finally, i've gathered enough of my wits for a wilco review.
the show was great, and the fleet foxes opening was not, by far, the least impressive part of the night. they were spectacular, and it was a fucking shame that there was like 50 people in the crowd when they started and about 200 by the time they ended. everybody seemed to be really into them, though, except for one dude who pretty crassly interjected a shouted "who are you, anyway?" towards the end of a song. the band replied pretty well to the heckling, fortunately (no ryan-type meltdowns at this show), even responding to the abovementioned guy with a casual "we're hannah montana". later on someone screamed something from the crowd that was pretty unintelligible, but that the lead singer thought was the phrase "shadow captain"...so the band decided to change their name from fleet foxes to shadow captain, which was then what tweedy introduced them as, hilariously, later in the night.
they played "white winter hymnal" and "blue ridge mountains" and a few other great songs i recognized, and the lead singer (whose name escapes me) played a solo medley at one point, including an INCREDIBLE version of "oliver james", which might well have been the best point of the whole concert, including wilco. this prompted a standing ovation from pretty much everyone in attendance. they opened their set with a few songs i didn't recognize, and they segued them all into each other until the whole thing became a really cool, almost 15-20 minute long song. it was more like listening to an orchestral piece than a rock band. very cool experience. i'm definitely picking up their two albums after this. the crowd stood and applauded when they finished, for a few minutes at least, while the band themselves cleared their gear offstage. it was the first time i'd ever seen an opener basically begged for an encore.
wilco came on not too long after, and opened really mellowly with "sunken treasure" and a few other acoustic-y type songs. this was a little disorienting because i expected them to blow the roof off right off the bat, but in retrospect the songs were really solid, and tweedy's voice was a lot more multidimensional than it comes across as in most recordings. i was stoked to hear "company in my back", one of my favorite wilco songs, and that's when things started rocking. they rocked out the outro to "you are my face" too. by this point pretty much everyone in the venue was standing, and we would continue to stand for the whole show, with the exception of "how to fight loneliness".
"hummingbird" was great, with jeff doing this weird sort of jogging dance during the outro where he went back around the keys and sort of behind glenn and then jogged back around at the end of the song. and who doesn't fucking love "hummingbird" anyway?
the next few songs were energetic rereadings of the studio versions; they didn't sound much different arrangement-wise, but they were a lot more intense and at this point the crowd was really getting revved up, especially in front. then nels ripped open "impossible germany"...i mean every solo i've ever heard him play on this song is lightning, but this one in particular went on for probably a minute and was just amazing. i was happy to hear "jesus, etc." too, but it was sort of a slow, weak version, honestly, compared to what they were doing with all the other songs. "misunderstood" brought the vibe back up though, with tweedy screaming the "nothing!" outro for about a minute and everybody screaming along with him. lots of fist-pumping.
one of the highlights of the night was hearing them perform "california stars", a song that i've performed at a few shows myself and which is a pretty meaningful song to me for a number of reasons.
the last three songs were completely rocked out, and tweedy apologized for singing "hate it here" right after telling the crowd how great they were and how much he liked spokane and how he wanted to come back (contrary to all the people who apparently thought this was a shitty show and the band skipped songs because they hated the crowd, tweedy did in fact remark on numerous occasions about how great the city and crowd was, though he complained on our behalf that we weren't all drunk...in response to one of his appreciative speeches, glenn climbed up on his drum kit and screamed, so i think the band had a good time, even if the crowd wasn't good enough for "real" wilco fans).
they came back out for one encore with "heavy metal drummer"...and that's such a perfect song, i don't really need to say anything. really cool light show with it too (and with "cali stars", a bunch of white stage lights filtered to look like starlight). kingpin was great, with tweedy wondering why we weren't all drunk (no-alcohol venue) and then jumping into it with "i wanna be your kingpin...livin' in spokane" which he pronounced as "spoken" but then apologized, and then singing the next verse "i wanna be your kingpin, livin' in...washington". it was pretty great.
then they brought "shadow captain" back out for an encore of "i shall be released", which was probably the other best moment of the show. it was a really somber, soulful rendition of the song with tweedy and the foxes (or captains?) rocking something like a four or five part harmony.
the second encore (late greats/casino queen/outtasite) was just all three songs run into one another in a fucking insane blanket of noise and feedback, just a full-on jam freakout that was basically a ten minute orgy of sound with the occasional chord change to differentiate one song from the next. awesome. my ears were ringing like hell afterwards.
i thought, based on other seated theatre shows i've been to, that this crowd was beyond pumped. we screamed after every song, people were dancing in the aisles, and the band seemed to love it. apparently we weren't up to normal wilco crowd standards, but whatever. everyone seemed to be having fun and if there weren't stumbling drunken assholes tripping all over the place, well, to me that makes a concert MORE fun. maybe i'm just getting old.
my only real regret is finding out afterwards that they had "spiders" and "ashes" on the setlist and didn't play them. those are probably my two favorite wilco songs, all-time and i would have fucking shot through the ceiling to hear them both in addition to what we actually did hear.
nonetheless it was a fantastic show, and i will definitely go see them again if the do come back to spokane. or even seattle, maybe.
there are a lot of show photos here, if you're interested.
No comments:
Post a Comment