Ever-evolving alt-country rockers Wilco will perform for a sold-out audience at the Barrymore Theater tomorrow night. A stop on their mini-string of Midwest performances, this visit marks the Chicago band's first jaunt through Madison since the fall of 2004, when they brought their A Ghost is Born tour to town. Then, Nov. 24 and 25, they will play in Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre, with Detholz (who also opens for them in Madison) and Califone. From there, Jeff Tweedy will abandon his band mates here in the U.S. and travel abroad for a set of solo dates in Europe in support of his new live DVD, "Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest."
Reflecting on the artistic and commercial progression of Wilco since their 1995 debut A.M. paints a remarkable narrative driven by the theme of unlikely greatness. After parting with his early-'90s collaborator Jay Farrar and their group Uncle Tupelo in 1994, Tweedy gathered Jay Bennett, John Stirratt, Max Johnston and Ken Coomer for what would become the first of several assemblages known as Wilco.
1995's A.M. emerged from the collaboration. Full of lively, earthy rhythms and melancholy acoustic spells, it was not dramatically distinct from earlier Uncle Tupelo releases. Even its finest moments like "Box Full of Letters," "That's Not the Issue" and "Blue Eyed Soul," the album seemed overly reliant on conventional harmonies and chord progressions, but still, it was hard to argue against such a highly tuneful approach. A.M. did point favorably to Tweedy's sly adeptness at wrapping depressed sentiments in uppity, hook-laden guitar work, something that would elevate their future release Summerteeth to the level of a near-pop masterpiece.
Wilco's 1996 sophomore effort Being There broadly expanded on their alt-country template, incorporating an impressive breadth of musical genres. An audacious two-disc, 19-track outing, its opener "Misunderstood" left little doubt that this was a band unwilling to be pigeonholed into set motifs. Against a background of percussive rumblings, Tweedy's glazed delivery traveled through gentle pianos and hidden acoustics that eventually terminated in a closing surge of psychedelic rock flourishes. However, the album wasn't wholly devoid of the band's twangy roots — entries such as "Forget the Flowers" boasted warm steel-guitar lines and lyrical musings like "You're tryin' my patience/ Try pink carnations/ Red roses and yellow daffodils" that cited their country influences. Being There garnered critical acclaim for Wilco and augured well for further innovation.
A full three years would elapse before their next proper release, Summerteeth. During that span, Wilco would undergo the first of a slew of lineup alterations. The multi-talented Max Johnston parted ways with Tweedy to form a new project with his sister, Michelle Shocked. That didn't stop Wilco from teaming up with British folkster Billy Brag in 1998 and dazzling critics with their Woody Guthrie tribute album Mermaid Avenue, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
The astounding Summerteeth followed in 1999. It played off of the rich pop schemes central to classic works like The White Album and Pet Sounds while again retaining the hearty strains of Wilco's old country-rock riffs. Lush jangles, spry organs and propulsive rhythms permeated the album's sprawling 17 tracks. But the title track best bore witness to Tweedy's skill at masking his boundless melancholia in unconventionally sunny sonic structures. Even as bubbly electronics drive the song's romping momentum, Tweedy dwells on death and despair with imagery more colloquial than aching: "One summer, a suicide/ Another autumn, a traveler's guide/ He hits snooze twice before he dies." Indeed, his lyricism increasingly became one of the band's standout traits, a development that would continue unabated in the fruitful 2000s.
In 2001, Wilco would finally achieve the sort of national prominence that had doggedly evaded them since their inception, but not without mixed ramifications. The sessions for their fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, unearthed personal and professional friction between guitarist Jay Bennett and the other band mates that soon led to his departure. Furthermore, Reprise Records became wary of the band's deepening experimental predilections and questioned the palatability of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as a mainstream offering. Eventually, they outright rejected it. Undeterred, Wilco purchased the master recordings for a moderate sum and later found a home for the completed album at Nonesuch Records.
Released less than a year after the terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot played like a perfectly scattered shot of iconoclastic rock catharsis, almost an ode to the wildly over-productive American mind. It received overwhelming praise from critical outlets and even climbed to No. 12 on the Billboard sales rankings.
Yankee showcased a band of fertile minds stubbornly insistent on creative evolution. Its production work, conducted by experimentalist Chicagoan Jim O'Rourke, propelled the Wilco aesthetic to once-unimaginable heights. No longer would Radiohead dominate the lonely ranks of most innovative modern artists. Indeed, in an incredibly penetrating insight, lead Rolling Stone music critic David Fricke drew such a comparison, commenting that "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was rumored to be crackpot pop-Radiohead's Kid A dressed in flannel and cow pie."
Such memorable numbers as the opener "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," "Radio Cure" and "Ashes of American Flags" lurched forward with eerily battered quirks that aurally resembled the last gasps of dilapidated household appliances. Nevertheless, pop shimmers still abounded on the swelling, brass-heavy "I'm the Man Who Loves You" and "Heavy Metal Drummer." Overall, Yankee was an astounding collection of sound and soul, and may stand as one of the 21st century's most towering musical achievements.
A worthy follow-up seemed a near impossible task, but 2004's A Ghost is Born, while clearly inferior to its immediate predecessor, still managed to deliver incessant innovation. Admittedly, it is overlong and frustratingly indulgent in overwrought solos. But its superior moments, "Handshake Drugs," "Hummingbird" and "Theologians," continued in Wilco's unpredictable pop vein and witnessed spurts of Tweedy's finest lyrical creations ("Hell in a nutshell/ Is a song worth singing/ If it doesn't help," from "Wishful Thinking").
Most recently, the group released Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, a double-disc compilation of live renditions from their hometown's Vic Theatre. A new album also is slated for late winter or early spring 2007. As this date is approaching fast, expect a healthy sampling of this new material at tomorrow's performance. But it's less certain what kind of bold, unworn sonic cloak Wilco will use to garnish and attempt to shroud their brimming rock core, since Wilco is America's essential rock 'n' roll band. As Tweedy notes on the closer of Being There's "Sunken Treasure," "I was named by rock 'n' roll/ I was maimed by rock 'n' roll/ I was tamed by rock 'n' roll/ I got my name from rock 'n' roll."
