Wilco turns into a loose, soulful guitar army in Millennium Park homecoming
Greg Kott, Chicagotribune.com, originally posted: September 13, 2007
There were moments in recent years when Wilco appeared to be aging gracefully, its concerts proceeding with the refined precision of a middle-aged art-rock band. Pretty, graceful, but somewhat predictable. On one tour, there were even sepia-toned abstract-art videos.
That Wilco was nowhere to be found Wednesday at jam-packed Millennium Park, where the sextet played only the fourth major rock concert at the city’s most prestigious outdoor concert space.
The lineup of Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glen Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Nels Cline and Pat Sansone has been playing together for three years --- a lifetime by the standards of this volatile, 13-year-old band. With that mutual history has come a shared language that translated into a loose, wide-ranging, two-hour-plus performance. Who was that raging guitar army on stage? And how did Tweedy become a singer with not just an expressive nicotine croak, but a bit of range, capable of sliding around notes like a blue-eyed soul man? Move over, Alex Chilton and Rick Danko, Tweedy’s figured out how to bend notes and sneak up on a falsetto croon.
It added up to one of the shaggiest and more satisfying Wilco sets in recent years. The studied interaction of past tours was buried beneath an avalanche of guitars. With each tour, Nels Cline has looked and sounded more comfortable within the framework of the band, his guitar solos going beyond expressiveness into more deranged territory. “Handshake Drugs” allowed Cline to channel his inner-beast in a three-guitar blow-out, with Tweedy holding down the rhythm while Sansone spaced his down-strokes with the kind of timing that might’ve brought a grin from Keith Richards.
On “Impossible Germany,” Cline, Tweedy, Sansone and bassist Stirratt created a more delicate but no less intricate or powerful latticework of stringed instruments that darted in, out and around one another. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” found Cline and Tweedy spiking the pulsing 10-minute groove shaped by Kotche and Stirratt with spastic incisions and stadium-rock power chords. For the finale, it was all about the guitarists channeling Crazy Horse stomp on a series of decade-old, “Being There”-era tracks.
When the guitars quieted momentarily, the dual keyboards of Sansone and Jorgensen and Stirratt’s agile bass and sublime harmonies framed Tweedy’s soul-singer flights. “Hate it Here” sounded like the kind of playful, plain-spoken lament Solomon Burke once might’ve done, “Pot Kettle Black” had the syncopated sway of R&B as interpreted by the Band, “Jesus Etc.” found Kotche laying down a subtle ballet of wrists and sticks, and “On and On and On” was a beautifully restrained elegy for departed loved ones.
“I caught myself thinking again,” Tweedy sang during the encore. “I’m gonna have to keep my mind out of this.” It was as if he were talking to his bandmates. Wilco sounds like it’s taken those words to heart, and the musicians in this band aren’t just playing a batch of great songs, they’re breathing with them.