Summerteeth

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Summerteeth
Studio album by Wilco
Released	March 9, 1999
Recorded	August 1997, November 1998
Genre	Alternative rock
Length	52:50
Label	Warner Brothers
Producer(s)	Wilco
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Pitchfork 9.4/10 link
Wilco chronology
Being There (1996)	Summerteeth (1999)	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Summerteeth is a 1999 album by the band Wilco. It was released by Warner Brothers on March 9, 1999. Summerteeth continued Wilco's evolution into an alternative rock band, almost completely void of their alt-country roots.

Wilco had already branched out on their second, eclectic album, Being There, but Summerteeth was much more heavily produced. Furthermore, the emphasis had shifted more towards keyboards and synthesizers. "I spent two years collecting keyboards," recalls Jay Bennett, a hobby of his that received greater encouragement when "the vintage guitar market went through the roof ... you [couldn't] afford to buy anything. ... The album could be a completely different album if we had bought different stuff. People don't like to hear that; they like to think that we had this grand vision. You use what's there until you find what clicks."

According to Bennett, the sound on Summerteeth also began to emerge "with a couple of defining moments: 'Via Chicago' and 'She's a Jar.' That's when the album took on its orchestral quality, cinematic quality. In 'She's a Jar' we started to layer the keyboards on it, and that did it. On 'Via Chicago,' it's two different takes of the song edited together on the computer with no overdubs, two different versions swapping back and forth to create something majestic. That laid our path for us." Extensive mixing and post-production work was later done on ProTools, developing the multi-layered sound on many of Summerteeth's tracks.

In sharp contrast to the stronger, 'pop' direction of Summerteeth's lush, bright sound, Tweedy was also writing darker songs. On songs like "She's a Jar" and "Via Chicago," lyrics like "You know she begs me not to hit her" and "I dreamed about killing you again last night/And it felt alright to me" (respectively) prompted NME to call it "perhaps the most cheerful record about dreaming of killing your girlfriend ever made."

"I apologized to the band," Tweedy later said. "I kept being surprised by the things coming out of my mouth as I was singing these songs. Just the worst things, which came out almost in spite of how (his wife) Sue would feel when she heard them, or my parents, or anybody. ... It was like I was letting go of myself, and how I'm going to be perceived. ... It was just free expression, almost selfless, and I thought I had gotten closer to where I wanted to be as a writer. The feeling of being uncomfortable with what I had written - that felt more real to me than anything I could have constructed, but at the same time I felt like I had let the band down. We worked really hard on this record, and my contribution was this dismal stuff: 'Oh, and here's another reminder of how terrible things are.'"

Despite Tweedy's concerns, the band was not bothered by the lyrics. "They basically said I was crazy - they didn't accept my apology," Tweedy said. "To them, the lyric writer was just some person who could be me, or never was me, saying all these things."

"I think [Tweedy] realized then that [Summerteeth] was this beautiful thing, not the wallowing record he thought it was," Bennett added. "It has dark lyrics, but the music we made is almost a counter to that. And that wasn't a product of some master plan, it was more a case of: 'The studio is a really fun place, and we're making a beautiful building here.' We wanted to take pride in every floor we made. And we were having fun doing it."

The Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot championed the album, writing that "it boldly transforms the band's roots-rock image by dipping their laid-back, countryfied melodies into a strange brew of warped keyboards, distorted sound effects and otherworldly atmosphere that suggests the influence of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Brian Eno's Another Green World and Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island." (The Chicago Tribune, February 28, 1999)

At the end of 1999, Kot would rank it the year's best album, calling it "pop so gorgeous it belies the intricate studio experimentation that brought it to life, while breaking the free fall of Jeff Tweedy's lonesome, Lennonesque lyrics." (The Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1999)

When The Village Voice held its Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1999, critical consensus was strong enough to place Summerteeth at #8.

Reprise Records also had greater, commercial expectations for Summerteeth based on the album's stronger, 'pop' direction and advance reviews, but label executives would later admit disappointment when the album reached #78 on the U.S. album charts and #38 on the UK charts.

[edit] Track listing

All tracks written, produced and performed by Wilco.

1. "Can't Stand It" – 3:46
2. "She's a Jar" – 4:43
3. "A Shot in the Arm" – 4:19
4. "We're Just Friends" – 2:44
5. "I'm Always in Love" – 3:41
6. "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)" – 3:20
7. "Pieholden Suite" – 3:26
8. "How to Fight Loneliness" – 3:53
9. "Via Chicago" – 5:33
10. "ELT" – 3:46
11. "My Darling" – 3:38
12. "When You Wake Up Feeling Old" – 3:56
13. "Summer Teeth" – 3:21
14. "In a Future Age" – 2:57
15. [Silence] (Hidden Track) – 0:23
16. "Candyfloss" (Hidden Track) – 2:57
17. "A Shot in the Arm (Alt. Version)" (Hidden Track) – 3:54

Wilco
Jeff Tweedy | John Stirratt | Nels Cline | Glenn Kotche | Pat Sansone | Mikael Jorgensen
Ken Coomer | Max Johnston | Jay Bennett | Leroy Bach | Jim O'Rourke
Discography
Albums and extended plays: A.M. | Being There | Mermaid Avenue | Summerteeth | Mermaid Avenue Vol. II | Yankee Hotel Foxtrot | More Like the Moon | A Ghost Is Born | Kicking Television: Live in Chicago
DVDs: Man in the Sand | I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Related articles
Uncle Tupelo | Billy Bragg | The Wilco Book | Loose Fur | Down With Wilco | Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest