(FORTUNE Magazine) – WILCO Summer Teeth Reprise Records

Jeff Tweedy has made a career out of committing career suicide. Just as his first band, Uncle Tupelo, teetered on the brink of a breakthrough in 1994, Tweedy and partner Jay Farrar abruptly parted ways. Two years later his new group of Midwestern twang-rock pioneers, Wilco, broke every law of the one-hit-wonder marketplace by putting out Being There, a sprawling double album. Then, instead of cutting a normal follow-up, Wilco teamed up with England's Billy Bragg for Mermaid Avenue, an album based on a batch of obscure Woody Guthrie lyrics.

But Tweedy's no fool. While hundreds of bands have been bullied into becoming drowsy radio workhorses, Wilco's still a wild card, bucking and champing at the bit.

You'll hear a lot of things on Summer Teeth that you'd never find on MTV: harmonies that chime like cathedral bells, orchestrations as dense and gleaming as Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, surreal poetry that calls to mind Bob Dylan's mid-'60s hot streak.

In all honesty, there's something way too musty and quaint about Wilco. Listening to Summer Teeth is like strolling through a classic-rock antiques shop, and Wilco's slow tunes tend to get stuck in a plodding, lethargic rut. But compared with niche-marketed dreck like 'N Sync, even Wilco's mistakes come as a relief. Careful planning is fine for your 401(k). With rock & roll, risk pays off almost every time.

--Jeff Gordinier

JEFF GORDINIER is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.