BY STEVE KLINGE

Any credible shortlist of the best American bands of the early 21^st century would have to include Wilco, not only for their unbroken streak of excellent albums that mingle familiar traditions with artistic challenges but also for their live performances. Like My Morning Jacket, Wilco appeals to several broad demographics: aging classicists, jam band obsessives, roots rockers, hipsters and critics.

And they’re road warriors. They’re still out there touring behind last year’s Sky Blue Sky, this time mainly playing festivals and secondary markets.  My sister saw them a few weeks ago in a rain-soaked outdoors show in Anchorage, Alaska, and the night after they played the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore, they came to Wilmington, Delaware’s Grand Opera House, a beautiful 19^th century building that seats about 1200. 

They played nearby Philly in February, and about half the setlist overlapped between the two shows. But the Philly show was lighter and celebratory; it included four songs each from Summerteeth and the Mermaid Ave albums. Wilmington’s was edgier and heavier, with no Summerteeths, one Guthrie (“Blood of the Lamb”), and more Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. And we got horns.

An old-time jazz clarinet threaded through “Blood of the Lamb”’s steady country amble early in the 24-song, two-and-a-quarter hour show, and the four-piece “Total Pro” horn section—saxophone, trumpet, trombone—joined during the encores. “Hate It Here” turned into a Muscle Shoals soul groove, driven by Pat Sansone on organ and by the horns, building to a climax that had the crowd shouting along with the title. With the horns doubling the melody line, “Walken” seemed more rooted than ever in Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’.” The horns were just one other element in the raucous cacophony of “I’m the Man Who Loves You” and “Outtasite (Outta Mind),” but they made “The Late Greats” swing and strut harder than ever; they suited the song’s nostalgic theme perfectly. Wilco doesn’t need horns, but they’re a great addition.

This is a band at its peak, but it’s a totally different entity than the one that recorded “Casino Queen” back in 1995. Only Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt remain from that incarnation of Wilco, and that song seemed immature and lightweight coming after the examples of Wilco’s inspired and embellished later work. It didn’t rock as hard as, say, the spacious version of “Pot Kettle Black” or as relentlessly as “You Are My Face,” with Stirratt sharing lead vocals with Tweedy.

Not to diminish the roles of drummer Glenn Kotche, keyboardist Mikael Jorgenson or the aforementioned Sansome and Stirratt, but after Tweedy and his frayed voice, the center of Wilco belongs to Nels Cline. The 52-year-old guitarist has a lifetime of free jazz, noise rock and alternative music at his skilled fingertips, and his solos, including several on lap steel, were consistent high points. I’m not usually one to care a lot about guitar soloing, but Cline is different: he’s obviously technically skilled, but he’s less interested in showing off his fleet fingers than he is in finding unexpected chords or noises that enhance a song or spike its tension. He roamed from noisy abstraction and feedback in “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” to jazzy, liquid runs in “Company In My Back” to pretty, soulful lap steel fills on “Jesus, etc.” to hard strumming blasts in “Handshake Drugs” (trading lines with Tweedy and Sansome on electric guitars, too, and building delicious wall of sound).

Wilco’s no jam band. Many of Cline’s lines mirrored the recorded versions; they were composed rather than improvised. His solo in “Impossible Germany” was perfect to begin with, and the Television-like interplay with the other guitars, veering in and out of unison lines, is part of the song’s beauty. And the epic “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” with its Krautrock rhythm underlying the guitars’ psychedelic explorations is through-composed enough to create peaks and valleys of dynamic tension. Cline knew just how much space and time he had to fill, and he made the most of each moment between the crashing chords that come each time after Tweedy says, “It’s good to be alone.” Towards the end of the ten-plus minute song, Tweedy cut out all the instruments and had the crowd clap the rhythm for a long thirty seconds or so before the band exploded for one final set of pummeling riffs. Ah, boys and their guitars. Great stuff.

Cline serves as Tweedy’s foil: Tweedy wants Wilco to be artistically challenging, and Cline’s inventive work easily pulls songs free, or at least loosens them, from their conventions. Let’s hope he outlasts Tweedy’s track record with previous foils.  At least Cline’s first name isn’t “Jay,” unlike two of his predecessors.

Wilco has been asking for requests for each show via its website, and the surprising top vote-getter for Delaware was “Hotel Arizona” (surprising, Tweedy said, because it had another state in its title). It took Tweedy three starts to get the song right (he was in the wrong key, he forgot some chords, etc.), but the song was a treat. Tweedy also bantered with someone doing sketches of the band (“Are you a courtroom artist?  We’ll have to see those.  Whenever I’m sketched I tend to look… simian.”). When he had to wave off the crowd’s handclaps at the start of “Radio Cure,” he looked both pleased at the response and frustrated at the interference in the song’s construction. In general, Tweedy seems bemused by audience adulation: as his songs suggest, his relationships are often contentious.

“Music is my savior… I was saved by rock and roll,” he sang in “Sunken Treasure” at the beginning of the night, and fronting a band like he has right now, it was easy to understand why, and to feel some of that salvation spreading through the audience.

***

Jennifer O’Connor opened the show with a strong set. Her three piece band added some needed energy and electric guitar noise to songs from her new album, Here With Me. “Sister” and “Exeter, Rhode Island,” from ‘06’s Over The Mountain… were even better: heartbreakingly personal but edgy and forceful, with guitar interplay that sounded more like Pavement than Liz Phair (to whom she’s often compared).

Set list

1. Sunken Treasure  
2. Wishful Thinking  
3. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart  
4. Blood Of The Lamb (w/clarinet)
5. You Are My Face  
6. Company In My Back  
7. Hotel Arizona (
8. Handshake Drugs  
9. Pot Kettle Black
10. Side With The Seeds  
11. Radio Cure  
12. Impossible Germany  
13. Jesus, Etc.  
14. Theologians  
15. Poor Places  
16. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
Encore 1:
17. Hummingbird  
18. Hate It Here (w/Total Pros horns) 
19. Walk On (w/Total Pros horns)
20. I'm The Man Who Loves You (w/Total Pros horns)
Encore 2:
21. Heavy Metal Drummer 
22. The Late Greats (w/Total Pros horns)  
23. Casino Queen  
24. Outtasite (Outta Mind) (w/Total Pros horns) 

[Photo Credit: Mary Ellen Matthews]