WILCO - A Ghost Is Born (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition with Book) - 9CD Box Set [FEB 7]

9CD - Limited 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Box Set. Features the album alongside alternates, outtakes, and demos plus the complete 2004 concert recording from Boston’s Wang Center and the band’s “fundamentals” workshop sessions. Includes 65 previously unreleased music tracks as well as a 48-page hardcover book with previously unpublished photos and a new liner notes by Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr.  

Nonesuch releases a deluxe edition of Wilco’s 2004 Grammy Award–winning album A Ghost is Born. The box set comprises either nine vinyl LPs and four CDs or nine CDs – including the original album, alternates, outtakes, and demos, charting the making of A Ghost Is Born – plus the complete 2004 concert recording from Boston’s Wang Center and the band’s “fundamentals” workshop sessions.  It includes 65 previously unreleased music tracks as well as a 48-page hardcover book with previously unpublished photos and a new liner note by Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr.

A Ghost Is Born was released commercially on June 22, 2004, debuting at No. 8 on the Billboard chart. The album, which Mehr calls ‘an eclectic array of dark ballads, upbeat pop songs, Krautrock chug, noise rock freakouts, and roots rock abandon,’ was widely acclaimed as one of 2004’s best, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NPR, NME, the Associated Press, The Wire, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and Uncut, among many others.  The album earned the band its first Grammy, for Best Alternative Music Album.  The album also won a Grammy for Best Recording Package.

For the A Ghost Is Born recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Mikael Jorgensen; Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the band’s previous release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, co-produced the album with Wilco. Leroy Bach left Wilco at the completion of the sessions and the band announced the addition of two new members: Pat Sansone and Nels Cline. Sansone and Cline toured with Wilco to promote A Ghost Is Born and that lineup has remained unchanged since 2004.  As Tweedy said to Mehr for his new liner note, “Making that record, and then finding this lineup, that was the start of something – of having a band that can play anything. That’s why, 20 years later, we’re still here and still going.”

Wilco first began sessions for what would become A Ghost Is Born in early 2002 at Chicago’s Soma E.M.S., where they had mixed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  Much of the album was tracked live in the studio with O’Rourke and engineer Chris Shaw.  They also reunited there with engineer and soon-to-be-bandmate Mikael Jorgensen.

At Soma, the band began sketching out music using Tweedy’s notebooks of lyrics, poetry, and prose. Mehr notes: ‘In between more traditional song tracking, the group would engage in a series of conceptual improvisations in the studio.  These musical experiments, broadly known as ‘Fundamentals’… were part of what Kotche said was ‘an attempt to search for a new group identity. To see what we could make this band into.’’

In the fall of 2003, the band relocated to New York to finish recording at Sear Sound.  “It seemed like the band needed to get out of Chicago, get out of the working mode they’d been in, and only be thinking about making a record,” O’Rourke told Mehr.  There, playing together in the corner of a large studio, the album began to take its final shape.

Emerging from a period of addiction and rehab, Tweedy discussed how he feels about A Ghost Is Born in retrospect.  As he told Mehr, “I was worried the album was going to feel like something dark and not me anymore.  But the album was ahead of me as a person.  It was the part of me that I was trying to preserve – enthusiastic and furious about the world, as well as open and loving.  I reached that in the music, before I could get there emotionally on my own.”

A Ghost Is Born was the second Wilco release on Nonesuch Records, preceded by the landmark Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The relationship with Nonesuch would last nearly a decade and include two more studio albums – Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (the album) – along with a live album and a live DVD, plus reissues of earlier records, before Wilco began its own label, dBpm.

A Ghost is Born 9-CD Deluxe Edition features Wilco's 2004 Grammy-winning album alongside alternates, outtakes, and demos, charting the making of the album, plus the complete 2004 concert recording from Boston’s Wang Center and the band’s “fundamentals” workshop sessions. The deluxe box includes 65 previously unreleased music tracks as well as a 48-page hardcover book with previously unpublished photos and a new liner notes by Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr.

“Another engrossing, unorthodox record," said Mojo. "With the low-key yet magnificent A Ghost Is Born Tweedy's offering plenty more reasons to believe in the redemptive powers of Wilco.” "Spectacular," Uncut exclaimed. "Their most engaging album yet."

Tracklist: 

Disc 1
1    At Least That's What You Said
2    Hell Is Chrome
3    Spiders (Kidsmoke)
4    Muzzle of Bees
5    Hummingbird
6    Handshake Drugs
7    Wishful Thinking
8    Company in My Back
9    I'm a Wheel
10    Theologians
11    Less Than You Think
12    The Late Greats

Disc 2
Outtakes/Alternates
1    At Least That's What You Said (8/13/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
2    Hell Is Chrome (10/5/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
3    Spiders (Kidsmoke) [9/28/03 SOMA-Chicago Version]
4    Muzzle Of Bees (7/15/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
5    Hummingbird (2/8/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
6    Handshake Drugs (11/13/03 Sear Sound-NYC Version)
7    Wishful Thinking (11/1/03 Sear Sound-NYC Version)
8    Company In My Back (2/8/03 Hothouse-St. Kilda, Melbourne Version)
9    I'm A Wheel (August 2002 SOMA-Chicago Version)
10    Theologians (3/19/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
11    Less Than You Think (11/11/03 Sear Sound-NYC Version)
12    The Late Greats (7/19/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
13    Kicking Television (3/18/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
14    The High Heat (2/5/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
15    Panthers (March 2003 SOMA-Chicago Version)
16    Diamond Claw (3/21/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
17    Bob Dylan's 49th Beard (June 2002 SOMA-Chicago Version)
18    More Like The Moon (2/8/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
19    Improbable Germany (10/7/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)

Disc 3
Outtakes/Alternates
1    Handshake Drugs (First Version, 6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
2    Hummingbird (February 2002 SOMA-Chicago Version)
3    The High Heat (2/4/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
4    Spiders (Kidsmoke) [February 2002 SOMA-Chicago Version]
5    Diamond Claw (March 2003 SOMA-Chicago Version)
6    Muzzle Of Bees (October 2003 Sear Sound-NYC Version)
7    Like A Stone (11/10/03 Sear Sound-NYC Version)
8    Leave Me (Like You Found Me) [6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago Version]
9    Losing Interest (11/11/03 Sear Sound-NYC Version)
10    Old Maid (6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
11    Spiders (Kidsmoke) [August 2002 SOMA-Chicago Version]
12    Panthers (October 2003 Sear Sound-NYC Version)
13    Muzzle Of Bees (7/16/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
14    Diamond Claw (10/9/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
15    Losing Interest (7/20/03 SOMA-Chicago Version)
16    Spiders (Kidsmoke) [October, 2003 SOMA-Chicago Version]
17    The Thanks I Get (6/26/02 SOMA-Chicago Version)
18    Two Hat Blues (March 2003 SOMA-Chicago Version)
19    Improbable Germany (January 2002 The Loft-Chicago Version)

Disc 4
The Hook At The Wang (10/1/04 Wang Center-Boston, MA)   
1    Muzzle Of Bees (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
2    Company In My Back (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
3    I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
4    A Shot In The Arm (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
5    Hell Is Chrome (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
6    Handshake Drugs (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
7    Jesus, Etc. (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
8    Hummingbird (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
9    I'm Always In Love (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
10    At Least That's What You Said (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
11    Ashes Of American Flags (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
12    Theologians (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)

Disc 5
The Hook At The Wang (10/1/04 Wang Center-Boston, MA)   
1    I'm The Man Who Loves You (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
2    Poor Places (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
3    Spiders (Kidsmoke) [Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04]
4    She's A Jar (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
5    A Magazine Called Sunset (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
6    Kingpin (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
7    The Late Greats (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
8    I'm A Wheel (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
9    Via Chicago (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
10    California Stars (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)
11    Christ For President (Live at the Wang Center, Boston, MA 10/1/04)

Disc 6
1    Fundamental 1
2    Fundamental 2

Disc 7
1    Fundamental 3
2    Fundamental 4

Disc 8
1    Fundamental 5
2    Fundamental 6

Disc: 9
1    Fundamental 7