My third time seeing Wilco after great shows at Austin
City Limits Festival and Stubb's
in Austin. Their new album,
Ode to Joy, is due out on
October 4th, so all the new songs were unfamiliar to me except for
the early single "Love Is Everywhere (Beware)".
Artist: Wilco
Venue: Tempodrom
Location: Berlin,
Germany
Date: 12 September 2019
Opening Act: Spiral
Stairs
Setlist (thanks to
wilcoworld.net
for the new songs' titles):
01. Bright Leaves
01. Bright Leaves
02. Before Us
03. Company in My Back
04. War on War
05. One and a Half
Stars
06. If I Ever Was a
Child
07. Handshake Drugs
08. Hummingbird
09. At Least That's
What You Said
10. White Wooden Cross
11. Via Chicago
12. Bull Black Nova
13. Reservations
14. Love Is Everywhere
(Beware)
15. Impossible Germany
16. Box Full of Letters
17. Everyone Hides
18. Jesus, Etc.
19. Theologians
20. I'm the Man Who
Loves You
21. An Empty Corner
22. Misunderstood
Encore:
23. Hold Me Anyway
24. Random Name
Generator
25. California Stars
26. True Love Will Find
You in the End [Daniel Johnston cover]
27. The Late Greats
Opening band Spiral
Stairs is actually the solo
project of former Pavement member Scott Kannberg. Despite his length
indie rock credentials, he appeared with an acoustic guitar,
accompanied only by Tim
Regan on lead guitar.
Kannberg
twice made jokes about them being Christian neurosurgeons. No
explanation was provided, but who knows, in an alternative universe,
maybe it could've been. At any rate, without a rhythm section, the
songs fell a little flat. Regan
did a great job filling out the songs with melodic riffs and
tasteful solos, but
Kannberg's voice wasn't too
sharp, and it felt like he was trying to sing the songs as if they
were intended to be bigger than they were.
The political lyrics were
good, though. I felt a
little bad when he said he was going to play a Pavement song ("Two
States") and hardly anyone responded when he asked if anyone
remembered the band.
[Spiral Stairs.]
Wilco
started their set with two new songs, both of which were low-key and
relatively unadorned.
I was concerned that they might again be pulling the full-album trick
as they did last
time I saw them, but thankfully they broke the pattern with the
delightfully oddball "Company in My Back" and the
shimmering, tuneful "War on War". The band scattered new
songs throughout the whole set, and
although I wasn't initially
impressed, they
seemed to improve as the night went on.
The new material seems to fit in with much of Star
Wars
(2015) and Schmilco
(2016) in particular, in that a lot of the songs sound downcast,
subtly and loosely arranged, and oriented around Jeff Tweedy's
obscure but idiosyncratically humorous perspective.
The
rest of set bounced all around Wilco's career, collecting exactly one
song from almost every album they've released, plus an abundance of
songs from Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot
(2002) and especially A
Ghost Is Born
(2004). Those are great albums, so I wasn't upset about it, but the
bias was extreme, and
I
was surprised by the lack of material from their recent albums. I
liked the front half of Star
Wars
quite well, and I never saw Wilco tour Schmilco.
Somehow, "If I Ever Was a Child" is already something of a
classic, and I was surprised to hear some of the audience singing
along.
Highlights
were the triple-guitar attack of "Handshake Drugs" and the
clearly beloved "Impossible Germany", the wild cacophonous
dynamics of "Via Chicago", the plaintively beautiful
"Reservations", the
awesome bells-and-guitar solo of "Bull Black Nova",
and the perennial classics "Jesus, Etc." and "California
Stars". The
biggest surprise was "True Love Will Find You in
the End", presumably played in honor of Daniel Johnston's
passing the day before.
Even
if not all the new material blew me away, I still liked the way Wilco
were able to blend the songs into their long setlist. They never lost
steam and balanced the softer and quieter numbers with plenty of
high-energy rockers. Many
of their songs
appear in most of their setlists, but their
songs
are varied and plentiful enough that they
can play endless variations and it never gets old. I didn't find this
show to be especially different than the core of the last time I saw
them, but it was different enough to still be compelling, and I've
thoroughly enjoyed them every time I've seen them. All six members
remain strong performers, and I like that each gets their moments to
shine.
[Wilco.]
Scores:
Spiral Stairs: C+
Wilco: A-
No comments:
Post a Comment