A Ghost Is Born (Box Set)

A Ghost Is Born was released commercially on June 22, 2004, debuting at No. 8 on the Billboard chart. The album, which Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr calls ‘an eclectic array of dark ballads, upbeat pop songs, Krautrock chug, noise rock freakouts, and roots rock abandon,’ was widely acclaimed as one of 2004’s best, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NPR, NME, the Associated Press, The Wire, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and Uncut, among many others. The album earned the band its first Grammy, for Best Alternative Music Album.  The album also won a Grammy for Best Recording Package.

For the A Ghost Is Born recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Mikael Jorgensen; Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the band’s previous release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, co-produced the album with Wilco. Leroy Bach left Wilco at the completion of the sessions and the band announced the addition of two new members: Pat Sansone and Nels Cline. Sansone and Cline toured with Wilco to promote A Ghost Is Born and that lineup has remained unchanged since 2004. As Tweedy said to Mehr for his new liner note, “Making that record, and then finding this lineup, that was the start of something – of having a band that can play anything. That’s why, 20 years later, we’re still here and still going.”

9CD box set features the original studio album plus alternates, outtakes and demos; the complete October 2004 concert at the Wang Center in Boston; the complete Fundamentals, all housed at the back of the 48-page full-colour hardcover book [with previously unpublished photos and a new in-depth recording history of the album by Grammy winning writer Bob Mehr].