“[You] struggle to find your skin,” Jeff Tweedy sang fittingly on “Can’t Stand It” from Wilco’s 1998 release “Summer Teeth.”

Wilco’s current struggles in releasing “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (Nonesuch) are a tired and sad story for music makers everywhere: The new album doesn’t possess any radio hits in the eyes and ears of record executives at Reprise, the band’s former label. Wilco soon was dropped from the label’s roster after the band submitted the new album (delaying its release by almost a year until the band signed with New York indie label Nonesuch).

Unlike “Summer Teeth,” an album that contained dark lyrics masked by layers of sunny synthesizers and overdubs, the lyrics on “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” are of the abstract, stream-of-consciousness vein.

Musically, the new album does build on the foundation its predecessor laid out. Many of the songs are built around Tweedy’s acoustic guitar work and the beats supplied by new drummer Glen Kotche.

Two of the album’s best tracks, “Heavy Metal Drummer” and “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” are so different that they sound almost as if two different bands recorded them.

“Heavy Metal Drummer” collects sparse piano, the hyper beat-box rhythms of Kotche, swirling synthesizers and the nostalgic lyrics of Tweedy (“I miss the innocence I’ve known”) to form one of the band’s most distinct-sounding songs.

“I’m the Man Who Loves You” is a kaleidoscopic foray that captures the bands’ Beatles-esque harmonies and some of Tweedy’s finer electric guitar playing (feedback included) with some vibrant horns that fit right in the mix.

Other tracks (“Jesus, etc.,” “War on War” and “Pot Kettle Black”) sound like early Wilco songs, though possibly remixed by someone outside the band. Electric blurbs mingle with organ, pedal steel guitar and Tweedy’s familiar, raspy voice.

The band – and Tweedy – seems comfortable in its own skin on “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” And in the process, Wilco has crafted a record that should serve to haunt record executives at Reprise for years to come.