Colleagues of mine know that I don't blink or flinch for a second when I tell them that Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album is the best album of this decade - so far. NOTHING has come close to equaling the artistic integrity that was displayed on that record in the four years this decade has produced so far. So it is with supreme disgust that I must reluctantly say that A Ghost is Born is a major disappointment, and maybe one of the most disappointing follow-ups to a masterpiece in recent memory. Not to say that A Ghost is Born is bad, half of it is actually quite good, but I can't help but think that Jeff Tweedy and company have squandered this golden opportunity. Ghost actually starts off with two of the best Wilco tracks of all time in "At Least That's What You Said" and "Hell is Chrome" with Tweedy's erratic guitar playing bringing to mind American Stars N' Bars/Rust Never Sleeps era Neil Young. But halfway through the third track "Spiders("Kidsmoke") is where the wheels start to show signs of wear.

What made Yankee Hotel such a treat was the beautiful interplay of excellent but understated experimental noise (brought to the forefront by Jim O'Rourke of Sonic Youth) with Tweedy's already present melodies. But most of "Spiders" seems to suffer from sounding too much like Tweedy and O'Rourke's side project Loose Fur. Repetitive organ, spastic guitar plucking, O'Rourke seemingly taking off the kid gloves, and a near 11 minute running time makes "Spiders" almost unbearable by the end. The next track "Muzzle of Bees" ends up making you forget about the last 11 minutes though, and "Hummingbird" (which was amazingly performed on the David Letterman show) is extremely reminiscent of the jangle pop stylings of Wilco's third album Summer Teeth.

After this point however, the wheels that "Spider" wear down to the spokes really start to fall off the wagon. "Handshake Drugs," which was already available in great form to fans on the More Like the Moon EP, makes an encore appearance here, but this version frustratingly feels like nothing more than an unfinished demo. "Wishful Thinking" sounds good even if a tad stilted, but "Company In My Back" and the what-the-hell-were-they-thinking "I'm a Wheel" are just downright dreadful. A Ghost is Born comes around the bend with "Theologians," an interesting number if not a memorable one and then comes the big controversy of "Ghost With Less Than You Think."

Now, I'm all for noise. God knows I've got a jones for everyone from Nurse With Wound to The Liars, but three minutes into a mellow sounding "Less Than You Think" starts a 12 plus minute symphony of monotonous feedback that has hardly any flow to it whatsoever (mind bogglingly reminiscent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.) If you're the kind of person who's not smart enough to hit the next track button after six minutes into this one, well, you must be just as loyal a fan as myself - because I sat through it praying for some sort of resolve. To no avail, sadly after nearly 16 minutes of mess, the final track "The Late Greats" offers up no redemption to wading through "Less Than You Think's" muck. It's as forgettable a song as the second half of this album. Being There, Summer Teeth, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are all masterpieces in my mind and more so than any other album this year, I really hoped that this one would not be a disappointment. I guess Mick Jagger summed it up decades ago - "you can't always get what you want."