I'm not surprised that Wilco's new album has been damned with faint praise from hip reviewing establishments; the ending is just terrible, as the penultimate track, "Less Than You Think" is a three minute song that is unlucky enough to be saddled with twelve minutes of noise. (Jeff Tweedy supposedly was trying to simulate the migranes that turned him to drugs, but it sounds more like an amplification of the high-pitched whine industrial fluorescent lights used to make years ago, with some other stuff dubbed in and mixed to the bottom.) Then the last track, "The Late Greats," is two and a half minutes of forgettable melody and painfully bad lyrics. No wonder Pitchfork hipsters have triggered their inevitable cool-backlash. (It's amazing Radiohead have staved it off for so long.) It's unfortunate that Tweedy decided to end this album so badly, because the first forty-five minutes are as strong as anything Wilco has ever recorded. This is what you get when you drive out a flamboyant keyboardist while experimenting with noise rock; something that's minimalist as it is anarchic, as warm as it is mechanical. Like if the Velvet Underground really had cut an album in a "closet." Spiders (Kidsmoke)is the core of the album, ten minutes of bizarre noise jamming, piano hook and understated synth that's surprisingly seductive, no matter how many critics think it's indulgent or dull. The other tracks are organic but tight, atonal but inviting. This album synthesizes so many elements of what's come before that it all sounds fresh; instead of wedding influences together into a chimerical fantasy, like YHF (you could almost hear the critics salivating to compare that one to the two least likely albums in the classic rock canon they could think of), A Ghost Is Born sums the entirety of rock music history seamlessly and humbly. Furthermore, Tweedy's new mastery of his voice is unexpected and lovely. This album is not perfect or cohesive, and the choice the listener will have to make between concluding the album with fifteen minutes of suffering or the power button mean this one will never be on anybody's top tier. But the good parts are as good as anything Wilco's ever done; maybe even better.