Context
Wilco was touring to promote Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in May 2000 when Jeff Tweedy was invited to play at the Noise Pop festival in Chicago. The festival promoter offered to pair Tweedy with a collaborator of his choosing, and Tweedy decided to perform with Jim O'Rourke. Tweedy frequently played O'Rourke's album Bad Timing in his car while he traveled during the previous winter. O'Rourke was an accomplished producer as well as a musician, and had produced over 200 albums by the time that Tweedy requested the collaboration. O'Rourke offered the services of drummer Glenn Kotche, and the trio performed at Double Door for the festival on May 14, 2000. Tweedy enjoyed the performance so much that he suggested that the trio record an album together. They chose the name Loose Fur, and recorded six songs during the following summer.
By the end of the year, the band had recorded enough demo tracks to release a fourth studio album (the working title was Here Comes Everybody), but the band was unhappy with some of the takes of the songs. This was attributed to the inflexibility of Ken Coomer's drumming. According to American Songwriter Magazine, "Virtually every attempt the singer made to steer Coomer toward the percussive sound he had envisioned for the record sparked a fight." The band decided to bring Glenn Kotche into the studio to record with the band. Wilco officially replaced Coomer with Kotche in January 2001, a decision originally proposed by Tweedy and almost immediately approved by the rest of the band.
Jay Bennett recorded the entire album with Chris Brickley, and agreed with Tweedy that O'Rourke would be a good choice to mix the album, after a failed attempt by Bennett and Brickley to mix a few of the songs at CRC and after hearing O'Rourke's "audition mix". One of the conflicts, exhibited in the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, was over the ten-second transition between "Ashes of American Flags" and "Heavy Metal Drummer". Bennett attempted to explain to Tweedy that there were several slightly different ways to approach the transition, each of which would yield slightly different results, but Tweedy explained that he just wanted the problem fixed, and was not concerned with understanding the different approaches. Bennett focused on the individual songs, while Tweedy focused on larger conceptual and thematic issues—a tried and true division of labor that had worked well on the four releases on which they co-wrote the material. In order to achieve the band's musical goals, Tweedy invited Jim O'Rourke into the studio to mix "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" ( sample), and the results impressed the band members. O'Rourke was then asked to mix the rest of the album.
The cover of the album is a picture of Marina City in the band's adopted hometown of Chicago. The album was named after a series of letters in the phonetic alphabet that Tweedy had heard on the Irdial box set The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. On the fourth track of the album Phonetic Alphabet - Nato, a woman repeats the words "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" numerous times; a clip from this Numbers Station transmission was placed in the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot song "Poor Places". Irdial sued Wilco for copyright infringement, and a settlement was reached out of court.
After the album's completion, Tweedy decided to remove Bennett from the band. The album was completed in 2001, and Tweedy believed it to be ready for release.
Read more about this topic: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
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