I was driving into work at Flock today, listening to Wilco’s album A Ghost is Born, and “Company In My Back” came on. I’ve listened to this album several times, but I received it from a friend along with three other Wilco albums, so I haven’t truly absorbed it yet. “Company In My Back” felt so right this morning that I had to give it a review of it’s own.
At the start of this song you can hear what was likely the folky riff that the song originated from. In true form, Wilco has taken this to a totally different place, using rhythmic breaks to make this intro as poppy as it is folky. It’s totally familiar and different at the same time.
Instead of committing to one of these styles, the verse launches with bass as the primary instrument. Acoustic guitar strumming and riffs compliment this bassline, but float between styles successfully, making the focus of the verse the vocals. Which is appropriate, considering the ugly, lustful lyrics that somehow also border on beautiful with Tweedy’s soft, unconcerned voice.
I attack with you, pure bug beauty
I curl my lips and crawl up to you
And your afternoon
And I’ve been puking
The chorus, rather than continuing to be subversively vague, hits full force with a confident drumbeat and the revelatory (but not really) lyric of “Holy shit there’s a company in my back”. We barely get a sense of the fantastic chorus melody before we’re dropped back into the verse, this time with a more solid rhythm and some sustained chords on the piano. The melody varies a bit here, which keeps us from getting bored.
The second chorus hits with even more force, and the full beauty of the melody becomes more apparent, backed by an orchestra of what I think are mandolins. The beauty of the melody should clash with the dark wording of the chorus, but it doesn’t. Instead, I hear the beauty of how screwed up life can be.
The third verse continues to play with our perceptions of what this song is, throwing in a synth riff that could just as well be in a Madonna song.
The final chorus leaves us with one last taste of that brilliant chorus melody and then dissolves into genre-crossing instrumentation that ends with that incredibly unique and compelling intro riff. I’m happy at the end of this song, but not satisfied. I want that chorus melody to go on and on, backed by a million clinking mandolins. And in a way, it does…you walk through the rest of your day with that orchestra right behind you, making the sorry state of the world something to appreciate just as much as the good things in life.
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Tags: Wilco, Company In My Back, A Ghost is Born, Evan Hamilton, review, music, folk, pop