Wilco
Zilker Park, Sept. 19
The only flaw with Wilco's sunset Sunday set? It stopped after an hour. This is a band that a year ago looked worn and sounded tired as it finished its Yankee Hotel Foxtrot odyssey. At Zilker Park, Wilco came off as the best thing going in American rock & roll. The difference? Besides a new LP and time off, it has to be the addition of guitarist Nels Cline. Every Jagger needs a Richards, and the former Geraldine Fibber is the perfect counterpart to frontman Jeff Tweedy's quiet charisma. Cline punctuated every song with economical leads and noisy fills, raising the crisp racket to a full blown roar. The duo worked together perfectly closing out a trio of openers from A Ghost Is Born with "At Least That's What You Said," skronking leads intertwining deliriously. Even as they leaned heavily on material from Ghost and Yankee, onstage Wilco never really asked the audience to pretend to like ethereal soundscapes. Tweedy's penchant for noise and aesthetics has certainly increased, but he hasn't gone over the edge only using it to adorn melodies rather than supplant them ("I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" toward the front end of the set, and "Poor Places" toward the back). Under the textures, Wilco is still four-chord Americana. They did dip back to Being There for "Kingpin," a "stupid song" they play because it tends to "rock out." Better was the marriage of the two in closer "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" where the trickle built into a full-on cacophony, before the big guitar riff at the bridge. Sixty minutes. Damn. Not enough time for a band at its peak. – Michael Bertin |
