Wilco

WILCO (THE LIVE SHOW)

by Claudio Lancia

The Teatro della Pergola is a real little gem, snug and almost intimate, built in 1656 as the first oval-shaped theatre in Italy, a design conceived for superior acoustics.

Arriving early before the show gives you the chance to admire the building in all its splendour, but above all to take a close look at the Wilco gear already set up on stage, with particular attention to the numerous guitars and the enviable pedalboard sets.

Tickets have been sold out for weeks, yet Florence proves to be a rather cold city towards the band.

The theatre only fills up completely five minutes before the concert starts, and the roughly one thousand paying attendees (except for yours truly and four or five other people, leaning against the theatre's side wall) will follow the entire show mummified in their seats, without ever managing so much as a shred of a singalong.

Jeff Tweedy, a personality well above average, a magnificent songwriter, a great singer and a thoroughly respectable guitarist, tries to stir the crowd by inviting everyone to sing along to "Jesus, Etc." (but by the end of the first verse he realises how meagre the response is and decides to take back hold of the microphone), and later, at the end of the first encore, asks those present not to be afraid to stand up and move closer to the stage.

The detached audience (which nonetheless never skimped on applause) was the only flaw of the evening, one of the most unforgettable that today's music scene is capable of offering.

At 9:45pm Wilco take the stage, the emotion is intense, they open with "Sunken Treasure", almost under their breath, with Tweedy staking his claim as the most authoritative candidate to succeed Dylan. From here on, for over two hours, it will be a flawless show, beyond any reasonable expectation.

The first gut punch arrives with a white-hot "Bull Black Nova", the song from the new album that Tweedy most enjoys playing live; the ending is tense, with the frontman, after describing a killer's jittery flight following a murder, letting loose a couple of screams that send shivers down the spine.

The other key moments of the first half of the show coincide with the electric surges of "At Least That's What You Said" and "Impossible Germany", where Nels Cline shows off the full extent of his technical mastery, launching into one of the finest guitar solos written in recent years.

The band is now well road-tested and cruises along effortlessly, with special credit due to drummer Glenn Kotche, disciplined even when whipping up chaos, and a visual treat in the percussive flourishes of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart".

Also excellent are loyal bassist John Stirratt (with Tweedy since the Uncle Tupelo days, surely no coincidence), multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone (equally sharp on guitars and behind the keyboards), and precise pianist Mikael Jorgensen.

The absence of "Ashes Of American Flags" is felt a little, along with a few acoustic gems like "Far, Far, Away", "Sky Blue Sky" or "Either Way", but the American band's catalogue is by now so vast that it could yield three or four different, equally impressive setlists.

Even so, top-tier songs come one after another, in a well-judged mix of recent compositions ("You Are My Face", "One Wing", "Country Disappeared", to name the standouts) alternating with what are by now bona fide band classics ("Company In My Back", "Muzzle Of Bees", "Handshake Drugs", the gorgeous "Theologians", "A Shot In The Arm", which I've since learned is the most performed song in Wilco's live history).

There's no shortage of nods to the band's debut album either ("Box Full Of Letters"), and "At My Window Sad And Lonely" also gets a fine showing, the Woody Guthrie tribute pulled from "Mermaid Avenue", the project completed some years back alongside Billy Bragg.

The first half of the show closes on a supremely gripping note, with an explosive "I'm The Man Who Loves You", during which Tweedy launches into a dazzling guitar solo.

The first encore is given over to a "Via Chicago" charged with emotion, its noisy surges ready to spill over into the gentlest calm. Next comes the torrential "Spiders (Kidsmoke)", which the six musicians turn into an endless, kaleidoscopic jam.

At last the crowd packs in at the foot of the stage, ready to face the second and final encore, which turns out to be a genuine explosion of sound. After everyone joins in singing "Happy Birthday" for a roadie's birthday, the band dances through "Heavy Metal Drummer", "Hate It Here" and "Walken", visibly having a blast. Jeff himself sets aside his eternally gloomy image, handing out generous smiles to the crowd and to his bandmates alike.

But time is running out: the show closes with a pair of songs pulled from "Being There", "Monday" and "Outtasite (Outta Mind)", the knock-out blow that ends the performance with one last, definitive shot of pure adrenaline.

A superb performance, backed by the theatre's flawless acoustics, through which Wilco confirm themselves as one of the most important forces in worldwide alternative rock of the last twenty years.

(13/11/2009)

* * *

THIS WHEEL’S ON FIRE

by Gabriele Benzing

There's something sacred about the liturgy of a concert. Something that has to do with sharing, belonging, being swept up in the creative act. Jeff Tweedy knows this well: "I find that the experience of a concert, or any kind of musical performance, has something transcendent about it. It's the closest thing to what I've always thought a church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time you realize you're part of something bigger."

Perhaps the feeling is heightened by the solemn aura of the Sala Verdi at the Milan Conservatory. Whatever the reason, despite the ovations, Wilco take the stage almost hesitantly, in the half-light. Grizzly Bear, who were meant to open the show, were forced to pull out due to a road accident, leaving the entire evening in the hands of Jeff Tweedy and co. And what they choose to offer as a hushed, aching prologue is "Ashes Of American Flags". A prologue that, with its familiar closing climax, takes on the full weight of a genuine poetic and existential manifesto: "I know I would die if I could come back new".

Then, as if eager to pay immediate tribute to their own roots, comes the Dylan-esque folk flavour of "Remember The Mountain Bed", an unexpected gem drawn from Woody Guthrie's lost lyrics set to music on "Mermaid Avenue".

A cloak of scarlet lights envelops the band, like the blood spilled by the protagonist of a tense, driving "Bull Black Nova" (one of the few tracks drawn from the latest "Wilco (The Album)"). The atmosphere grows more intense as songs from "Sky Blue Sky" unfold, moving from a "You Are My Face" that is pure Band in style to an "Impossible Germany" that serves as the perfect showcase for Nels Cline's virtuosity (at times dangerously close to excess). Wilco is by now a flawlessly tight-knit machine, even if inevitably ever more inclined to retrace a well-worn path. Then again, there are songs whose live versions have become genuine classics in their own right, from "Misunderstood", still capable of leaving audiences stunned with its simple, dizzying insistence on repeating a single word, to "Via Chicago", which casts a spell with its alternation of fullness and emptiness, where bursts of noise overlap with nostalgic whispers.

A live outfit at its zenith, then, proudly balanced on the ridge that still separates it from formula. Just watch the possessed Cline spin his guitar to conjure feedback in the overwhelming finale of "A Shot In The Arm", backed by Mikael Jorgensen's feverish whirl of keyboards; or the way "Handshake Drugs" unspools over John Stirratt's bass until it reaches a white-hot crescendo of distortion, or how the percussion on "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" fragments into a swarm of crystals.

Jeff Tweedy, seemingly less chatty than usual in the first part of the evening, gradually loosens up song after song, winning over an ever warmer and more engaged crowd. A shame about those familiar faces from the press who left the hall after barely a dozen songs, complaining they'd already seen too many shows... Because it's from that point on that Wilco really seem to be having fun, with Tweedy - after vainly trying to tame his rockstar quiff - introducing "Jesus, Etc." by joking about the failed attempt to get the crowd involved at the previous Florence date, before picking up a rose handed to him by a fan, complete with a dedication to the "greatest band since the Grateful Dead"...

The mood turns lighter, and at the start of a rousing "I'm The Man Who Loves You" Glenn Kotche - as ever the band's formidable rhythmic engine - stands up on his drum kit to the crowd's cheers, while Tweedy starts playing around, balancing on one leg and swinging the microphone through the air during "Hummingbird".

By encore time the air is electric and the audience abandons their seats to crowd in front of the stage, breaking once and for all whatever formal etiquette the venue might otherwise impose: "The Late Greats" and "Heavy Metal Drummer" answer the crowd's expectations with irresistible energy, while "Poor Places" and "Reservations" drift, rarefied, dissolving into countless rivulets. But it's on the pounding pulse of a more muscular-than-ever "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" that the surrender becomes total and unreserved.

The band leaves the stage again, but genuine stadium-style chanting brings them straight back out for a final bow: a scorching "I'm A Wheel", which sets the room ablaze, crowning two and a half hours of triumphant tour de force. Leaving one single, visceral certainty etched on every face, even the most disillusioned: "We still love rock 'n' roll"...

(14/11/2009)

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