One of the many magical moments of the Wilco concert Wednesday night at Heinz Hall came during the instrumental freakout on “Via Chicago” where Jeff Tweedy continues to sing his weary folk song unfazed while all hell is breaking loose behind him with strobes flashing and red lights blinking like an emergency zone.
Wilco actually rolls with a pretty intense light show, deservedly so, which is weird because it certainly didn’t start out in the world as a light-show band.
In 1995, Wilco played alt-country on a club level, and there was no reason, given the past history in Uncle Tupelo, to think that would ever change. But Tweedy knew what he was doing when he let his bandmates reflect his inner turmoil by messing around with the sonics.
It started with the second and third albums and escalated in 2001 with “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” a career-defining album that the label, Reprise, didn’t even want. Nearly two decades and seven albums later, that sense of adventure continues on the new “Ode to Joy,” thanks in part to the primal beats of Glenn Kotche.
The album is, in Tweedy vein, a pretty somber, meditative affair and not all that joyful sonically. Some of those songs — like opener “Bright Leaves” with its slap-you-in-face drumming, “White Wooden Cross” with its “vaguely tropical” rhythm and “We Were Lucky” with Nels Cline’s shards of guitar noise — came to life more robustly on stage.
Cline, who came to Wilco in 2005 from the avant-garde noise-rock world, is one of the best things that ever happened to the band. Making notes simmer, summoning feedback, stabbing at the strings, he generates some kind of tension on just about every song and then absolutely explodes when the time is right, like at the end of “Handshake Drugs” and “Random Name Generator.” The jam with Tweedy on “At Least That's What You Said” fell somewhere between Crazy Horse and Radiohead (maybe just call that Wilco) and Cline’s show-stopping climax to “Impossible Germany” is, inarguably, one of the most artfully constructed rock guitar solos of the century.
Tweedy, looking like a life-sized garden gnome with his pointy knit hat, was in fine spirits despite a situation with something he believes came from a “salad truck.” “Do you guys have salad trucks?” he asked.
“I think the Imodium is starting to kick in,” he assured (oddly, John Lydon said nearly the same thing at Altar Bar in 2015. Chalk it up to touring life.)
It didn’t hamper the scruffy 52-year-old’s energy or longevity in the two-hour-plus show, which included seven of the 11 songs from “Ode to Joy” and “greatest hits” like “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” “War on War” and lovable early fave “Box Full of Letters.”
Tweedy, who really doesn’t require anything but an acoustic guitar, writes and sings with a beauty and word-weary vulnerability that cuts deep with fans and, as always, that connection was palpable in the room. The gorgeous “Reservations” made people almost swoony. During “Hummingbird,” a young woman who clearly adores that song, stood up while everyone else was sitting and did a sort of interpretative dance, spreading her arms like wings on the chorus. Even for the person right behind her, it had to be lovely to watch.
Of course, lots of fans just shouted at him between songs, something he always handles in hilarious fashion. To a guy yelling a request, he said there were pamphlets in the hallway on the way out help people transition out of whatever disappointment they may have felt from the show.
Safe to say, there was little to complain about, aside from the Heinz Hall sound not being quite as warm as the Benedum, where the band played two years ago.
Wilco just kept giving Wednesday, closing the man set with a raucous “I'm the Man Who Loves You” and then remaining on stage for the “encore.”
“That was our show,” Tweedy said, putting on yet another guitar. “We went off stage and then we came back ... We weren’t sure we were going to get [an encore], so we thought we would stay. Plus, we decided [if we didn’t walk off] we could play 1.7 more songs. This is our point 7,” he said, introducing new song “Hold Me Anyway.”
People started walking out and lots left after a jubilant “The Late Greats” only to have Wilco re-emerge for a four-song dash through “California Stars,” “Red-Eyed and Blue,” “I Got You (At the End of the Century)” and “Misunderstood.”
That last, bittersweet selection meant Tweedy ending the show shouting “I'd like to thank you all for nothing...Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!
Nothing!”
He didn’t mean it personally.
“Pittsburgh is one of my favorite cities,” he said earlier. “We’re lucky we could make it over here.”
Salad truck aside, we were all lucky.
Opening act Deep Sea Diver showed off the many talents of singer and multi-instrumentalist Jessica Dobson, who’s toured as a member of Shins, and is now back fronting this punchy indie-pop quartet.
Scott Mervis: smervis@post-gazette.com
WILCO SETLIST
Bright Leaves
Before Us
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
War on War
One and a Half Stars
Handshake Drugs
At Least That's What You Said
Hummingbird
White Wooden Cross
Via Chicago
Whole Love
Laminated Cat
Random Name Generator
Reservations
We Were Lucky
Love Is Everywhere (Beware)
Impossible Germany
Box Full of Letters
Theologians
I'm the Man Who Loves You
Encore (sort of):
Hold Me Anyway
The Late Greats
Encore:
California Stars
Red-Eyed and Blue
I Got You (At the End of the Century)
Misunderstood
First Published: November 7, 2019, 3:05 p.m.
