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November 20, 2005

wilco :: kicking television (live in chicago)

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My experience of Wilco albums is inseparable from their live shows, and so this new double live disc, less a career summation than a celebration of its apex in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born, gives me a chance to review my relationship with the band.

Forgetting their mostly forgettable debut, A.M., we jump in at their first statement of artistic purpose, the 2CD Being There. Wilco's live shows around this time were, for my taste, interminable exercises in self-satisfaction, often with upwards of 5 encores, and really designed for the core of fawning acolytes that they'd drug with them out of the wreckage of Uncle Tupelo and which seemed to have multiplied like rabbits. I could never hear Being There as anything but the protoypical double album that was just about twice as long as it should have been, chock full of b-side material weighing down about 7-8 excellent songs. Just like the shows.

Mermaid Avenue is still the finest record bearing Wilco's name, in my estimation. If there was a tour with this disc, I didn't see it; I seem to remember that Billy Bragg and Wilco didn't get along too well by the end of the sessions. In any event, it took collaboration, both with Bragg and Woody Guthrie, to shape Jeff Tweedy's talent into its best form, and we will see later that collaboration is always at the heart of his best work, as singular as he seems to have beome.

I had had enough of Wilco live for a while, and I don't remember seeing them on the Summerteeth tour. I can't imagine it being good. The album itself began a period of real creative labor for Tweedy, I think. It was clear that he heard a new muse and desperately wanted to break the stylistic bonds of alt-country, the only style he'd really touched to that point. Summerteeth is an unfortunate combination of fussed-over and naggingly incomplete - I can barely name more than 4 songs from it, but those were gems that would do well to resurface when their creator had a more confident hand - as we will find out.

Now comes the toughest part for me: the canonical Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, one of the consensus masterpieces of recent years, but for me a disc that seemed to be missing an essential spark. While certainly a great record, more accomplished and assured than Summerteeth, with better songs and a more expansive sound, it still sounded worked over to the point of near-lifelessness. Why did it sound that way to me? Perhaps it was the live show I saw before its release: Serious Tweedy holding hushed court, a live "performance" of a grand new work rather than a rock show, and boring as fuck all. A top-flight snoozer. Believe me, the final disc was a pleasant surprise after that, clearly a kind of triumph, but I believe that show has held me back from full appreciation.

The last studio record was A Ghost is Born, which most people found inferior and far less approachable than YHF. But in the interim between the two discs, Tweedy had somehow developed Wilco into one of the best touring outfits on the circuit. Finding a way to live in the Foxtrot tracks as spacious songs rather than statements, the band brought glowing warmth and quiet energy without sacrificing a bit of creative detail. I heard the Ghost is Born tracks live in this way before the record was out, and they were staggering to me. I'll never forget the first time I heard "At Least That's What You Said", "Spiders (Kidsmoke)", and "Hummingbird". I saw the band twice before the disc came out; when it did, it made perfect sense, so I'm in the tiny minority that feels like the followup to Yankee was possibly an improvement.

But let's return to the first part of that last paragraph: I felt like not only were there wonderful new songs, but the Hotel tunes sounded reborn. And that, to me, is the best part of this beautifully made new live CD set (which features a slightly different but similar-sounding band to the one I saw first perform the Ghost tracks). The definitive versions of "Ashes of American Flags" and "Poor Places" live here, as well as improved versions of songs like "Radio Cure" and "Heavy Metal Drummer". All the way back to Summerteeth, we find a revelatory take on "Shot in the Arm", a song that was crying out for recording justice.

I'm not sure I've ever heard a better-sounding live disc; the performances aren't perfect (nor should they be) but the balance of clarity and theater ambience is spot-on. The only issue I can take with it is that this band doesn't rock very well; straight numbers like "The Late Greats" and "I'm the Man Who Loves You" never really find their groove. But the band is otherwise phenomenal, and they are all collaborators in the chosen shape of the songs. Nels Cline's virtuoso scree guitar playing is particularly notable.

Whatever your opinion about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born going in, this album puts them on equal footing and doubles your pleasure. You'll also be longing for a redo on Summerteeth. If you haven't managed to see them in the last couple of years and you like the records, you'll be lining up for tickets to the next tour.

Ashes of American Flags (mp3)
A Shot in the Arm (mp3)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at November 20, 2005 11:46 PM

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