REVIEW -- Wilco at the 9:30 Club (Feb. 27, 2008)

In interviews, Wilco’s front-man Jeff Tweedy bristles when journalists refer to his band and their music as “experimental.” “I don't feel like we've ever been very experimental to begin with,” Tweedy told Pitchfork Media in an interview last May. “As far as I'm concerned, we've always been a rock band.”

As if to prove the point, conspicuously absent from Wilco’s performance at the 9:30 Club Wednesday night were the digital bleeps and whirs of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot -- the album that typified Wilco as experimenters. In their place were an electric piano that would sound at home in a 1970s-era classic-rock band and a decidedly analog three-piece horn section. Even the staging was stripped down, as if to say we are a simple Midwestern rock band, nothing more. Gone is the giant video screen displaying abstract images seen on the Ghost is Born tour. Wednesday night’s stage was set with just guitars, amps, a big oriental rug splayed on the floor, and a large cowboy hat atop Tweedy’s head.

Setting the tone of the night as an intimate back-to-basics showcase of Wilco’s songwriting and talent as a rock and roll band, Tweedy opened with a plaintive arrangement of “Sunken Treasure” constructed only of finger-picked acoustic guitar, drums and lap steel sprinkled softly. With Tweedy’s vocals at the center of it all, the sparseness and quiet of the arrangement put the full power of his songwriting on display.

The crowd seemed pleased, showing their enthusiasm at the smallest of promptings. Not far into the show, as Tweedy began the first instrumental break of “She’s a Jar,” he realizes his harmonica is in the wrong key. As he continues playing, each step in his subsequent effort to procure a new harmonica draws enthusiastic applause from the crowd culminating in raucous cheering as he blows the first correct note with the new harmonica.

As the band progressed through the set list, they increasingly let their rock and roll side hang out culminating with a loud and thrilling double-encore featuring older fan-favorites such as “Casino Queen.”

Many who became fans of Wilco during the Yankee Hotel era may complain about the band’s pendulum swing back towards a more straight-forward alt-country style. But, this is a band that has never allowed its fans to stay too long in a sonic comfort zone. “I think there's a difference between confirming an audience and challenging an audience,” Tweedy told Rolling Stone in 2004, “and if you decide to challenge an audience I don't think half-measures will do you any good.” There, he was discussing the band’s shift to the more avant-garde electronic sounds of Yankee Hotel and A Ghost is Born. But, the same idea applies to their present return to a rootsier rock and roll sound. Wednesday’s show proved that even at their simplest, Wilco is among America’s most innovative and interesting rock and roll bands.