Wilco will do: Chicago band draws line between jangly and jarring
The two best moments during Wilco’s Sunday night concert occurred when lead vocalist Jeff Tweedy was not singing.
In the sold-out UIC Pavilion on the first show of a two-night stint, Tweedy yielded the singing duties twice during the 28-song concert. Both episodes were thrilling. Bassist John Stirratt delivered an engaging, sumptuous version of “It’s Just That Simple,” a folk-flavored tune he wrote and sang on Wilco’s 1995 debut, “A.M.”
(Tom Cruze/Sun-Times)
(Tom Cruze/Sun-Times)
WITH TORTOISE
Highly Recommended
When: 7:30 p.m. Tonight (Monday)
Where: UIC Pavilion, 525 S. Racine Ave.
Tickets: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com
A few songs later, Tweedy asked the audience to sing “Jesus, etc.,” and the hometown crowd responded enthusiastically while the front man stepped away from the microphone and became the conductor for a massive sing-along.
The Chicago band’s latest effort, the cheekily titled “Wilco (The Album),” was released in June and sold 99,000 copies in its first week, which was enough to land at No. 4 on the Billboard pop album chart.
Wilco’s stature has increased throughout this decade, despite a lack of mainstream radio airplay. Hailed by critics, the group has evolved from an alt-country outfit into an art-rock band that merges hooky melodies with Sonic Youth-type bursts of guitar feedback. That dynamic — of melding the gently jangly with the jarringly metallic — was put to maximum effect Sunday in a powerhouse rendition of “Misunderstood.”
At other times, those sonic impulses were separated but still mightily effective. Some of the band’s new material, such as the bouncy “You Never Know,” floated along with a seductive melody, whereas the menacing “Bull Black Nova” built into a sonic maelstrom akin to a busy runway at O’Hare Airport as Tweedy sang the blood-soaked noir narrative and screamed, “I can’t calm down!”
On this night, Tweedy’s self-deprecating stage banter repeatedly alluded to the band’s status as arena rockers. In the introduction to “Walken,” he joked about the number of friends in the crowd and the size of the venue, quipping, “I’d like to dedicate this song to the 200 people here tonight who weren’t on our guest list. I guess we could’ve played Schubas.”
Now a sextet, Wilco did a superb job of balancing the artistic impulse to make an unhinged racket with the more conventional desire to give the crowd tunes they know. Lead guitarist Nels Cline frequently pushed his guitar near an amplifier to generate waves of feedback, and during the instrumental hurricane segment at the end of “Shot in the Arm,” keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen was punching the keys with his fist wrapped in a towel.
In the seventh song of the encore, “Hoodoo Voodoo,” Cline and rhythm guitarist Pat Sansone traded licks in an impressive, toe-to-toe guitar duel that also featured some ironic guitar-god posturing. On this song, drummer Glenn Kotche (who crafted stellar percussion patterns throughout the show) played a beat that was augmented by Jorgensen on cowbell.
A gleaming gong hung behind Kotche, which he only played once, picking up a pair of massive mallets for the introduction to “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” a song from Wilco’s most acclaimed album, 2002’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.”
When a band plays two nights in a basketball arena, and features cowbell and gong, then it must be dubbed an arena rock act. But when it also plays “Just a Kid,” a song from the soundtrack to “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” then the musicians must be called something else: visionaries.
Bobby Reed is a Chicago freelance writer
1. “Wilco (The Song)”
2. “Shot in the Arm”
3. “Bull Black Nova”
4. “You Are My Face”
5. “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”
6. “One Wing”
7. “Misunderstood”
8. “At Least That's What you Said”
9. “Deeper Down”
10. “Impossible Germany”
11. “It's Just That Simple”
12. “I’ll Fight”
13. “Handshake Drugs”
14. “Sonny Feeling”
15. “Jesus, etc.”
16. “Theologians”
17. “I'm Always in Love”
18. “Hate it Here”
19. “Walken”
20. “I’m the Man Who Loves You”
Encore:
21. “You Never Know”
22. “Heavy Metal Drummer”
23. “Just a Kid”
24. “Kingpin”
25. “Monday”
26. “Outtasite (Outta Mind)”
27. “Hoodoo Voodoo”
28. “I’m a Wheel”