Triumph of the Wilco
Photographer and commercial director Sam Jones’ I Am Trying to Break Your Heart traces alt-something band Wilco’s tribulations creating and releasing its lauded 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Along the way, the charmingly awkward 16-mm black-and-white rockumentary offers an astute appraisal of Middle American musical torpor and the band’s struggle to escape it while searching for something like soul.
The movie is a minor miracle for the Wilco faithful, but what we’ve really got here is a mild propaganda film. Broken into three crude acts, this is the story of Wilco’s excitement about experimenting in the studio, its finding out that longtime label Reprise doesn’t like the band’s latest offering, and the personal conflict between tenderfoot Jeff Tweedy and his openly obnoxious bandmate Jay Bennett as Wilco attempts to land Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at a new label.
The cliché of DIY hopefuls fighting the Music Industry Machine is a theme better stated by Nirvana’s “Radio-Friendly Unit Shifter” or the Sex Pistols’ “EMI.” That the band’s tyrannical old label (Reprise) and its heavenly new one (Nonesuch) are both tentacles of all-consuming octopus AOL-Time Warner is thankfully acknowledged by the band (which also includes John Stirratt, Leroy Bach and Glenn Kotche) and manager Tony Margherita, who understand that Wilco’s ridiculous “perils” have led only to greater fortunes.
The band’s obtuse, almost Spinal Tappian earnestness — nervous leader Tweedy describes Wilco’s latest effort as having “a lot of drums and holes in the songs in it … open spaces in what’s supposed to be the music part” — is belied by footage that includes a blistering run-through of “I’m Always in Love” in the band’s Chicago loft as well as standout concert versions of “Kamera” and “Not for the Season.” When Tweedy screeches, “I am so out of tune … with you!” to an adoring crowd during “Sunken Treasure,” chops and emotional investment are revealed in equal measure.
Between performances, we hear accolades from Chicago journalist Greg Kot (“This is an interactive band,” he helpfully explains) and Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke (who looks disturbingly like Tony Robbins in a Joey Ramone wig but makes some strong points about the music business). Tweedy pukes for us. Groupies beg to have their asses signed. But mainly we’re just locked in with the fellas as they debate sonic abstractions in studio patois. Still, if an intimate look at Wilco at work happens to be your bag, you wouldn’t want to miss it.
Perhaps it’s no mistake that Jones frames some of his “loitering rock band” shots exactly like the cover photo of U2’s enormous All That You Can’t Leave Behind; if there’s one mantra repeated here, it’s the concept of taking Wilco “to another level.” Let’s hope they make it so the uninitiated can get behind the music.
