ALBUMS THAT GOT SCREWED: Mayday

Here's a tricky one for any accounting department: how do you explain your company giving something away, then buying it back? The good folks from Warner Brothers are probably still scratching their heads over that one. But it worked out in the end, because Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has gone gold.

Back in 2001, Wilco were just a scrappy alternative band out of Chicago that had charmed the critics (and Nora Guthrie) but had failed to find a large nationwide audience. After they finished work on their highly experimental new album, Warner Brothers rejected the tapes, claiming the new material to be uncommercial. Finally, Wilco asked to be released from their contract. Warner Brothers offered to sell the YHF master tapes to the group for $50,000. This bit of pointless greed brought the company some mighty negative press, and they eventually agreed to let Wilco have the rights, providing the band got lost.

While the band contemplated their next move, Wilco fans began flooding the MP3 world with poor-quality bootlegs of the new material. Wilco decided to release the entire album on their website, and it became a great success. Soon Nonesuch Records, a division of Warner Brothers, signed the band, boughtthe album and released it to great acclaim and success.

I have to admit, I didn't fall in love with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at first. I thought Jeff Tweedy and right-hand man Jay Bennett (who quit after the sessions were complete) had gone too far. Too much ambient noise. Too many long, spaced-out interludes. But it grew on me, and I eventually came to appreciate the album's strangely cohesive weirdness. Tweedy has described this approach as giving the album "space," instead of making it a compact, too-tight collection of songs.

Warner Brothers should just be glad they still have Wilco in their family. They've proven to be one of rock's most popular live acts, and their last two studio albums have debuted in the top ten. Not commercial? Who says?

TODAY'S RECOMMENDATION: "Jesus Etc." by Wilco
AVAILABLE ON: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; iTunes