Wilco Uncover Sunken Treasures On Reissues of Their First Two Albums

Wilco is digging deep for new expanded reissues of their first two albums, due this December from Rhino Records.

The Chicago alternative outfit was born in 1994 from the ashes of influential alt-country outfit Uncle Tupelo, following the dissolution of Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar's creative partnership. Farrar went on to form Son Volt, while Wilco began with Tweedy and the rest of the band--bassist Jon Stirratt, multi-instrumentalist Max Johnson and drummer Ken Coomer--plus new lead guitarist Brian Henneman of The Bottle Rockets, who left shortly after the album was finished. Both Wilco and Son Volt put out albums for Warner Music labels very close to each other (Uncle Tupelo had been Sire artists, while Wilco recorded for Reprise and Son Volt for Warner Bros. Records), and even a last-minute remix by engineer Richard Dodd (who'd done Tom Petty's Wildflowers) couldn't stave off modest reviews and low sales for the relatively straightforward debut album A.M. in 1995.

"Listening back to records 15 to 20 years later, I'm always taken with the confident but guileless quality of bands in their 20s, that strange mixture of innocence and conviction," Stirratt writes of A.M. in the new reissue's liner notes, "and this is one of those records - we were barely a band at that point, just trying to make some noise." This expanded presentation comes with eight previously unreleased bonus tracks, including "When You Find Trouble," the last track recorded by Uncle Tupelo.

For the follow-up Being There (1996), Tweedy recruited a new guitarist, Jay Bennett, gave up smoking marijuana, and strove to write more revealing songs exposing his psyche in the wake of Uncle Tupelo's demise as well as Wilco's rough start. The songs flowed freely, piling up into a double album, and featured not only country and rock styles but power pop and even psychedelia. As a result, Wilco had their first hit album, reaching No. 73 on the Billboard 200 and receiving critical plaudits including a place in the Top 20 of The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop Poll.

The expansion of Wilco's sound comes in full focus on the expanded Being There, available as either a 5CD or 4LP box set and pairing the original album with a disc of 15 unreleased outtakes and alternates plus a clutch of live material recorded in Los Angeles just after the release of the original album. (The vinyl includes a radio set for KCRW-FM, while the CD box adds a lengthy show recorded at The Troubadour a day before that appearance, on November 12, 1996.) Author Steven Hyden writes the liner notes.

Both reissues are available on December 1. Pre-order links and track details are below!