Song 94: She's a Jar

I'm not sure I've ever written about this song before, though it's a significant song for me. This is the second track on Wilco's 1999 album 'Summerteeth' and so, in fact, the second Wilco song I heard, since 'Summerteeth' was the first Wilco album I listened to, though my interest had been piqued by a 1997 review of 'Being There'.

Mercury Rev's 'Deserter's Songs', from late 1998, saw the start of my shift from Britrock to Americana, but Wilco turned out to be the one I would hold on to longer. They remain one of my favourite bands and I would say that they are a) one of the two best live bands I've seen, and b) the band with the strongest catalogue of the last 25 years.

I think I'd heard 'Can't Stand It', the single and opening track, before I'd bought the album. It's quite sharp and poppy, good enough, tacked on the album because the label needed a single. Otherwise, 'She's a Jar' would have been Track 1, and that would have been quite a start.

She's a Jar

I'd never really heard anything like it before, strange as that sounds in retrospect. There's a great darkness to Wilco between 97 and 2004 (some would say in their recording prime) which hasn't been there since, however much they've continued to make fine records and put on glorious live shows. On 'Summerteeth', that darkness is allied to a musical sweetness that is unnerving, and 'She's a Jar' is the epitome of that.

Jeff Tweedy sings these short, associative, phrases, strumming on an acoustic, while all manner of sweet keyboard orchestrations and mellotron wobbles go on behind him. There are a lot of Dave Fridmann productions around that time (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Delgados etc) and this is the nearest Wilco get to joining that, woozy and rich and beguiling. That's the Jay Bennett influence - this could be Bennett's finest moment.

Lyrically, it's a mix of obscure and brutally straightforward, in a way that is involving and moving. I'd go so far as to say it's one of the greatest lyrics ever written. The most notorious moment is the "twist" ending when Tweedy turns the refrain "she begs me not to miss her" to "she begs me not to hit her", one of the few genuinely shocking moments in a song you'll hear.

I remember once playing it somewhere on a boombox (it's one of the last albums I ever bought on tape) and someone came into the room and told me to turn it off cos it was shit and depressing, which is just the reaction you want from certain people sometimes.

Anyway, I've seen Wilco a few times and they've played this a couple of times, and the live versions have been phenomenal. There are a handful of truly beautiful Wilco songs, and 'She's a Jar' is the darkest of them, and still, just about, my favourite. 

I'd say it's alongside Like a Rolling Stone, More Adventurous and a handful of others as one of the most seminal (in the correct sense of the word) songs in my music taste, one of those moments of "this is it, this is how I want a song to make me feel", and I've never really got tired of it.