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Features Sky's The Limit Monday, March 03, 2008 Wilco Promise To Eclipse Last Year's Brilliant Australian Shows. By Martin Jones.
When I talk with Wilco’s long-serving bassist John Stirratt, it’s on the eve of their five-night sold-out run at The Riviera in Chicago, where the band is ambitiously planning to tackle pretty much everything it has ever recorded. That’s a span of almost fifteen years, six richly diverse studio albums, and a dozen band members. This bodes well for the band’s imminent tour of Australia; not only will we be receiving a highly-rehearsed Wilco, but we can expect a substantially different set-list to last year’s mind-melting shows. (Though I, for one, wouldn’t complain a bit if they exactly recreated the show I saw in Brisbane.)
Though you’ll find that Wilco fans tend to favour a particular era of the band, staunchly defending their dedication to a particularly album or line-up, few would dispute that the Wilco presents its most exciting live incarnation yet. With Nels Cline sharing the spotlight with Jeff Tweedy out front of the band, spinning a whirlwind of effects pedals and classical and jazz influenced guitar wizardry, and Pat Sansone enriching the already mighty depths of the band with his vocal harmonies and multi-instrumental prowess, Wilco 2008 could well be the best live rock band in the world.
“Yeah this version of the band has really been able to capture the atmosphere of every record,” Stirratt attests, “but at the same time make it sound like it’s own sort of band. The band does have a personality that I think it will even show more of itself on the next record! But I’m looking forward to this other material because there are a lot of Summerteeth songs that we never really did, so I’m looking forward to tackling the rest of that, and a lot of the baroque sort of arrangements on that record, I think Pat, Patrick Sansone, it’s right up his alley that element. And I am sure he and Nels can create such great atmosphere between them.”
Those of us lucky enough to catch Wilco mid last year, were given the privilege of being among the first to see the songs from the most recent album Sky Blue Sky. The complexity of the album is such that you’d scarcely believe it possible to recreate live without some serious electronic trickery. But there it was, expanding like an exploding star before our eyes and ears – I likened the experience to a magician showing the secret to his best trick, before you’ve even seen the trick.
“It’s great, it just gets stronger,” Stirratt describes how the band dynamic has developed since those last Australian shows. “I have to say it’s wonderful, things just get deeper and deeper and it’s amazing, it gets more and more rewarding. I think the touring cycle from the last year, Australia on, it just got so much better and I think we’ll pick up right where we left off, hopefully it’s a progressive thing. I think we feel a little more confident with a lot of that stuff.”
Read the full feature in March Rhythms.
Sky Blue Sky is available on Nonesuch through Universal. The Autumn Defense is available on Reverberation/Fuse. Wilco play Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on March 18, Brisbane’s Tivoli on March 19, Byron Bluesfest on March 20, and Melbourne’s Metro on March 26.
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