{"id":5797,"date":"2019-10-18T10:46:07","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T15:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=5797"},"modified":"2019-12-17T20:07:46","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T01:07:46","slug":"review-wilco-boch-center-10-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2019\/10\/18\/review-wilco-boch-center-10-11\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Wilco @ Boch Center 10\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Sensabaugh<\/em><\/p>\n

The last time I saw Jeff Tweedy was a year and a half ago. The show was intimate. Tweedy was touring with an acoustic set for an upcoming album and an autobiography, all of which carried deeply personal insights into the songwriter whose band, Wilco, has been crowned by critics as \u201cAmerica\u2019s Radiohead.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Wilco has never been anyone but themselves. Everything the band puts forth is played with intention<\/em>, from a nice guitar-lick to a ballad superimposed over the sound of sonic anxiety. Wilco is not Tweedy\u2019s songwriting outfit, but an organized hive mind where Nels Cline\u2019s guitar solo or Glenn Kotche\u2019s drum fill sounds as if they were written with Tweedy\u2019s lyrics side by side to the band\u2019s instruments.<\/p>\n

Wilco played the Boch Center – Wang Theatre for their second show in Boston Friday night, the venue described by opener Daughter of Swords (Alexandra Sauser-Monnig) as a place with plenty of \u201cnaked people on the wall.\u201d The place feels more like an opera house than somewhere to see someone sing about binge drinking and coping with death.<\/p>\n

Yet that’s the beauty of Wilco. Their music carries such range in aim and scale that Wilco can perform \u201cJesus, Etc.\u201d as if you’re 14 stories up in a cramped, small Chicago apartment, or a song like \u201cMisunderstood\u201d that can only be properly listened to in a 3,500-seater venue not unlike the Wang Theatre. That range is just as palpable on Wilco\u2019s new album, Ode to Joy<\/em>, which Wilco used to open the show, playing over half of the album through the course of the night.<\/p>\n

Opener Daughter of Swords prefaced the show perfectly. \u201cHoly s**t man, it’s so cool,\u201d said Sauser-Monnig, who is also one third of folk-trio Mountain Man. \u201cI just had my mind blown 18 times watching their set.\u201d Alternating between a cappella and acoustic guitar, Sauser-Monnig performed a goosebump-inducing set with music from her solo debut, Dawnbreaker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Wilco were in great form from the start. \u201cWe\u2019re not playing for you, we\u2019re playing with you,\u201d said Tweedy, calling out some people texting during the show, and rightfully so. They were 3 rows back from the singer\u2019s microphone.<\/p>\n

Aside from the initial distraction, the concert ran smoothly. Kotche nailed the drums on \u201cI Am Trying to Break Your Heart\u201d and \u201cVia Chicago.\u201d Cline was fantastic, breaking a guitar string at the start of the show, and alternating solos with Pat Sansone on \u201cImpossible Germany\u201d in a way that made me feel like I was 9 years old again.<\/p>\n

That was the recurrent feeling throughout the night. My earliest memories of Wilco were going to and from school in the backseat of an SUV. Even after rediscovering the band, I still found myself singing along to songs I hadn\u2019t heard in almost a decade. In that sense, it was an experience that could only be replicated by a college freshman lucky enough to have parents with great taste in music.<\/p>\n

Regardless, Wilco had fun onstage. New single \u201cEveryone Hides\u201d was intermixed with banter with the audience. \u201cA pack of light beer is kinda oxymoronic right? It’s Friday, get a case of real f**king beer,\u201d said Tweedy, before admitting that he hadn\u2019t had real beer in 20 something years. It was vintage Wilco, and the band knew it. The group asked the audience to pretend they had an encore in order to keep playing.<\/p>\n

2 and a half hours and 26 songs later, Wilco played a show that was just as enticing as when they played Yankee Hotel Foxtrot <\/em>to crowds of college students almost 20 years ago. That fact can only be reflected in the music, then and now. Just the tone of \u201cJesus, Etc.\u201d is still copied and imitated by numerous artists today, much less an innovative approach that has helped Wilco continue to create incredible music. Wilco are no late greats.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Setlist:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Bright Leaves<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Before Us<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart <\/span><\/li>\n
  4. War on War<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. One and a Half Stars<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Handshake Drugs<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. At Least That’s What You Said<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. I Might<\/span><\/li>\n
  9. Hummingbird<\/span><\/li>\n
  10. White Wooden Cross<\/span><\/li>\n
  11. Via Chicago<\/span><\/li>\n
  12. Laminated Cat<\/span><\/li>\n
  13. Random Name Generator<\/span><\/li>\n
  14. We Were Lucky<\/span><\/li>\n
  15. Love Is Everywhere (Beware)<\/span><\/li>\n
  16. On and On and On<\/span><\/li>\n
  17. Impossible Germany<\/span><\/li>\n
  18. Box Full of Letters<\/span><\/li>\n
  19. Everyone Hides<\/span><\/li>\n
  20. Jesus, Etc.<\/span><\/li>\n
  21. Theologians<\/span><\/li>\n
  22. I’m the Man Who Loves You <\/span><\/li>\n
  23. Hold Me Anyway<\/span><\/li>\n
  24. Misunderstood<\/span><\/li>\n
  25. California Stars<\/span><\/li>\n
  26. The Late Greats<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Matthew Sensabaugh The last time I saw Jeff Tweedy was a year and a half ago. The show was intimate. Tweedy was touring with an acoustic set for an upcoming album and an autobiography, all of which carried deeply personal insights into the songwriter whose band, Wilco, has been crowned by critics as \u201cAmerica\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525],"tags":[542,952,31,631,951],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5801,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797\/revisions\/5801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}