WILCO
OVENS AUDITORIUM, CHARLOTTE, NC
WORDS: AW HENDERSON
PHOTOS: ALEX HARBERGER
JUNE 20, 2007

Talk about panache. Wilco vertex Jeff Tweedy has it in excess, dripping off the edge of the stage. An ultraviolet scan of his dressing room would reveal a bioluminescent trail of pure style everywhere he's been. The man defined an era of American indie rock, and then had the balls to ape both the Krauts of the '70s and the dad-rock of the '90s without a single apology. Plus, he punched some dude in the face in front of a crowd of paying fans. Ladies and gentlemen, panache.

(Un?)luckily, no assaults were witnessed, Tweedy-perpetrated or otherwise, at Wilco's North Carolina stop this tour. The night was not without it's surprises, but these were mostly of the pleasantly mild variety, certainly keeping with the Sky Blue Sky tone. For an album that has been derided by critics as too laid back, Sky Blue Sky's songs were some of the most thrilling of the night. "Side with the Seeds" and "Shake It Off" in particular, but not forgetting "Impossible Germany" or "You Are My Face," shot into the crowd like electric arrows, piercing us right where we wanted to be pierced. Devil horns went up sporadically, more often than not thrown by husbands with grey in their hair. Such is the power of Wilco.

But it's not about the music, at this point. We know what Tweedy can do, and he knows we know, and he knows we want to see anyway, so he gives it to us, with Nels Cline's help, this time. Aforementioned squiggly-straight rockers, blocks of dissonance bookending Yankee tracks, groovy lighting and I-can-hear-the-air spaciness for cuts from A Ghost Is Born, and Jeff's voice leading the boy scouts of country through the wilderness of rock. All executed to a T, but if that was all they gave us then we might as well be home kicking our televisions and dancing in our living rooms.

To belabor the point (as in, get to the point!) even further, when I found a friend of mine after the show, the first words out of her mouth were, "That was the best concert ever!" and for all I know that's completely true. Tweedy and his friends have mastered the art of live entertainment to the degree that they appear casual, even sloppy, on stage. That's where the beauty lies, and the charm. Tweedy knows that every last one of those in the crowd has either grown into adulthood singing his tunes, or will. In a very palpable way, we're all old friends reuniting after an unfortunate but unavoidable spell in the "real world." This reunion is a chance to swap good moods, and the collected whole of the audience just barely matches Tweedy's vibes. Smiling, jocular and ready to take the minute or two between songs that he needs to connect with the audience, Tweedy treated the people of Charlotte with quirky anecdotes about their own city, viewed from the eyes of a visiting performer. The highlight of the show for me was, apart from hearing "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" live for the second time, the dance between Jeff and the little blonde girl in a cowboy hat, facing each other, offering the audience their profile outlined against the multi-chromatic stage lights. That's what I paid $32.00 + service charges for, to say nothing of the goofy props crafted from yarn that seemed to drop from the rafters of their own volition.

This is why Wilco will never really be "the American Radiohead" as they've been touted; they have too much fun whenever they're on stage. And so do we.