Few who were bewitched by Wilco’s breakthrough album, 1995′s Being There, would have thought the band would still be around some fifteen years later. While that album’s scope and ambition was a clear signpost of things to come, the unassuming Chicago band led by Jeff Tweedy have gone on to create some of the noughties’ best music above and beyond the cul-de-sac marked ‘Alt Country’.
The ‘ear-drum pulverising forays into the sonic unknown’ explored on 2002′s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and to some extent on 2004′s A Ghost Is Born have been tempered with the more straight-ahead folky ‘cinematic-sounding country music’ leanings of their nineties output and 2007′s Sky Blue Sky and 2009′s Wilco. Their most recent album The Whole Love can be seen as a unification of these two markedly different Wilcos. Released on their own label dBpm, their eight album proper has been hailed as both ‘inventively avant garde’ – Krautrock-style glitch and spiky new wave-isms – and the most ‘Wilco sounding’ album in years (whatever that means!).
The current line-up of the band features the ever-present Tweedy, along with Nels Cline on guitar, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, bassist John Stirratt, drummer/percussionist Glenn Kotche and Mikael Jorgensen on keyboards and this line-up has been the most consistent in the band’s mercurial history. Wilco are now regular visitors to NZ, and frequent guests at Neil Finn’s Roundhead studio, where the band recorded parts of 2009′s Wilco and also participated in Finn’s celebratory charity album and sequel to his ‘Seven Worlds Collide’ project.
Friday 5th April – Wellington Town Hall
Saturday 6th April – Auckland Town Hall
Presales Tuesday 30th and Wednesday 31st October through www.muchmoremusic.co.nz
General onsale – Thursday 1st November
Wellington through www.ticketek.co.nz
Auckland at www.the-edge.co.nz
For all show & ticketing info go to www.muchmoremusic.co.nz
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