilco at #13 (topped by A Ghost is Born two years later.) It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Some of the making of the album was chronicled in Sam Jones's documentary film, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

Though "Jesus, Etc." and elements of other songs (in addition to the album cover itself) are sometimes thought to have been created in memory of the September 11th attacks, the entire album was completed before the attacks; September 11, 2001 was in fact the original intended release date for the album.

The More Like the Moon EP (also called Bridge and Australian EP) was originally released a bonus disc to the Australian version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The band ended up releasing the EP to all their fans via the band's website in late 2004, but not before they had released it for about two years exclusively to all buyers of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.