Summerteeth

Wilco

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 9, 1999)
• Original Release Date: March 9, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Reprise / Wea
• ASIN: B00000I5JS
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (197 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,644 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Wilco's de facto frontman, Jeff Tweedy, sports a colorful past, one where he wrote paint-peelers dedicated to late Minutemen founder D. Boon as a member of the feted (and maybe fated) Uncle Tupelo and where he dolefully crooned Woody Guthrie lyrics on 1998's Mermaid Avenue. But Wilco's Summer Teeth shows hardly a tatter of Tweedy's herky-jerky postpunk intensity or the agrarian rootsiness that so often came in the past from him. Instead this layered album spreads its digits far into guitar-heavy Britpop, with full-group backing vocals carrying bouncy choruses and synths whistling over the melodies. The tunes sound like a crosshatch of orchestral plans and an execution drawing on Alex Chilton and Big Star, the Kinks, and, only distantly, Wilco's debut, A.M. "We're Just Friends" and "Via Chicago" stand as harmonized twists on ballad formulas, the latter recalling Mermaid Avenue's "California Stars" with the opening line, "I dreamed about killing you again last night / And it felt all right to me." So it's not always uplifting or cheery, but it's got dozens of surprises in a mere 15 songs. --Andrew Bartlett

Entertainment Weekly
Teeth is packed with poignant mid-tempo ballads that would've seemed right at home on a top 10 list in 1975.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Great Great Disc, June 5, 2004

By	Terence M. Kelley "TM Kelley" (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What do you say about one of our generation's most defining albums when no one has heard of it? The music, lyrics, and that undefinable edge of this album rank it as an all time classic, but few critics would rank this in their top picks. The reason is simple: Wilco's success has always been limited to intelligent discerning individuals looking for great music-not the next big thing. Wilco might never become Top-40 radio darlings, or their next album might propel them to popularity on par with the Beatles. Either way, they remain one of the best bands out there-no matter what genre of music you listen to.

Summerteeth is a miasma of rock, pop, and country music swirled into an amazing tapestry of sound. The songs evoke hard and true feelings: bitter anguish and bubbling euphoria. Like all truly great albums by truly great bands, they defy description and they work together. Wilco doesn't use cheesy concepts or themes to tie their songs to one another, but this is one disc you have to listen to all the way through to appreciate.

In the end, that greatness may be their commericial undoing. Although certain tracks would certainly work on pop radio, they're not as good by themselves. To hear one of Summerteeth's songs without hearing the rest of the album is like reading a single and random chapter of a great novel-it may be good reading while you're reading it, but you have to read the whole thing to appreciate its magnitude.

Buy this album, and listen to it, and it alone, for a week. Then buy Yankee Foxtrot Hotel and A Ghost Is Born and consider yourself a Wilco fanatic. Trust me-it's worth it.

PS: also check out Greg Kot's forthcoming (June 15th) book on the Wilco. Greg is the Chicago Tribune's lead rock critic and one of the most honest and earnest voices out there today. His reviews are right on and transcend criticism to bring you the true story and significance of the music.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprise! The Hoopla is Worth It., January 22, 2000

By	Patrick F Clifford (Columbust, OH) - See all my reviews

I love Uncle Tupelo. Unlike so many people who have been drawn to Son Volt and Wilco through the emergence of "altenative radio", I have been listening to Uncle Tupelo for a long time and I have always hated Jeff Tweedy. Jay Ferrar was always the romantic, Neil Young inspired tunesmith (what a horrible word!). Through all of their records, I found myself ignoring all of Tweedy's harder-edged contributions to that incredible band. So when I picked up "Summer Teeth", I did so grudgingly (for want of anything else in the store at the time)and then felt like such a misdirected fool. This record is so dense, so immediate, so seemingly heartfelt and direct that I had to go back and re-evaluate all of my attitudes.

This is an incredible pop album influenced by hard core country sentiment, rock & roll experimentation (which probably bummed me out so much about Jeff Tweedy's work in UT), and just great heart-felt songwriting. What incredible songwriting! The arrangements are intelligent and (should I sound stupid) overwhelmingly daring for a band birthed from American roots-rock. Jeeeze. The first couple of songs cruise though, then "A Shot in the Arm" hits. You can just feel this one. Then the perfect pop of "I'm Always in Love" (nice baritone guitar and Moog) and "Nothing's evergonnastandinmyway (again)". Then "Via Chicago" rolls through. Wow. This is an album for people who listen to their music, for people who want to feel something. Tweedy's voice just drips with emotion and loss and I buy it. The production is, again, dense and relevant. Moogs, guitar noise (a bad thing done so without intention), and strings all play together amazingly. I, for one, amhumbled by how well this record is crafted. And it is crafted: everything works, everything drives the songs forward. This is one of the best albums of the nineties and maybe (we'll see) one of the best of all time.

I still love Son Volt and UT, but if Jeff Tweedy keeps throwing out stuff like this, I'll have to reevaluate the importance of those bands. Right now, with each Son Volt album mining the same roots rock seam, Wilco, with it's experimental bent is forging a future even this UT fan can't argue with.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ok, you'll like summer teeth if..., April 5, 2002

By A Customer

This disc is so across the board, you truly can't really pin it down to a certain group of people's tastes. so i guess i'll try to pin it down.

if you're a fan of the beatles/the beach boys/the kinks/the byrds/any good 1960s pop band: you'll like SUMMER TEETH's melodic, catchy, hook side, sort of experimental side. Familiar sounds might be 12 string electric on hook heavy "can't stand it" and the great pop of "nothingsevergonnastandinmyway(again)" and mellotron on the previous mentioned along with "she's a jar" and "my darling" (with beatles and beach boys influences clearly evident) and backward piano on "how to fight loneliness". also, note the timpani on "a shot in the arm".

if you're a fan of elvis costello/devo/80's pop: you'll like SUMMER TEETH's use of angular song forms and synths on songs like "a shot in the arm", "im always in love" and "elt".

if you're a fan of beck/radio/experimental 90's stuff: you'll like all the previously mentioned songs have the element of the computer's effect on music today. almost all the songs on here sound like they were ran through protools. which they probably were.

if you're a fan of britney spears/nsync/shaggy: um...you NEED SUMMER TEETH :)

all these "if you likes" sort of have a common denominator: they're all sort of an influence, by each other and together. well, not the last one. A HEADPHONE RECORD ALL OVER THE PLACE - A 90s "REVOLVER".