...pummels this and Radiohead and Nirvana.

that's a good record, but, sorry, it rips from aeroplane. it's like comparing apples and applesauce. nothing against wilco, but they owe a serious debt to a number of rougher, short-lived bands that came before. the replacements come to immediate mind. if mangum had stuck around, i'm sure he could've turned out something smooth and slightly overproduced that would've knocked your socks off. i'm glad he didn't.

I think indie music snobs tend to call anything that's not recorded in one take "overproduced." I disagree. Anyway, I wasn't saying Mangum's stuff was bad, just that YHF is much better.

It's time to bury, forever, the canard that indie rock is about underproduction (or that it is "about" anything for that matter). It was, once, and in NMH records went a long way toward showing what you could do in your bedroom or in a friend's living room, but that just doesn't hold true anymore. Two words: Arcade Fire.