Austin Nelson
Veteran Chicago alt-rock band Wilco
Dallas Jeff Tweedy and his Wilco band-mates have turned charting their own course into quite the career.
A quick recap of the back-story long since passed into indie rock lore: Wilco's fourth studio album, 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was subjected to head-scratching record label contortions even as it brought an increased amount of attention to the group. Fast forward a decade and having been thoroughly scorched by the experience, Wilco elects to go it alone, forsaking major label support as only an infinitesimal number of its contemporaries have likewise been able to do.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Tweedy and his collaborators have earned the right to deliver a messy, frequently enthralling performance of the sort on display Tuesday night at the Music Hall at Fair Park.
The stop kicked off the latest leg of a tour supporting the band's first, officially self-released album (The Whole Love, which provided a healthy chunk of the sprawling set) and returned Wilco to North Texas a mere six months after its gig at the University of North Texas Auditorium in Denton.
The opening song selection neatly illustrated the dichotomy Wilco embodies, moving from the pastoral, delicate One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend) to the bared-teeth, broken-window squall of Poor Places. The tender and the tough rest uneasily, side by side, throughout Wilco's ever-deepening catalog; the Chicago-based sextet easily toggles between sheets of noise cascading amid a riot of lights and almost heartbreaking guitar lines that evaporate too soon in the darkness, leaving only pleasing memories. (The band was abetted by its peculiar stage set-up, which placed the group in front of what appeared to be hundreds of handkerchiefs dangling from the rafters; projected images and eyeball-frying spotlights filled in the rest.)
Although the crowd (not sold out, although it appeared, glancing around the room, to be close) decided to sort of stand and sort of sit, the band wasn't outwardly interested in pleasing them, preferring to ratchet up the guitar attack and rendering even more familiar tunes (Jesus Etc.; Handshake Drugs) in a thicker, heavier fashion. In the two years since I last saw Wilco (at the Palladium Ballroom), Tweedy and, in particular, guitar god Nels Cline have toughened up Wilco's more accessible material, rendering it harder in the process.
This was rock music with an art-school edge, alt-country filtered through an urban aesthetic. It is, quite simply, one of America's most vital bands in any genre, plowing ahead and continuing to do as it has always done. Wilco satisfies itself first, letting the rest fall into place naturally.
Those savvy enough to show up early were treated to one of the best opening sets -- or even headlining sets -- North Texas has seen in 2011. Veteran singer-songwriter Nick Lowe is warming up crowds on this leg of Wilco's tour and his generous, 45-minute acoustic turn was a master's class in pop music spiked with thorns. "It's so nice to be in the bosom of my favorite city," said Lowe between songs, "around the corner from Deep Ellum, the scene of my youthful indiscretions."
Apart from the droll banter, there were Lowe's bristling, exquisite tunes, sung in a clear, limber voice, bent artfully around his deft turns of phrase. From his own, revered staples (Cruel to Be Kind, (What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?) to newer selections (the wryly comic House for Sale, from his just-released LP The Old Magic) to his smart covers (a beautifully wounded rendition of long-time pal Elvis Costello's Alison), the 62-year-old Lowe proved his standing as one of rock's true geniuses, who, not unlike the headliners, has simply ignored conventional wisdom and gone his own way.
