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Trevor: Wilco has had one hell of a year. With a Grammy for A Ghost is Born under their belt they hit the road with two new members, garnering acclaim as one of the best live acts in rock and roll. So it's no surprise they've opted to take a victory lap with two discs and 23 tracks of pristine live recording. The results exceed expectations.
Thorin: If by exceeding expectations you mean the guitar wankery of Nels Cline, then I think you're right. But, you're right, with the respect that the band finally has garnered for their live show, it was inevitable that the live album would come quickly thereafter, and with the band constantly in arguments with labels, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a forced exposition.
The album features tracks mostly culled from the last two records, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, with a glance back to 1996's Being There's album-opener "Misunderstood." The song is a born sing along with lyrics like "Back in your old neighborhood, the cigarettes taste so good." The disc captures the crowd cheering approval to lines like "You still love rock and roll."
"Misunderstood" is by far my least favorite song on the album, but I'm willing to admit that I'm more a Wilco mid-early-convert-that-lost-interest than a die-hard fan. I really enjoyed Being There and Summerteeth, but A.M. and A Ghost is Born just sat on my shelf waiting to be sold.
It sets the celebratory tone of the record. You can hear the band relishing in the density of their albums, and the group's ability to embellish the layers they paint into their signature sound of folk and classic rock interwoven with sonic textures of echoing guitars and static noise. Both front man Jeff Tweedy and virtuoso Nels Cline partake in guitar solos and they manage to remove some of the irony from rock's overwrought guitar solo.
I don't know about that. I mean, the guitar solo is still, well, a guitar solo. I want to start a band that is only guitar solos, kind of like Joe Satriani or something. I'll be a guitar god. Just for the record, my favorite song on this record is "Airline to Heaven." It doesn't really have any guitar solos. No piano, just an acoustic guitar, a female backing vocal, a slide guitar and a quiet drum kick.
"Via Chicago" from Summerteeth opens the second disc as a sleepy murder-ballad with intermittent explosions of noise that disappear as quick as they pop up. Other classics range from bittersweet ("Jesus, Etc.," "Radio Cure") to scorching ("At Least That's What You Said," "Kicking Television"). If you were to devote two hours to any single rock album this year, Kicking Television is it. Is it a classic? Only time will tell.
It's as classic as a live album is going to get. It shows Wilco playing through their catalog at a breakneck speed, changing and moving and creating new songs out of old ones. This is everything a fan could hope for in a live album because it's not just all the songs you know and love being played live. They're being embraced live. Ah crap, did I just become a Wilco fan?
-Trevor Morris, Thorin Klosowski
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