Print
E-Mail
tool name
closeSaturday, Oct. 10, 2009
Review: Wilco wows 'em in Dallas
Review: Wilco delivers controlled chaos at the Palladium Friday, and gets the crowd roaring.
Preston Jones
DALLAS -- Wilco provided ample evidence of its new-found calm Friday night.
The seven-member band took the stage to the The Price is Right theme song.
Frontman Jeff Tweedy swapped shirts with a member of the audience, donning a stylish gold lame number. "I feel like I'm in Sha Na Na," he said.
Tweedy even paused, mid-set, to offer his colorful theories on the construction of set lists.
A brooding, troubled artist this was not.
The Palladium Ballroom's sold-out crowd ate it up, roaring after every song, belting out lyrics and enveloping the Chicago-based rockers in a fierce, warm welcome. For more than two hours, Wilco happily rambled through its catalog (the band solicits requests online prior to shows), doling out more than 20 songs.
The septet is touring in support of this year's Wilco (The Album), a sunny, quirky and faintly difficult record that loops in the avant-garde splashes of A Ghost Is Born and the rollicking country sketches of Summerteeth. In the spirit of its latest album, the band delivered controlled chaos with a smile.
Loose almost to the point of shambolic, but razor sharp throughout, Tweedy and company allowed the darkness coloring tunes like Jesus, Etc. or Impossible Germany as shades of nuance, rather than a prevailing mood. Slashes of guitar meshed with rolling splashes of percussion and Tweedy's persistent, pained tenor.
Wilco (The Album) has garnered considerable critical acclaim for bridging the extremes of this wonderfully ambitious group. As Friday's excellent performance demonstrated, letting in a little light -- and calmness -- only cements Wilco's standing as one of America's finest rock bands.
DFW.com is pleased to be able to offer its users the opportunity to make comments and hold conversations online. However, the interactive nature of the internet makes it impractical for our staff to monitor each and every posting.
Since DFW.com does not control user submitted statements, we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted on our website. In addition, we remind anyone interested in making an online comment that responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not DFW.com.
If you find a comment offensive, clicking the exclamation icon will flag the comment for review by the administrators; we are counting on the good judgment of all our readers to help us.
