Wilco began its 2010 world tour this week, stopping in Portland Tuesday for a sold-out set where, says Rolling Stone, the band proved a "well-oiled rock machine." The Oregonian called it an "intense, beautiful, playful ... moving performance," concluding: "Wilco's a great band that played a great show." Seattle Weekly says that at last night's Seattle show, the band "somehow made the sold-out Paramount even more golden for two straight hours."
Wilco began its 2010 world tour in Montana on Sunday, heading next to Portland, Oregon, to play a sold-out set at Arlene Schnitzer Hall on Tuesday. There, says Rolling Stone, the band proved to a "well-oiled rock machine." As Rolling Stone reviewer Jim Withington reports, the set featured the return of Jeff Tweedy's famed "thwack-whacking, guitar-shaking lead" and encores with guest turns from Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck, of R.E.M. and the Minus Five (which famously featured Wilco on its amusingly titled album Down with Wilco) and a "stellar cover" of Neil Young's Buffalo Springfield tune "Broken Arrow." Read the review at rollingstone.com.
Even after a night's sleep to ponder the previous night's events, The Oregonian's Ryan White found, as he wrote his concert review yesterday, that he was still ready "to make sweeping proclamations about the importance of Wilco to just about everything and everyone."
Of all the band out there, says White, "Wilco is one of the great ones." He describes the "great rock show" the band gave the Portland audience as "a diverse and intense, beautiful, playful ... moving performance."
Responding to Tweedy's announcement of the band's forthcoming free show in Vancouver as part of the city's Olympic Winter Games LiveCity festivties, White is sure to include the band among "the rest of the best in the world" there to perform in the Games.
White reiterates his claim of Wilco's exalted place among its peers, saying that with all the bands playing, "there aren't many with the range, the history, the success and the chops Wilco brought to town ... Wilco's a great band that played a great show."
Read the complete concert review at oregonlive.com.
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After the Portland set, Wilco was off to Seattle, where the band performed at the Paramount last night. Seattle Weekly says the current line-up of the band "exists in a completely different galaxy from that shy, awkward band" of its earliest days, such that it "somehow made the sold-out Paramount even more golden for two straight hours."
Reviewer Gregory Franklin has kind things to say, to put it mildly, about "savant-garde guitar master Cline." Franklin lauds his solo on "Impossible Germany," in particular, as "one of the most unparalleled, magical things I've ever heard in my life. Gorgeous, chaotic, improvisational and loose, but still retaining dignity, Cline's solo is the closest thing to an out-of-body experience that I've ever had."
Read the complete concert review at seattleweekly.com.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Chona Kasinger found front man Jeff Tweedy to be "visibly ecstatic and grinning ear-to-ear," leading the band in "more than two hours of indelible classics." Kasinger praises both the words and the music of those classics, new and old, saying, "The poetry of Tweedy's lyrics are unmatched, and Wilco has an uncanny knack for pairing them with the perfect melodies." Read that review at seattlepi.com.
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Before Saturday's free concert at Vancouver's David Lam Park comes a show at the Royal Theatre in Victoria, British Columbia, Friday night. For Wilco's upcoming tour schedule, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
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