About a month ago I saw Wilco in Raleigh NC. They played outside at the NC Art Museum, a beautiful space. The NC State Fair was taking place about a mile away and each night when the fair is ending, they have a fantastic fireworks display. When Wilco played this song the fireworks started and above us was a gorgeous display and you could see the fireworks colors reflecting off of the windows of the museum, it was a really magical moment. lil mentioned in the recent #tngpodcast on spirituality that we tend to find that "spiritual" feeling in shared experiences, like concerts etc. Well, for me that that was certainly one of those moments. Jeff Tweedy made mention of them after the song. They then played two more songs and the fireworks were still going, Tweedy remarked, "Wow, the fireworks are still going. You guys in Raleigh sure have a lot of money." -It was hilarious. Such a kick ass evening. This song is easily one of their greatest, some of my favorite song lyrics of all time. jonaswildman, give it a few listens before you come to your final judgement. That said, I totally understand that sometimes a band just doesn't gel. There are a lot of people that love Modest Mouse and I just can't get in to them... I've tried.
I think I've just learned to ignore it when the band starts in on the discordant-guitar-screeching. There's a lot to like with Wilco, but they do seem to like to "deconstruct" once in a while, and I just don't enjoy that part of it.
Yeah, that's some of my favorite aspects of their music. I can hear pretty ditties from any number of bands, but they're so good at taking their own material and as Tweedy has said, "destroying it." It's artfully done and is much more difficult than it seems. [edit] -this is not to say that they don't have "pretty ditties," as you know, they absolutely do. I think Nels Cline is the greatest: That solo is all over the place and ends up in some screechy, discordant places but it's just one hell of a journey. Then there are moments like the ones in Via Chicago -especially live, that are definitely "discordant," but I fucking love it. Bottom line is that they have such a wealth of material at this point that to dismiss them as "this" or "that" just doesn't work. I for one love it all, but I'm glad you've found some of it that speaks to you, that's awesome.