Jeff Tweedy: "Like Neil Young learning Thurston Moore's solos"

A very thorough analysis of Wilco's "A Ghost is Born" on PopMatters review "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Zeth Lundy.

"The songs are steeped in clouds of little significant remembrances, with Tweedy at his most pensive and introspective. In 'Hummingbird', he sings of a man whose 'goal in life was to be an echo', and requests: 'Remember to remember me / Standing still in your past'. He even gets downright pastoral in the natural imagery of 'Muzzle of Bees', submissive and confessional in 'Handshake Drugs', and steadily defiant in 'Theologians'. Yankee songs like 'I'm the Man Who Loves You' and 'Reservations' merely hinted such significant internalizations, as most of that album mushroom clouded into the atmosphere of instable city imagery.

Tweedy has also found a new outlet for such wellsprings of charged emotion: the guitar solo. This may be the element of Ghost that comes off as the most surprising. Tweedy's like a hurricane? Yup. Actually, he's more like Neil Young learning Thurston Moore's solos (or vice versa). They all reek of a player who has recently discovered his instrument's voice, but are endlessly fascinating as they skirt around typical solo confines, refusing to follow a song's melody or chord structure, and often contribute to the overall dissonance of the piece. "

More on Wilco and Neil Young.

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