A little over 20 years ago, in June 2004, Wilco released an album that stands out in their discography. „A Ghost Is Born“ was the Chicago band’s fifth album in a row and the first they recorded after dramatic situations with publishers and studio innovation of the album „Yankee Hotel Foxtrot“ from 2002. This album exceeded expectations, winning rave reviews, a more dedicated audience and a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album. Now, Wilco announces the deluxe edition of the box set „A Ghost Is Born“ which comes out on February 7, 2025.
The box set will be available through Nonesuch Records in either nine-CD or nine-LP/four-CD formats. It includes the original 2004 album, over 65 unreleased demos, alternate recordings, a full concert from that year at the Wang Center in Boston, and a 48-page book by rock historian Bob Mehr. You can already hear the previously unreleased studio recording of the song “Handshake Drugs” recorded on November 13, 2003.
„A Ghost Is Born“ marked a uniquely volatile period for Wilco. In his 2018 memoir, „Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back)“Jeff Twitty shared how he felt depressed while working on the album with band members and producer Jim O’Rourke in November 2003. He was plagued by mental health problems and drug addiction: “I was pretty sure I was going to die. Every song we recorded felt like my last.”
Tweety channeled his inner struggle into the album, writing that he sees it as “a gift to my kids, so that one day, when they grow up, they can piece together the pieces of me that I couldn’t give them in real life.”
The new box set will include several recordings from the period when they used a method of improvisation they called “the basics”. “We would put on a roll of tape and record the whole album in the time it would take to listen to it,” Tweety said in 2020.
Around the album’s release in 2004, Twitty sought help at a dual diagnosis clinic to treat anxiety, depression and addiction. He has been sober and healthy ever since. “It’s something you deal with every day,” he said last year.
Tviti was the only lead guitarist on this album, which gave it a special sound. Not long after the release, Nels Kline and Pat Sansone joined, which kept the band’s lineup the same for the next 20 years. They recently surprised their fans with a performance of the entire album „A Ghost Is Born“ at the Solid Sound festival.
“Making that album and then forming this line-up, that was the beginning of something — having a band that could play anything,” Twitty says in the accompanying text of the new box set. “That’s why, twenty years later, we’re still here and still working.”
Source: balkanrock.com
