by Alex Danger Stewart
Who: Wilco with special guest, Tortoise
What: A concert. Duh
Where: The UIC Pavilion
When: October 19th
I’m often prone to beginning reviews and essays and such with one of several reassurances. Either that (despite possibly nebulous evidence to the contrary) I am actually well informed enough to provide a quality review of the topic at hand, or that in declaring my personal biases I am freeing the reader to discount my opinion for clearly shallow reasons even though I think they should place trust in what I have to say. It’s a self reflexive, vaguely post modern ploy meant to distract from the fact that I didn’t take any notes or do any actual journalistic work. Fuck it. I think it works.
Here’s the part where I confess my bias. I love Wilco. I hear accusations of dad rock and I don’t really care. That’s not even a real term. A lot of dads like Sonic Youth. Would anyone accuse them of being bland, or passé, or people who wear high waisted jeans, or any other of the more derogatory adjectives associated with being a dad? The Wilco of late is not any more retro sounding than any one of a slew of roots rock bands. The accusations most likely stem from the fact that the band has been in existence for a good 15 years and has (seemingly) left behind the noisier, avant leaning aspects of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born to return to more conventional stylings. Although that criticism is valid on some levels, it shows a lack of deeper listening to the more recent releases. In the end, no matter the dressing, you can’t beat a folk song that grabs your heart and squeezes your mind grapes. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I love Wilco. I find them to be one of the more perfect internalizations of American music in the last 50 years. I would even go as far as to argue that (my love for Jay Bennett not withstanding) the current line up is Wilco’s most accomplished. These guys are a god damned mechanized assault squad. These songs sound like they do on the record and, in many cases, are bigger, louder, and more dynamic. This becomes even more evident when they play Via Chicago.
Quick! What’s your favorite Wilco song? Poor Places? They played it and it sounds the way you remember it. Except now Nels Cline is in the band. He’s a crazy free jazz nutjob (the man once covered the entirety of John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space on guitar!) so the chattering, dissonant, electronic burbles in the latter half of the song become more swirling and encompassing. Name another song! Passenger Side? Really? Ok well they didn’t play that. But they did play Casino Queen. They played for more than 2 ½ hours. During that time, with nods to George Harrison jammed up against krautrocking epics, in between lushly orchestrated chamber pop, one begins to realize that this is a band that defies any easy categorization beyond American Rock and Roll. It becomes entirely ok for Wilco to record an easy going love song like You and I instead of something as damaged as She’s a Jar (neither of which were played, by the way. That’s ok because they opened with Via Chicago and threw down a stellar Shot in The Arm because America is nothing if not society’s great melting pot. A place where any myriad of influences can fit comfortably next to one another as long as you cushion them with fantastic melodies (luckily this shallow metaphor is able to ignore America’s rich history of bigotry that goes along with the cultural diversity). And like Wilco, America isn’t just for dads. Despite those Steely Dan comparisons (yuck!), America is for everyone.
Oh wait. Quick PS: Tortoise was reliably entertaining in the opening slot. They sounded great, although I find them slightly boring in long stretches. Tortoise should open for all of my favorite bands.
Final Verdict: 5 out of 5 Kiss Covers.
Alex Danger Stewart will be eating those negative words about Steely Dan someday.
When I first heard Saves the Day, I felt their music was melodramatic, annoying, and obsolete. Some of my friends in college had taken a liking to their second album, Through Being Cool, which irritated me; I had no reason to listen to a band with such naive, predictable, and emotionally obvious songs. When Stay What You Are came out, I, again, had a small army of friends singing the band’s praises. Around the third time I heard “Freakish,” I stopped my complaining and bought my own copy of the album. Almost a full decade later, I still listen to this album once every couple months. The hooks, melodies, lyrics, and guitar riffs are still melodramatic, annoying, and predictable, but I am, thankfully, no longer missing out on all the fun.
