Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood was once the center of the city’s booming entertainment district. Located at what had initially been the end of the L Train system, The Aragon Ballroom, Green Mill Jazz Club, and long-defunct Uptown Theatre quickly defined the corners of Broadway and Lawrence Avenue as the designated area for Chicagoans to congregate for the arts. As the area’s zeitgeist waivered though, the theatres grew into a weekend oasis of vibrancy amongst an otherwise casual and sleepy north-side neighborhood. Given Wilco’s consistent championing of Chicago’s local institutions, and another Uptown landmark Carol’s Pub in particular, The Rivera Theater seems like exactly the kind of venue for the band to host their latest three-night run and the start of their spring tour.
Jeff Tweedy and company know the former movie palace well, playing there many times over the years and even using it as the base for a five-night series of performances back in 2008. Aside from a few secret shows the band played at the laid-back country dive Carol’s Pub last fall, the group’s last Chicago tour dates were dedicated to three nights of playing their opus Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in full to honor its 20-year anniversary. Now the band, free of gimmicks and obligations, has promised their fans that the current slate of concerts will feature no repeats, an obligation that for most groups would add up to a couple of extremely short and boring sets. Wilco, on the other hand, offers one of the deepest and most rewarding discographies in modern music, and that’s what they provided.
The Thursday and Saturday night shows set a precedent too. Thursday night, the band, playing their first show in almost six months, plowed through much of their more country-tinged material, touching on tracks from A.M., Mermaid Avenue, and especially their newest album, Cruel Country. Saturday, on the other hand, covered many of the fan favorites from YHF, Summerteeth, and Being There, including the obligatory and much revered “Via Chicago”. In between, the group even joined Yo La Tengo during their Friday show at the Metro to plow through a batch of covers, as if the band hadn’t been tasked with enough songs to remember.
Each show featured another local Chicago standby, the burgeoning Horsegirl, as support. With their first formal full-length, Versions of Modern Performance coming out last year, the band capitalized on much of the good faith they had cultivated touring throughout the city in the years prior. To see the group playing to a sold-out crowd at one of Chicago’s larger venues was probably inevitable, but even by the end of their third set, Horsegirl seemed amazed, not just by the state of their rapid ascendance, but by how quickly the Wilco fans had clung onto them. They’ll play with Wilco for a few more shows before beginning their own headlining tour later this year. That will culminate in another stop back in Chicago, this time at Thalia Hall.
By 8:30, local radio station and promoter XRT had introduced Wilco and the band had taken the stage before a thick crowd of clamoring Tweeders, many on their third night of the run (March 26th) and many packed deep into the pit of the three-level GA floor. The group in turn began with two of the best tracks off A Ghost is Born: “At Least That’s What You Said” and “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”. Both were jammed out, excursions into the eerie and confounding state of the 2004-era Tweedy psyche. The former leaning harder into its noisy guitar theatrics as a great opener should, and the latter remaining the most ferocious the band has ever allowed themselves to devolve to, even outside of the dynamic switch-ups. With these two tracks and all the surrounding guitar embellishments and dramatic drum fills, the band indicated they still had plenty of energy saved up for their last show.
If there was one overarching theme of the setlist, it was the dominance of that guitar and in turn one of the band’s more lead-heavy albums, Sky Blue Sky. That 2007 release was noted at the time for the inclusion of guitarist Nels Cline, who dominated on Sunday’s renditions of “Impossible Germany” and “Side with the Seeds”. After another Sky Blue Sky track, the soft and contemplative album opener “Either Way”, Tweedy took a moment to present a few soccer trophies to the members of Horsegirl for being “the best-behaved audience members.” Horsegirl who had been perched in one of the venue’s opera boxes, played along, and danced riotously to Wilco’s next track, The Whole Love highlight, “Dawned on Me”.
For a show heavily indebted to a single album, much of the night’s biggest moments came from the songs that fell in between. The late-career classic that is Cruel Country’s “Tired of Taking it Out on You”; the ruminative “Reservations”; and set closer, one of Tweedy’s strongest love songs, “Jesus, Etc.” The audience was keenly aware of the previous two night’s standout encores and as the band departed the stage, the crowd was eager to delve into another batch of fan favorites.
Returning to the stage, the band quickly launched into the A Ghost is Born closer, “The Late Greats”. In its cheeky, pop-reverence, it was a rousing intro to the predictably ecstatic and thematically similar “Heavy Metal Drummer”, which even had Horsegirl back on their feet. As the only Summerteeth track of the night, “A Shot in the Arm” proved to be exactly the kind of cathartic closer that the weekend demanded. One of Wilco’s first breakout singles, it was also the entry point into the band’s catalog for much of the crowd’s older members.
With the bright theatre lights shining out into the audience, the night could have seemingly ended there, but Wilco tacked on one more Sky Blue Sky track, albeit one that served a purpose. “On and On and On” reminded Chicago that the band was home, and more importantly that they would return. Jeff Tweedy and the rest of the group have served as one of the city’s clearest connections to the musical landscape and remain a singular point of pride. Countless citizens, their lives and families having intersected with members of the band or their continued rapport as current residents, see Wilco as something different amongst local groups, a fulfillment, and justification of the city itself. To their credit, the band has done just about all they can to acknowledge their gratitude, and each show they play seems to only exist to outdo what had come before.
