Music Review | Wilco : Expressing Unsteadiness In Lyrics, But A Clear Focus In Delivery

I have no idea how this happens, Jeff Tweedy sang at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Monday night. All of my maps have been overthrown. As his band Wilco chugged soulfully behind him, he continued: Happenstance has changed my plans/So many times my heart has been outgrown.

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The disorientation in those lyrics, from a song called You Are My Face, says something about the current sound and spirit of Wilco. But so does the willful ambiguity of a subsequent line. Cant tell you who I am, Mr. Tweedy rasped, offering either a lament or a disavowal. (He cant or he wont?) Coming at the outset of the concert, all these cryptic confessions seemed to portend something unstable and confused.

That wasnt quite what unfolded over the course of a briskly paced, dynamic and focused show. Mr. Tweedy seemed loose and agreeable, the band sounded lean and combustible, and the songs felt sturdy in their purpose. There were bolts of feedback and static, but they fulfilled a function, bridging themes or clearing the air.

Wilco has famously cycled from rustic sweetness to flinty obliqueness and back; its latest album, Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch), is widely understood as a return to the country-rock at its core.

The concert told a slightly different story, though. Side With the Seeds started out as a rootsy waltz, with Mikael Jorgensen on piano and Pat Sansone on Hammond organ, but morphed into a raucous anthem. Its coda had Nels Cline feverishly carving up his electric guitar, while Glenn Kotche slashed at his cymbals and drums.

Another new song, Impossible Germany, put Mr. Cline in a similarly crucial role, and he delivered a solo that was compositional as well as cathartic. He played more of an ensemble role on Shake It Off, which started slinky and chromatic, crept toward a chorus and then plunged into a round of stubborn downbeats.

Somewhere theres a war/Sometimes there is art, Mr. Tweedy croaked uneasily, but irrefutably.

In the same way that the songs from Sky Blue Sky sounded more barbed in concert, material from the ostensibly less conventional albums Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born came across as radiant and forthright.

Spiders (Kidsmoke) had the benefit of a visceral hard-rock riff, along with another sharp solo by Mr. Cline; Hummingbird had the audience singing along. Even I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, with its lyrical and musical obfuscations, felt like the stealthy pop tune that it is.

In the encore portion of the concert, Wilco called up some songs stretching back as far as a decade, and they fit. But the final salvo was Im a Wheel, a post-punk workout from A Ghost Is Born, and in it Mr. Tweedy made what sounded like a promise.

I will turn on you! he shouted with a touch of glee. Turn on you, turn on you, turn on you.

Wilco performs on Thursday in Boston and on Friday in Shelburne, Vt.: wilcoworld.net

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