The Books That You Don’t Read Anyway

Wilco “Poor Places”

“Poor Places” is about a very particular lonely state of mind, but the lyrics are all scattered thoughts and images: The sound of his father’s voice trailing off. Bandages, broken jaws, a drunk rock singer, an air-conditioned room at the top of the stairs. There’s moments of desperation, and details that are basically inconsequential but somehow seem essential to getting across the feeling.

And in the middle of all this oblique poetry, Jeff Tweedy sings one line that’s direct and entirely unambiguous: “I really want to see you tonight.” You don’t say that if there’s a real possibility of it happening. It’s the need that is unmet. It’s the help you can’t even really ask for. The guy in “Poor Places” knows he’s a mess, and he knows he needs to be alone. He can’t bring himself to care about anything else. But he’s longing for connection, affection, distraction. He can’t have it.

The ending of “Poor Places” is resignation bleeding into oblivion. He decides to shut out the world, and the song shifts from a delicate and elegant middle section into a graceless thudding rhythm and cacophony. There’s a sample from a numbers station recording, a woman crisply annunciating “yankee…hotel…foxtrot” over and over in a clipped mid-Atlantic accent. She sounds unreal and robotic. It sounds menacing in context, particularly as the thud of the beat becomes more aggressive. It also sounds completely meaningless, like some detail your mind fixates on as everything else falls out of focus. You just stare until your consciousness dissolves.

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