As
alluded to previously, I went to see Wilco at Artpark in Lewiston on Sunday night. Wilco is an amazing band, having compiled an incredible run of quality experimentation over their body of recorded work, but they are even greater live. I saw them a few years back when they were touring the
A Ghost is Born album, and they knocked me out, in part because I had read that leader Jeff Tweedy did not particularly enjoy live performing, and in part because a lot of the sonic elements of their two most recent albums (the other was
Yankee Foxtrot Hotel) seemed to stem from access to studio technology. Based on what they delivered though, neither of those factors made a lick of difference. The show I saw Sunday was more wide-ranging in choice of material from the breadth of their career (including a couple from the first
Mermaid Avenue album, on which they collaborated with Billy Bragg to put tunes to some old Woodie Guthrie lyrics), and it was evident that the band has become even more polished over the intervening years (with Tweedy playing the avuncular host). I think the phrase I'd use to describe this show would be exquisitely tuneful noise: walls of sound cascading through the theater, without ever really losing the melodic themes. Plus, I don't think they missed a single song that I was hoping to hear-- which rarely happens when I go to a show (see
my comments on Amy Rigby from the day before). There were only two, minor downsides: one was that I was a long way from the stage (serves me right: I didn't buy my ticket until the day of the show), but I have to say the sound was the crispest I have ever heard in a venue of that size. Two, I took to heart the warning on the ticket that cameras would not be allowed and so have no first hand photos (the above was found on-line), even though plenty of other folks were snapping away (of course, from where I was sitting, I wouldn't have gotten anything particularly good anyway).
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Boys opened the show, and they were pretty good too, decked out in matching white boatsman caps. Oberst is a talented guy, and sounds good with a band behind him. But unlike Wilco, it's hard for me to see him as anything more than a better-than-most-but lesser-than-some singer-songwriter. One odd thing-- Oberst performed his whole set in shadows, although he was stage front and center for most of it. All the spotlights were on the bandmembers. An act of self-effacement? I don't know. He reminds me of guys like Steve Forbert and Willie Nile, and more recently Tim Easton and Todd Snider who never got anywhere near the attention Oberst now enjoys (which obviously isn't really a reflection on him or them so much as the vagaries of the industry), though I'm hard-pressed to see much difference in the quality of their work. He seems content to work that vein, and more power to him. But meanwhile Wilco is constantly challenging themselves to come up with something new. Even when they revert to elements of their folk/country roots, they never sound like anyone else, and it's gratifying to know they are willing to stretch out that way, and be comfortable re-examining and re-defining themselves periodically-- and playing killer live shows that can draw on the full span of their career without any evident inconsistancy showing. They are truly a great band, to my mind the greatest working today.
As alluded to previously, I went to see Wilco at Artpark in Lewiston on Sunday night. Wilco is an amazing band, having compiled an incredible run of quality experimentation over their body of recorded work, but they are even greater live. I saw them a few years back when they were touring the A Ghost is Born album, and they knocked me out, in part because I had read that leader Jeff Tweedy did not particularly enjoy live performing, and in part because a lot of the sonic elements of their two most recent albums (the other was Yankee Foxtrot Hotel) seemed to stem from access to studio technology. Based on what they delivered though, neither of those factors made a lick of difference. The show I saw Sunday was more wide-ranging in choice of material from the breadth of their career (including a couple from the first Mermaid Avenue album, on which they collaborated with Billy Bragg to put tunes to some old Woodie Guthrie lyrics), and it was evident that the band has become even more polished over the intervening years (with Tweedy playing the avuncular host). I think the phrase I'd use to describe this show would be exquisitely tuneful noise: walls of sound cascading through the theater, without ever really losing the melodic themes. Plus, I don't think they missed a single song that I was hoping to hear-- which rarely happens when I go to a show (see my comments on Amy Rigby from the day before). There were only two, minor downsides: one was that I was a long way from the stage (serves me right: I didn't buy my ticket until the day of the show), but I have to say the sound was the crispest I have ever heard in a venue of that size. Two, I took to heart the warning on the ticket that cameras would not be allowed and so have no first hand photos (the above was found on-line), even though plenty of other folks were snapping away (of course, from where I was sitting, I wouldn't have gotten anything particularly good anyway).
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Boys opened the show, and they were pretty good too, decked out in matching white boatsman caps. Oberst is a talented guy, and sounds good with a band behind him. But unlike Wilco, it's hard for me to see him as anything more than a better-than-most-but lesser-than-some singer-songwriter. One odd thing-- Oberst performed his whole set in shadows, although he was stage front and center for most of it. All the spotlights were on the bandmembers. An act of self-effacement? I don't know. He reminds me of guys like Steve Forbert and Willie Nile, and more recently Tim Easton and Todd Snider who never got anywhere near the attention Oberst now enjoys (which obviously isn't really a reflection on him or them so much as the vagaries of the industry), though I'm hard-pressed to see much difference in the quality of their work. He seems content to work that vein, and more power to him. But meanwhile Wilco is constantly challenging themselves to come up with something new. Even when they revert to elements of their folk/country roots, they never sound like anyone else, and it's gratifying to know they are willing to stretch out that way, and be comfortable re-examining and re-defining themselves periodically-- and playing killer live shows that can draw on the full span of their career without any evident inconsistancy showing. They are truly a great band, to my mind the greatest working today.
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