A confession : when the album was released, I kind of shrugged at this song, not because I didn’t like it, but because I did like it, as opposed to “loving it” or “dying for it” like Hummingbird or Company in My Back, the two other melodic stand outs on the LP. I thought it was a bit too laid back or too derivative of classic 70’s stuff, something like 73-75 Bowie producing 73-75 Steely Dan, with flashes of 73-75 Rundgren (and yes @dirkster, maybe some 73-74 Randy Newman too !). But as the years went on, the song has grown and grown on me, especially thanks to some transcendental live performances. The build-up towards the screaming bridge and the whole « A Ghost Is Born » part have proven to be one of the most stellar Wilco sections as far as I'm concerned. Crucially, this track also sees the invention of the Sky Blue Sky sound, foreshadowing another favorite moment of mine, the soul-inflected bridge of You Are My Face. Once again, there’s one song linking to the next LP, and once again it seems Jeff & co. are perfectly aware if it : out of the egg, will come a bird, and soon enough this bird will be flying up to the sky (blue sky), as seen on the next cover art. How they manage to conceptualize it and make it work is beyond me. We’re close to the ending of Ghost, and the next album is being invented in front of us, Theologians being the first masterpiece of the next Wilco era. Needless to say, I don’t shrug at this fabulous song anymore. “A ghost is born”, yes, or more precisely, a new band is born.
"Theologians"- Great comments already. It does point the way to Sky Blue Sky, but still feels very much a part of A Ghost Is Born. They are starting to get into that mid 70s AM radio dad rock phase, which becomes a complete shift on the next album. I don't want to jump ahead so I will save all my thoughts about that when we get there. I never realized it, but this does have a bit of early 70s Bowie in the piano and guitar style. I can now hear Bowie singing it sitting at the piano in his Ziggy gear. This would have been a great closing tune for the album as he mentions "A ghost is born" and goes into the ending with the "Cherry ghost" lines. Yep! This is another great song. Not quite a top five song on the album for me, but pretty close. 4.5/5
Theologians is a great song. Definitely one of my favorites from this record. I would say it may not be top 10 Wilco for me, but its definitely top 20. Never thought about it pointing the way to Sky Blue Sky, but it totally does.
"Theologians" is another Wilco classic. I love the interplay of the piano and the acoustic guitar that runs throughout. The electric guitar leading up to the solo has a very power pop feel (which I love). Great lyrics here that communicate a clear idea but do so in an oblique manner. This one is just outside of my top three tracks on the album, but I do like it a lot. Although I generally listen to albums all the way through, with A Ghost Is Born, I'm regularly tempted to hit the "stop" button after the end of this song.
Theologians is a great one. I love the 70s soul vibe, which despite its reputation as a noisy album, is a running theme across Ghost. Of course the bridge is amazing with some really hard crunch. And if Ghost is meant to be a posthumous letter to Jeff’s family, the lyric is a heavy hitter. A long time ago in the thread I mentioned that Jeff tends to be subversive of religious (particularly a Christian/biblical ones), and this is a great example. After dismissing the world of theologians, he plays on Jesus’ own words “where I’m going you cannot come...”, but turns them into a statement of defiance (“no one’s ever gonna take my life from me”). As for Theologians being a precursor to Sky Blue Sky, I’m not so sure. SBS has a bit of 70s soul vibe, but the lyrics are intentionally direct. Theologians is deliberately obtuse at times, most importantly with the whole cherry ghost image.
Wish I had time to say more about this great tune. Theologians has soul, though they may not know much about yours!
Both of these quotes are things that came to my mind, so I'll just use them. I also think the fairly simple rhythm serves the song well. Theologians is a fine song.
And then there's this one... Less Than You Think Credited to everybody: Bach/Jorgensen/Kotche/O'Rourke/Stirratt/Tweedy Jeff Tweedy: vocals, six-string acoustic bass, loops, filters, synths John Stirratt: acoustic guitar, loops, filters, synths Glenn Kotche: drums, hammer dulcimer,loops, filters, synths Leroy Bach: acoustic guitar, loops, filters, synths Mikael Jorgensen: Serge modular synthesizer Jim O'Rourke: loops, filters, synths I would like to officially ask each one of you how often you listen to the entire 15 minute piece. I will be dead honest with you. I rarely make it all the way through. I always listen to the 'song' part of Less Than You Think and I often have the intention of trying to make it through the drone, but I almost always give up around seven minutes in. I just don't find the drone either pleasing to the ear or particularly interesting. I get that it is an attempt to capture what a migraine feels like in sound, but I'm just not the kind of person who will listen to twelve minutes of white noise. I like songs. I don't begrudge Jeff and the guys putting this on the album (it's their album) but I'd be lying if I said I thought it was essential or that I loved it. They don't do the drone part live. As for the song portion, I actually think it is very beautiful but deeply sad and I love the use of the hammered dulcimer in it. It adds a spectral eeriness to it. Jeff's voice sounds near tears and the lyrics are full of so much pain and disenchantment. Jeff said the lyrics meditate on the idea of free will, and I can hear that. There is an element of nihilism in there as well and existential dread. It's definitely a very dark song and captures him at one of his lowest points even on this album in which he spends most of the running time contemplating his own death. (This morning I made it to 8:26 in 'Less Than You Think.' It was bothering my cat).
I have to be in just the right mood to listen to the whole 15 minutes of Less Than You Think. It doesn't happen very often. If I remember correctly, on the last night of the 2008 Chicago residency, they played this as the final song of the main set, and left the instruments feeding back as they left the stage. That said, the song itself is quite good, and the sparse instrumentation perfectly fits the simple, pretty melody. Jeff's vocal is very vulnerable. It's interesting that Jeff says it's about free will, because I always thought it was about death.
I've only listened to the whole thing once, and that was way back when the album first came out. It left the wrong impression as if the whole album was like that. Now, I just skip it, rather easily.
4 minutes... and the first time I’ve even bothered with the song in at least 15 years. Totally self-indulgent. I probably shouldn’t pop back in just to say that...but I did take up the challenge and that’s as far as I got!
Less Than You Think. A nice piano and vocal intro. The gently rising strings? mellotron? is very effective, and the song sounds like it is going to be a beautiful addition to the album. The whole gentle ensemble sneaks into play, almost, and the arrangement works really well. The drone, holds no interest to me whatsoever.... I actually get kind of annoyed by these kinds of "artistic statements " because they are empty noise in my world. I have never listened to the whole thing, and never will. In fact the song must have been playing in the car, and I started up the car the next day to the start of the noise... thinking "it'll end in a minute", but ended up hitting the skip, with some punctuated cussing. MMM junior, and I don't like either
Less Than You Think I listen to the whole thing almost every time. It’s not “white noise”. White noise is that “static” noise you used to get on a TV when it wasn’t tuned into any channel, and I doubt I’d ever bother listening to 12 minutes of *that*. Nobody would. The final 12 minutes of this song are somewhat ambient, somewhat edgy, and they can test your patience occasionally, but the sounds within do evolve and hold my interest. I don’t recall where I read it, but the process of recording those 12 minutes was described and it was definitely not as simple as getting some feedback and then leaving the room while the instruments made noise. I think each of the musicians recorded separately and then the results were mixed later in a fluid process where some of the separate recording tracks would be rising and others would be falling in the soundscape at any given time. Playback at higher volume also reveals more details that I didn’t notice at lower volume. I get it though: this is a very “marmite” track. You either like it or you hate it. But I personally think it works great as a setup for the next track. However, that’s a topic for tomorrow. As for the lyrics, they are quite interesting: “Your mind's a machine It's deadly and dull It's never been still and its will Has never been free Lightly tapping A high-pitched drum As your spine starts to shine You shiver at your soul A fist so clear and climbing Punches a hole In the sky So you can see For yourself If you don't believe me There's so much less To this than you think It's almost gone The night is dissolving In a cup God lifts To toast the lightning Lightly tapping It's high-pitched and it hums Your spine starts to shine And you shiver at your soul A fist so clear and climbing Punches a hole In the sky So you can see For yourself If you don't believe me There's so much less To this than you think” Is it a knock at religion and mysticism, saying there’s “less than you think” to them? Or is he saying there’s “less than you think” when it comes to the actions you can take to set your mind free? I get both possible interpretations here. I am reminded of a Husker Du song called “Power Lines” on New Day Rising when I read Tweedy’s lyrics here.
"Less Than You Think" is the song that sort of pulls this record down in my personal rating of Wilco records. I appreciate the song, and I fully understand why its there and why Jeff put it on the record. But to me it just totally breaks the flow of the record and sort of "disrupts" my listening experience. I love the first part of it, but the extended "drone" is just too much. I read somewhere, where Jeff considered at one time to put it on a separate disc and I sort of wish he had. It is sort of the records "Revolution 9," but I end up listening to that song most of the time because there are so many bits of weirdness that it holds my attention. This song, unfortunately does not do that. As I have mentioned before on any given day AGIB would be my favorite Wilco record. If it weren't for this song - or the second part of it - AGIB might, just might, win hands down. @Parachute Woman I played it all the way through the first time I played the CD - I had read about the song before listening. I hate to admit it but I am pretty sure I've never listened to more than a minute or so of it since. I love the song we are going to discuss tomorrow, so its an automatic skip for me once the first 3 minutes of song end.
Quoting @jalexander's post - " A long time ago in the thread I mentioned that Jeff tends to be subversive of religious (particularly a Christian/biblical ones), and this is a great example. After dismissing the world of theologians, he plays on Jesus’ own words “where I’m going you cannot come...”, but turns them into a statement of defiance (“no one’s ever gonna take my life from me”). " That's a really interesting/good observation. I will try to find it but I read an article recently - cannot remember if it was an old one or a new one - about Jeff's conversion to Judaism. It may be discussed too in his book - I just can't remember. But it was a really good read and I will try to dig it out and post a link.
I don’t mind the “noise part” at all, if only because it sets The Late Greats off very effectively. I’ve always thought it was a joke about the early 00’s trend of hidden tracks after a 20 minutes blank. Oh, ok, I hear you, it’s also because Ghost is the migraine record, of course. But I like to think of it as a Wilco joke. As for the song, it’s fine as well, almost beautiful. It shoots for Reservations but falls a little short. The melody is perhaps too deliberately generic to achieve greatness, or even the kind of hymnal purity it’s aiming at. And for the life of me, I can never remember it fully whenever I try to hum it for myself as a lullaby. The best part for me is Jeff’s singing, the way he’s coming back to the At Least That’s What You Said whispering voice, frail phrasing and hushed feeling. If it was a concept album, it'd work wonderfully. In truth, it’s so well done that it makes the whole thing feel like it is indeed a concept album after all ! I really like this sequencing a lot : the subdued hymnal finale, the crazy noise, and then the unexpected bittersweet pop nugget… it’s really brilliant – and I can't wait for my 2LP set to be delivered, so that I can listen to experience this vinyl Side 4 properly. This is not Tweedy’s best composition by a long shot, nor is the drone his best « arty » idea, but as a conceptual device, I think it works perfectly well.
I never listen to the noise section. In fact, many years ago I edited this track down to the basic song length and that is how it is in my library. If I play the CD, I just hit skip at the end of the tune itself ...
"I'm a Wheel" I never much cared for this song. It isn't that the lyrics are deliberately silly, or that it's a punk rock burst in the middle of an otherwise ruminative record. I just don't think it's very well done. I've seen this one four times, and two of those were show closers. One of those was 2006/04/22 at the College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, VA. That was a weird show in a gym, with only college kids allowed on the floor, and a 19-song set of what you might call Wilco's "greatest hits." I don't know if there was a venue curfew, or the band wasn't feeling the crowd, or what, but to end that show with this song felt like a let-me-down. The band played marvelously, though. I also saw it close the "An Evening with Wilco" show, 2010/03/29 in Richmond, VA. That was a 36-song show with an acoustic set in the middle. Though I never like "I'm a Wheel" as a closer, you just can't complain after a show like that.
"Theologians" One of the all-time great Wilco songs, and one of the best on a great record. I have to quarrel a bit with Parachute Woman's Latin. I do see it quoted across Google hits as Inlitterati, but the lyric is actually Illiterati lumen fidei, which could be translated as "the illiterate light of faith." Lumen fidei is a well-known concept in the Church, see Lumen Fidei (29 June 2013) | Francis but Tweedy is saying here that the theologians don't know nothing about his soul. His lay knowledge of his own personal light of faith is illiterate, or unstudied by doctrinaires. The idea that a lay understanding of spiritual matters can exceed the understanding of, or is of more personal value than, the study of the clergy is an idea as old as the Reformation, if not older. This interpretation is reinforced by the full lyric: Illiterate lumen fedei God is with us everyday The illiterate light Is with us every night Where "the illiterate light" calls back to the illiterate light of faith in the Latinate. I think that the lyrics: I'm going away Where you will look for me Where I'm going you cannot come No one's ever gonna take my life from me I lay it down A Ghost is born refer obviously to Tweedy's belief that his own death was imminent. This is not only a killer bridge, but it's the heart of the record. It's followed by: I am a notion I am all emotion I am a cherry ghost After his death, he's nothing but an idea, or a feeling, in the minds of his loved ones. He wants them to remember him sweetly, thus a cherry ghost. Of course, cherry can also connote newness or freshness, tying further into the concept of the ghost being born. Jeff is the ghost. They've played it at 7/13 Wilco shows I've seen, though the first three should be thrown out because before the song's live debut, so it's more like 7/10. I think the group likes playing this one. Jeff's played it 70 times solo, including at the first solo show I saw, 2005/11/12 at Messiah College in Grantham, PA, another college show in a gym. He did it there as part of a theological trinity (a holy trinity, perhaps?) with "The Ruling Class" and "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down."
The other day, I played the album on the home stereo, and when I got to "Less Than You Think," I thought this would be a good time to listen through the whole track. See how it sounds on the big speakers. After about 5 minutes of the noise, I heard a bedroom door down the hallway click shut. That was all that the kid could stand. But I couldn't take much more, either. I agree that it's not just white noise, but there are some high-pitched sounds in there that were just giving me a headache. If that was Jeff's goal, to make you suffer like he suffers, congrats to him. If it was just his idea of a joke to test your patience until you're driven to reach for the skip button, kudos on that, too. But it is a bit much. Half would have been plenty. If he actually hoped for people to listen through the whole 12 minutes, there are things he could've done to make it an enjoyable experience. Since almost nobody really enjoys it, I have to believe that this never was his intent.
"Less Than You Think" is the one misfire of the album for me. And it's not just the drone. I know I'm the guy who keeps harping on the 2002 live versions of these songs, but this is one where I think the album version is simply not as good as the previous live version were. The emotion of the song really shined through when they used to play it live. The instrumentation was better. John's harmony vocals on the final chorus brought it all to another level. In comparison, the album version feels sterile and a little lifeless. Even before you get to the drone, the track is a letdown, for me. Then there's the drone, which is one of those ideas they should have thought through a little more. We've seen how well the band can do noise. The work on YHF speaks for itself — it's interesting. The drone on "Less Than You Think," in addition to going on too long, just isn't interesting. I get the concept. But it doesn't make it worth listening to. There were a lot more worthwhile things (including noisy or f-ed up stuff), they could have done with that precious album running time.
Great analysis and one that sets the stage for Less Than You Think. I listen to the full drone every time I hear the album, but not if the song comes up on shuffle. It’s definitely not white noise and it definitely evolves (there’s a high pitch seesaw that comes into play late in the game for example). I can understand that if you’re into well-composed songs, this won’t be your cup or marmite. But we’ve gone from Jeff shaking his fist at the sky in Theologians, to this track about the potential meaninglessness of it all and then drifting off into the endless oblivion that is a migraine. If you’ve never had one, this is an accurate representation of one, especially if you put on headphones and focus in. The slowly evolving nature of the drone also demonstrates a certain weird focus and clarity that can be found in this kind of pain. This is part of where I would differentiate the anxiety and panic songs against the migraine ones. They are different experiences and somehow Jeff found a way to communicate these aspects of his life very well. And then after preparing to die and drifting off into oblivion... we’ll, let’s talk about that tomorrow.
I’m one of the weird ones who does enjoy it. Part of that enjoyment is in embracing the difference between noise and drone. Handshake Drugs gave is an amazing noise meltdown, but am ambient drone is simply a different beast. Do I want Wilco to go there all the time? Nope. But I’m glad their catalogue contains an exploration like this, and it’s an important part of Jeff’s narrative that noise wouldn’t communicate. I also think the observation about it sounding sterile is a good one, but again I would assume that to be a deliberate choice. Look at the artwork - again very sterile. So as with Spiders that has had earthier live arrangements, the album seems to balance this idea of a living breathing human being in a stark, operating room-like world, and I think they achieve that here.
