A Ghost Is Born is the fifth studio album by the American rock band Wilco, released on June 22, 2004, by Nonesuch Records.

The album was produced by Jim O'Rourke, who mixed Foxtrot and was a member of Wilco side project Loose Fur.

[8][9] Tweedy sought to play solos on the album that were unlike those of jam bands such as Phish and The Grateful Dead.

I love all the possibilities that modern recording techniques allow, but I couldn't picture the idea of really wowing anyone with some crazy evolution of the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sound.An unusual feature of A Ghost Is Born is the fifteen-minute long track "Less Than You Think".

The second part consists of electronic drones and noise, intended to audibly represent the migraines that lead singer Jeff Tweedy had been suffering from while addicted to pain killers during the recording sessions for A Ghost Is Born.

The EP featured two outtakes from the album—"Panthers" and "Kicking Television"—and live versions of "At Least That's What You Said", "The Late Greats", and "Handshake Drugs".

[18] Jon Pareles of Rolling Stone called A Ghost Is Born "as eerie as anything Wilco have recorded yet" and applauded Tweedy for offering "illuminating curiosity about what can happen in a song.

"[33] Akiva Gottlieb of Stylus Magazine praised A Ghost Is Born as being "even more brilliant" than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,[34] a sentiment echoed by Michael Metevier of PopMatters, who added that the album made him "surprised and delighted enough to last several lifetimes.

Club wrote that A Ghost Is Born "channels its shaggy sound into pop music" that "constantly threatens to erupt into noise or fade into silence, but it's still hard not to hum along.

"[36] James Hunter of The Village Voice felt that "Wilco's ideas are unremarkable, but are worked out with intelligence and striking conception.

"[37] Q called the album "more meandering" than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but also "more confident, more coherent, yielding an all-enveloping warmth that's entirely resistant to any iPod shuffle function.

"[26] Among mixed reviews, Rob Mitchum of Pitchfork criticized A Ghost Is Born as "wildly uneven" and "less cohesive than any other Wilco release.

"[24] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau called it a "privileged self-indulgence" due to its extreme musical dynamics.

"[23] Joshua Klein of the Chicago Tribune felt that the album possessed an "incomplete" quality which nonetheless can be "quite intriguing, more of a side step than a forward leap, but a worthy experiment all the same.