Listen: Wilco Unveil 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of ‘A Ghost is Born’: 65 Previously Unheard Tracks

Photo: Peter Crosby

Remember to remember me

Standing still in your past

A Ghost Is Born, Wilco’s 2004 album, known for “Hummingbird,” “Handshake Drugs,” and other long-lasting fan favorites that demonstrated the band’s musical dexterity coming off the success of experimental Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, has arrived in deluxe form. Today’s Nonesuch Records release presents 65 previously unheard tracks, 9 LPs/4 CD box sets, and a 9 CD bundle. And is available on all digital streaming platforms.

Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born was initially released in 2004. Before receiving a Grammy for Best Recording Package, the collection debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard charts, revered for its ability to churn out moody ballads and pop-leaning incantations spliced with punkier moments, all the while residing under the art rock umbrella. 

At the time of production, Wilco consisted of members: Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Mikael Jorgensen. Ultimately, Bach left Wilco after finishing A Ghost is Born sessions, and in his place, they ushered in new players, Pat Sansone and Nels Cline. The newcomers supported the set on tour and still remain integral parts of the six-piece.  

In the new linear notes, Tweedy reflects, “Making that record and then finding this lineup, that was the start of something—of having a band that can play anything. That’s why, twenty years later, we’re still here and still going.”

Wilco initiated the sessions that would serve as the making of A Ghost is Born in 2002 at Chicago’s Soma E.M.S., where they mixed Foxtrot. Much of the album was tracked live in studio, pulling from Tweedy’s notebooks: poetry, lyrics, and prose. “In between more traditional song tracking, the group would engage in a series of conceptual improvisations in the studio. These musical experiments, broadly known as ‘Fundamentals’ …were part of what Kotche said was ‘an attempt to search for a new group identity. To see what we could make this band into.’”

Production brought the Windy City band to New York in 2003, where they finished recording at Sear Sound. “It seemed like the band needed to get out of Chicago, get out of the working mode they’d been in, and only be thinking about making a record,” Jim O’Rourke [who mixed Foxtrot and Ghost] told Bob Mehr [who wrote the liner notes for the group’s anniversary set].

In retrospect, Tweedy reflects: I was worried the album was going to feel like something dark and not me anymore. But the album was ahead of me as a person. It was the part of me that I was trying to preserve—enthusiastic and furious about the world, as well as open and loving. I reached that in the music, before I could get there emotionally on my own.”

Today’s mega release features 65 previously unheard takes on Wilco material derived from A Ghost Is Born. Stream now, or browse the deluxe collection and its variants here.

A Ghost Is Born 9 LP & 4 CD/9 CD Deluxe Edition

65 previously unreleased tracks:

A Ghost Is Born

1. At Least That’s What You Said

2. Hell Is Chrome

3. Spiders (Kidsmoke)

4. Muzzle of Bees

5. Hummingbird

6. Handshake Drugs

7. Wishful Thinking

8. Company in My Back

9. I’m a Wheel

10. Theologians

11. Less Than You Think

12. The Late Greats

dBpm: Outtakes/Alternates 1