Late Greats: Wilco Live at 9:30 Club

"I'M A FUTURE FALL OUT STANDING / In the present race I phantom," Jeff Tweedy crooned to a packed-to-the-gills house at 9:30 Club last night.

Phantoms of the past, present and future pervaded a show that chronicled a band's evolution and a singer's checkered emotional past. When Tweedy invited the audience to sing along to the deceptively jaunty "Hummingbird," it felt like an enormous group hug. To wit: "His goal in life was to be an echo / The type of sound that floats around and then back down."

Not that the Chicago-based group has fallen on hard times. Far from it. But on the artistic front, 2007 proved to be a tumultuous year for Tweedy and Co.

Wilco's latest studio release, "Sky Blue Sky," received healthy radio play and even eked out a Grammy nomination (the band's fourth). But among the band's disciples — music critics included — universal anticipation of an evolved sound gave way to some dissatisfaction for what was deemed old and traditional. A volley of criticisms like "safe," "straightforward" and "mainstream" was visited on "Sky Blue Sky" by a phalanx of bloggers.

One of the most perplexing (albeit amusing) assessments popped up in a prominent entertainment publication, which stated that Wilco had produced the best Eagles album the Eagles never made. These kinds of flip comparisons are pitched to offend one or both of the bands — and certainly listeners of either. Which is why it was easy to grin like a Cheshire upon the discovery that the album's breakout single, "Impossible Germany" — a sleeping giant of a song about how denial can wake up to possibility — could be heard as Wilco's answer to "Hotel California." This review will refrain from such comparisons shortly.

In terms of musicality and structure, the songs differ a great deal from one another. (Although a case could easily be made for both having similar heaven-scraping guitar solos at their codas.) But on a more visceral level, especially when experienced firsthand, both songs have a distinctive galvanizing effect, notably on a crowd. They're anthems to shaking off the cobwebs that shackle and stifle the spirit, to finding a balance between disappointment and opportunity, between art and commerce. This sentiment could also have served as a theme for Wilco's performance last night.

The Wilco sound of old was in residence, the kind of small, alt-folk music reminiscent of the band's second album, "Being There." The seductive blue-eyed soul of "Side With the Seeds" benefitted from an intimacy that the sextet has employed less and less over their previous two albums. Producer Jim O'Rourke's carefully plotted white noise, which gave "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" its static cling, is in short supply on "Sky Blue Sky," and during their set, the newer songs were given room to breathe, hang and weigh. They also neatly bookended key callbacks to earlier albums "A.M." and "Summer Teeth."

The show opened with "In Your Dreams," an old standard, and "Blue Eyed Soul," which filled the space with bluesy reminiscences and neatly segued into seldom heard material. Tweedy and guitarist Nels Cline took turns overlapping the musical and lyrical obfuscations that are prevalent in "Handshake Drugs." But they also layered smooth, glistening trails of chords over lyrics that alternated between plaintive ("Jesus, Etc.") and folksy ("Monday").

Wilco finished the set with "Late Greats," whose (yes) straightforward momentum and themes shrouded a more immediate message: "The best song will never get sung / The best life never leaves your lungs / So good, you won't ever know / I never hear it on the radio."

This rocked-out salvo summed up the evening, as well as Wilco's journey from label to label, from album to album, from critic to concertgoer. The place that they're most at home is where their music gets people buzzing: town after town; toll after toll.

» Wilco performs again at 9:30 Club tonight at 7:30 p.m. (sold out).

Written by Express contributor Christopher Correa

Photos by Michael Segal (top) and Chris Strong