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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.

a ghost is born
by Wilco


8.7

based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 93 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album

MUSIC:

When you record one of the most acclaimed albums of the decade, what do you do for an encore? If you are Jeff Tweedy & co., you return with both old (Jim O'Rourke again producing) and new (yet another lineup change) for your fifth studio LP.

LABEL:	Nonesuch
RELEASE DATE:	22 June 2004
DISCS:	1 disc
GENRE(S):	Indie, Alt-Country, Rock

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Tiny Mix Tapes

Unlike the first three Wilco albums and even more than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born requires careful listening.

100

Stylus Magazine

On almost every level, Jeff Tweedy and Co. have concocted the perfect follow-up to an epochal, career-defining record--taking greater risks and yielding deeper rewards--and finding more challenging ways to channel pain that just won’t quit.

100

Uncut

A Ghost Is Born feels like a band learning to be spontaneous and unencumbered, and coming up with their most engaging album yet. [Album of the Month, Jul 2004, p.94]

Filter

Feels more timeless, more effortless. [#11, p.91]

Delusions of Adequacy

A work like this is only self-indulgent if its accoutrements aren't justifiable. Wilco makes every note count on this album: however miraculously, it all manages to cohere. And the songs are undeniably stunning.

Neumu.net

If Foxtrot's songs were fractured pop, then Ghost is just plain fracture, a soft and brutal self-examination that pulls no punches even as it manages to remain carefully elliptical.

The Onion (A.V. Club)

For the most part, Ghost channels its shaggy sound into pop music. True, it's pop music that constantly threatens to erupt into noise or fade into silence, but it's still hard not to hum along.

cokemachineglow

What makes Ghost succeed so magnificently... is how the directness, the openness of the lyrics in general, is so beautifully matched to the damaged music, which is itself rife with symbolism and meaning.

PopMatters

Every aspect of the project is an improvement on the last.

Los Angeles Times

The songs are structured firmly in the classic tradition, evoking Dylan, the Band, Hendrix and Beatles. They're enriched by a bottomless well of melodic invention and find an emotional core in Tweedy's shy, plaintive vocals. [20 Jun 2004]

E! Online

If the album weren't so agreeably off-kilter--short, whispery tunes alternate with long, rambling epics--its mix of guitars and piano would almost seem like the stuff you'd hear on rockers like Layla or Abbey Road.

Q Magazine

Even more meandering than its celebrated, if somewhat cold, predecessor. It's also more confident, more coherent, yielding an all-enveloping warmth that's entirely resistant to any iPod shuffle function. [Jul 2004, p.119]

Rolling Stone

Where Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sounded dense and surreal, the bulk of Ghost is spare and earthy, with streaks of Crazy Horse, the Band, the Beatles and the Replacements.

Junkmedia

The flaws in A Ghost is Born are almost as interesting as the album's considerable triumphs.

The Wire

Musically and lyrically, A Ghost Is Born is translucent, weightless, supernatural, capable of drifting back and forth across rock'n'roll's state lines at will. [#246, p.61]

The Guardian

This is a dramatic, ambitious album that dares you to rise to its challenge.

Playlouder

This time, as well as simply delivering the goods, Wilco come bearing a basket of extras.

All Music Guide

A Ghost Is Born hardly sound[s] like a retread of YHF, but the languid, ghostly song structures, the periodic forays into dissonance and the pained, hesitant vocals from Jeff Tweedy that were so much a part of that album also take center stage here.

Flak Magazine

It's in the mournful, captivating, meditative, exasperating, pretentious, masterfully constructed experience of A Ghost Is Born that Tweedy and Wilco become true iconoclasts.

Austin Chronicle

Ghost is not a lot of fun. Still, it's an accomplishment, because it's an angry album.

Entertainment Weekly

For someone [Tweedy] whose longtime strength has been songwriting over all-out adventurousness, many of the more traditional tunes seem, ironically, half finished. [25 Jun 2004, p.161]

Spin

There are flashes of Yankee's shimmer on Ghost, but the album is more elusive, more disjointed. [Jul 2004, p.103]

ShakingThrough.net

Despite being one of the weaker albums Wilco has released, A Ghost is Born is nonetheless the most fascinating.

Billboard

Its most difficult and uncompromising album to date.

Magnet

Finds Wilco switching moods, tones, influences and instruments enough to suggest a band on a pub crawl in search of its winterteeth. [#64, p.112]

Village Voice

Wilco's ideas are unremarkable, but are worked out with intelligence and striking conception. And as it happens, the new organic emphasis tables some of Wilco's lamer stylistic obsessions.

Nude As The News

Over the course of this album, you may laugh, frown, cry, cover your ears, or reach for the remote to fast-forward. But then you'll want to listen to it again.

Village Voice (Consumer Guide)

It's hard to imagine any of the suckers who fell for the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot hype striving to identify with, say, "Muzzle of Bees." Not impossible. Just hard.

Pitchfork

In the end, the ambitious misfires and pre-coffee drowsiness of A Ghost Is Born don't ruin the album entirely-- they only serve as distractions that make it much more difficult to excavate the band's strengths from the surrounding detritus.

Alternative Press

It's important that albums like Ghost exist--but unfortunately, those albums don't always make the most enjoyable listens. [Aug 2004, p.116]

Blender

On initial listen, the album is rather monotonous, a bunch of moderately singable tunes with some noise piled up around the edges.... After the fifth or twentieth listen, however, A Ghost Is Born starts to insinuate meaning. [#27, p.132]

New Musical Express

It's like Scissor Sisters on tranquilisers. With a bit of ELO. And a dash of Ramones. And, with this eclecticism, a worrying lack of focus. [5 Jun 2004, p.57]

Trouser Press

A Ghost Is Born is a textbook example of an album created to fulfill expectations the band doesn't necessarily share.

The average user rating for this album is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 93 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Wes M. gave it a10:
Is it crazy that I liked this way more than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot?

Steven Pro gave it a10:
Stylus' review is spot on. This album is absolutely stunning.

Joseph gave it an8:
A true grower. Easily, Wilco's most difficult album, yet after several (for some, many) listens, the beauty of many of these songs shine thorugh and one realizes that they are among the best in Wilco's breathtakingly brilliant catalog. Tweedy's guitar playing snarls and bites throughout ("At Least That's What You Said", "Spiders (Kidsmoke)") and his lyrics are as strong as ever. Not quite a step forward from YHF but certainly not a retread by any means either. The only complaint is Jim O'Rourke's production is surprisingly flat and there's a noticeable lack of dynamics throughout the records. The greatness of these songs truly shines through live, as can be heard on the superior "Kicking Television" double-album.

Felix gave it a7:
It's an average album; Less Than You Think is the worst song in the album followed by Late Greats. Only about half the songs on the are good, including the excellent Wishful Thinking and Company In My Back.

joel n gave it a10:
This is by far my fave Wilco album and i have all of them, yeah "Summerteeth" is great but for me this is the album i find myself always going back to. "Less than you Think" is a freaking great song, it's just the noise for 10 minutes that people shouldnt enjoy, but the song is beautiful. "Hell is Chrome" is the best song of all time, along with "Theologains" Listen Up, AGISB is a Classic! You'll See!

RJ McClaine gave it a7:
many of the songs are fantastic: at least that's what you said, hell is chrome, muzzle of bees, handshake drugs, wishful thinking, company in my back. some are bad: spiders (kidsmoke) is 4 times as long as it should be....the divine riff just gets cloying; less than you think and the late greats are rubbish. the rest are just so-so: hummingbird, i'm a wheel, theologians. all in all, though, it's a great collection of songs.

Eric L gave it a5:
Wilco was my favorite band. Now they have a CD that I can't get through even once without skipping to somthing else. This disc goes off the deep end, and the hooks are about gone. If Summerteeth is a 10, then this is a (kind) 5. My Best of Wilco has one song from this CD ( I'm a Wheel)

a ghost is born by Wilco

a ghost is born
by Wilco