While Fat Tuesday rung in debauchery and revelry from New Orleans to the rest of the country, alt-country fans in Norfolk attended a celebration of their own: the long-awaited return of Wilco.
While Fat Tuesday rung in debauchery and revelry from New Orleans to the rest of the country, alt-country fans in Norfolk attended a celebration of their own: the long-awaited return of Wilco.
On the heels of their latest offering, Star Wars, Jeff Tweedy, Nels Cline and co. treated fans to an eclectic set including an opening block of new songs, hits from their 1999 breakout album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and other favorites digging back to their earliest recordings.
Los Angeles folk punk duo Girlpool (pictured below) opened the show with a stripped-down indie set reminiscent of Kimya Dawson and of early Against Me! If every one of Against Me’s songs could sound like “Beginning in an Ending,” then Girlpool would undoubtedly be the result.
An opening lyric, “I thought I found myself today/no one noticed/things are okay” set the tone of their performance, an examination of the time between childhood and adulthood that is being in one’s late teenage years.
Yet, they are still young and though full adulthood is on the horizon there is frustration in their inability to move past childish things. Another lyric from their song “I Like That You Can See It” laments, “my mind is almost nineteen/and I still feel angry.”
Girlpool, overall, kept a hard-edged, almost riot grrl sound instrumentally, effectively and precisely mixed with vulnerability and heart in their lyrics and beautifully executed vocal harmonies.
Despite the overall chattiness of the Norfolk crowd, the audience was drawn in slowly as the group really hit stride mid-set before a strong finish as the energy and anticipation built.
Wilco, touring in support of their newest release, Star Wars, opened their set with a block of new songs. A breezy pop album that many critics deemed accessible, easy listening, and a return to form for both their noise rock and pop sensibilities, Star Wars’ abrupt and unannounced release seems appropriate, as its jokey name and cover diminish any pretension that the band could justifiably claim for their longstanding status as one of the more respected bands in alternative music. If anything, their breezy looseness both in releasing the record and in the record’s content seems to solidify their position atop the effortless indie rock canon.
The band took the stage to “EKG,” a static, noise-rock intro before promptly moving into their first set, beginning with the first three songs off Star Wars.
With older hits like “Handshake Drugs” and “Spiders,” guitarist Nels Cline brought the show to static noise rock fever pitch. Meanwhile with the otherwise mellow “Kamera,” the band took a harder approach, speeding up the song slightly while letting distorted guitar dominate the room.
Tweedy was characteristically casual and soft-spoken, bantering deep in the set with an audience member in the front row about the intensity of their light show. “The rest of the show is nothing but flashing lights,” Tweedy joked, afterwards assuring the audience that he didn’t want anyone to have a seizure “on his watch.”
The band finished off with a crowd pleasing acoustic encore set featuring songs off of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Being There, and Summerteeth, closing finally with popular songs “Jesus, Etc.” and “A Shot in the Arm.”
Wilco had been touring for their album The Whole Love when I first saw them play at Merriweather Post Pavilion 5 years ago, and the band continues to innovate their sound while maintaining a larger-than-life arena stage presence, even at a smaller club. Their 2011 album featured a more polished pop sound that seemed to peak with their album opener, “Art of Almost.”
But very little seemed to have changed in their live sound in these years, apart from the album artifact they chose to have on the stage. Instead of a macramé owl, representative of The Whole Love, a white cat statue perched on an amp.
The divide between the last tour I had seen and their tour now would strangely be summed up more effectively by Girlpool. I saw Wilco for the first time when I was on that narrow divide of late teenhood to my twenties, and returning to them now in my twenties seems like both a homecoming and a parting of ways.
Still—it was fun to revisit Wilco, and my 17-year-old self, while it lasted.
Set List (As Written by Wilco)
MORE…
RNG
JOKE EXPLAINED
YOU SATELLITE
TASTE THE CEILING
PICKLED GINGER
WHERE DO I BEGIN
COLD SLOPE
KING OF YOU
MAGNETIZED
HANDSHAKE
CAMERA
HEART
ART
HUMMINGBIRD
BOX
HMD
I’M THE MAN
DAWNED
IMPOSSIBLE
RED EYED
I GOT YOU
OUTTASITE
FIRST ENCORE – SPIDERS
SECOND ENCORE – MISUNDERSTOOD
JUST THAT SIMPLE
WAR ON WAR
ALWAYS IN LOVE
JESUS
SHOT
