Wilco “Venus Stopped The Train (Demo)”
Jay Bennett & Edward Burch “Venus Stopped The Train”

When Jay Bennett split from country-rock chameleons Wilco, he was apparently awarded a couple of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot outtakes in the divorce. For comparison today we have Bennett’s version, from his and buddy Edward Burch’s record The Palace at 4am (Part I), and the Wilco demo, sung by the band’s frontman, Jeff Tweedy.

Both feature piano prominently, but Bennett’s take is more layered (admittedly it’s not a demo), both with typical pop-rock accessories–lumbering bass, mellow drums, organ drone–and with some weirder stuff, like swamp chirp sound effects and backing vox that sound like they’ve been put through a Leslie speaker.

Other than the storm break at the opening–a nod to Black Sabbath? or Flipper?–and harmony vocals, the Wilco version is more of a piano ballad, leaving the song relatively bare.

Tweedy’s a singer-songwriter bandleader type who, according to all evidence, ultimately had the reins on YHF, and the demo’s keep-it-simple starkness may reflect this. Bennett can write a helluva tune himself, but he’s much more of a studio rat/multi-instro one-man-band in the mold of a Jon Brion, and while there’s nothing “maximal” about his album track, it does demonstrate the love of little details that can come out of a kitchen-sink approach.

I’m not really positing this as a competition, ’cause I can’t pick a favorite between the two, although the demo feels more precious for its being marginally harder to get ahold of.

I guess I really wanted to spotlight a song I love. A lot of “Venus Stopped The Train”’s appeal comes from its darkness and mixed emotions.

The song tells of a burnt-out, damaged gurl, tracing back the drug haze, the delinquency, the grasping need to be loved, to the abuse of a powerful father–”the light striking terror” as he opened her bedroom door and “reached out to her/while her mother slept.”

There’s deep, deep sympathy here, but also a revulsion at what the victim’s become, the regret over the price the speaker isn’t willing to pay for letting her love him. It’s not pretty–it’s complicated, it’s human, and it’s real.

P.S., and on a more light-hearted note, Jeff Tweedy doesn’t want yr kisses while he’s playing his music. (1:10)

The Palace at 4am (Part I) at Newbury Comics.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at Target.