Wilco

The band kept one foot planted in approachable song structure, while walking the line with more experimental pieces from its latest and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. This ability to work within two artistic worlds is evidenced in Tweedy and Cline’s blistering guitar solos on “At Least That’s What You Said” and the gorgeous “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” with its swelling wall of sound.

The clarity of Tweedy’s offbeat poetry cut through, even in the midst of intricate songs like “Shot In The Arm,” “Hell Is Chrome” and “Theologians.” With everything from tiny, sad vignettes (“The ash tray says you were up all night / When you went to bed with your darkest mind”) to the deceptively welcoming images of acceptance and the Devil in “Hell Is Chrome,” Tweedy showed off his lyrical dexterity.

Wilco brought the show to a climax, encoring with the thought-provoking “Theologians,” Tweedy singing the words of a song made all the more poignant by the difficult path he faces:

Theologians
They don't know nothing
About my soul

No one's ever gonna take my life from me
I lay it down
A ghost is born…

Click here to read assistant editor Steve LaBate's review of A Ghost Is Born.