There’s a perfunctory, fan-service quality to any longtime band’s collection of outtakes, rarities and live performances. Yet this four-disc peek behind the curtain of adventurous Chicago rock outfit Wilco fascinatingly lays bare the band’s ambitions — and, often more intriguing, its faults.
It’s not often that a band is as open with its rubbish as Wilco is on “Alpha Mike Foxtrot.” As a result, what could have been a random collection of odds and ends — or worse, a nostalgia grab — isn’t so much a look at Wilco’s alternate-history past as it is a glimpse at ground the band still has to cover.
Though “Alpha Mike Foxtrot” is curated by the band, it attempts to look back on Wilco’s two-decade history as unsparingly as the 2002 documentary “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” the Sam Jones-directed film that chronicles the group’s acrimonious split from Reprise Records.
Check the self-depreciating way Wilco architect Jeff Tweedy introduces one track and see if it doesn’t pique your curiosity: “Pretty painful listening,” he writes in the accompanying notes about the little-known original “Let Me Come Home.”
The bandleader’s criticism is on the nose, but that’s far from the only head-scratching moment here worthy of deeper investigation.
How about, for instance, the sound of Wilco the punk rock band? “Student Loan Stereo” is less than two minutes of hoarse shouting, guitars that sound as if they’re overheating and a bottle-breaking grand finale. “Always one of my favorite tracks,” confesses Tweedy, and it’s not the only time Wilco reveals its lineage from the Replacements, circa 1983 (see the set’s sprint-through of early-career country ballad “Passenger Side”), making one wonder whether the band’s folk-leaning tendencies have occasionally been misplaced.
One can take solace in the fact that despite all the lineup changes, Wilco appears to be a band that trusts its instincts. Though Tweedy admits fan favorites such as the sunny-side-up “A Magazine Called Sunset” should have been cut, alternate takes of songs from 1999’s colorful, keyboard-soaked”Summerteeth” show a disaster was nearly avoided.
It’s the inclusion of this mistake that perhaps best makes the case for Wilco’s importance. Rather than rely on studio trickery or audience pandering, Wilco holds the song itself in highest regard. The rhythms and melody may be malleable toys that can and should be regularly bent out of shape — or downright stripped apart — but Wilco understands the difference between experimentation and over-thinking.
