Live review: Wilco, Vicar Street, Friday August 28th.

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Adam Lacey

Vicar Street and Wilco go together like Pitchfork and decimal points, Tom Cruise and F14 Tomcats, Drop-D and trolling commenters…they just work.

On Jeff Tweedy’s last solo outing to Dublin, a friend and I bumped into him on O’Connell Bridge whereupon we asked him to join us for a cold beer. Alas, the saucy midget was buying lingerie for his lady.

He chatted amicably for a few minutes about his love of Dublin (after recording Mermaid Avenue here years ago) and then his tiny frame sauntered off into the distance leaving a moustachioed moi (also suited and fresh from a job interview) and my tracksuited friend (long story) thinking what might have been.

I really believed he would mention us onstage that night as the guys with whom he should have drank deeply…

Cut to a few years later and Friday night in a gorgeous Vicar Street and Tweedy and company are in fine fettle. From the introductory music (The Price Is Right?) and the almost unbelievably Wilco-esque opening riffs of Bull Black Nova, this is going to be special.

I’m somewhat documented as a bit of a country music fan (a genre I appreciate alone most of the time..) and Wilco manage to take the finer elements of country (hauntingly simplistic chord progression, dark back stories) and combine it with the raucous feedback and lyrical idiosyncrasies of the grunge and ‘alt-rock’ 90s scenes, while Senor Tweedy could have been something of a stand-up comic if the music career hadn’t taken off.

The band as a whole are seamless, with the so-good-he-will-explode Nels Cline up for the guitar solos to such an extent that I can almost smell the ejaculate of the guitar fanboys in front of him when he launches into the stratosphere during Impossible Germany.

Not to be outdone, Glenn Kotche brings drumming to a new level throughout the night and the whole band’s musicianship is just so supremely confident the crowd are giggling and shouting with barely-contained glee for the whole 2 and a half hours.

Tweedy, whose rep as a curmudgeonly old sort unfairly precedes him, is a livewire willing to slag off Bono, praise Thin Lizzy and chat to the crowd at any opportunity, after a five-straight-songs opener. They tear through material from their entire back-catalogue and while Sky Blue Sky was not everyone’s favourite album (I loved it), a standout version of You Are My Face is just sublime. Spiders (Kidsmoke), Jesus Etc., I’m The Man Who Loves You, the list goes on as the dodgy (but eminently drinkable) Guinness goes down and the happy haze sets in.

The ‘hits’ are also duly knocked out with knee-bouncingly wonderful versions of Heavy Metal Drummer, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart and Shot In The Arm all being greeted with giddy joy and, as with the Thursday night gig, there are two encores with Blitzen Trapper joining them onstage for a version of California Stars.

This was another special gig from a special band who seem to have reached a certain kind of stability in the line-up department, despite a seemingly endless rotation throughout the years. They ooze confidence, they indulge themselves playfully and brilliantly, while the songs themselves are like a Viscount biscuit with a strong coffee, i.e., to die for.

There are many who will (and do) dismiss Wilco as dad rock, soft rock, country or alt-country. It’s the kind of weirdly dismissive attitude some reserve for Elbow. While some of these points can easily be argued, Wilco are just too good to write off, their songs are too pure, catchy and lyrically intriguing, and their live performances too charismatic to pooh-pooh in a sardonic sound bite. Wilco are for the music fan who forgets they are at a gig surrounded by a huge crowd and loses themselves at length, and completely, in a band of overwhelming talent and exuberance.

If Jeff Tweedy and Wilco were Jim Jones, I’d drink the Kool-Aid.

wilcoworld.net

Filed under: featured, live

Tags: Blitzen Trapper, Glenn Kotche, Jeff Tweedy, Mermaid Avenue, Nels Cline, Sky Blue Sky, vicar street, Wilco