A Ghost Is Born is a good album, but I'm not sure yet just how good. Sometimes I think it's right up there with Summerteeth as a truly great album, but at other times I'm more ambivalent, reckoning it to miss as often as it hits. To start with the definite hits: the opening five cuts are all really good, especially the "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" - "Muzzle of Bees" - "Hummingbird" sequence. The moody, midtempo rock atmospherics are delicately, perfectly balanced from the slow piano beginning and the sliding yet careful guitar line which cuts in at about 2 minutes in through the elegant rockisms of the rest of the album's opening run (I particularly like "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"). But I'm not so sure about the record's second half-and-a-bit, which doesn't make me feel in the same way and sometimes feels like a regression to the blandness of YHF and the one or two less distinguished moments on Summerteeth; whereas the first few tracks derive their glory from their subtlety and understatedness, these last ones can drag a bit and seem just plain uninteresting. Good to see that the band haven't lost their facility for silvery jingles - as evident in "The Late Greats" - and, to a lesser extent, "Hummingbirds", too.
Maybe this is one that needs to be lived with over an extended period of time in order to fully unfurl itself, because it does seem to take on a different hue and complexion with each listen - and especially its second half...besides, Wilco albums always grow on me gradually, to greater or lesser extents.
