Wilco have never had the live DVD treatment, odd perhaps for a band six albums into their career. With a line-up now relatively constant, they’ve bitten the bullet with a setlist that spans 14 years. The way the film has been produced, interspersed with hidefinition shots of an America long past best, however, leaves a melancholia not as cathartic as the feelings left by their music.
Between shots of endless car parks, wide roads and silent queues awaiting entry to sold out venues (gigs chosen include Tulsa, New Orleans, Nashville and Tennessee), “for the camera” performances of the likes of Handshake Drugs, Wishful Thinking and a positively epileptic Via Chicago seem occasionally stillborn. Guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche remain two of the most startlingly inventive musicians of their generation – and they are on stunning form here, caught on tape performing with this group for the very first time. Ultimately, however, this “performa-bio” was never going to capture the Wilco magic, though it succeeds in bullet-pointing a forgotten America. Whether Jeff Tweedy et al should be similarly canonised, especially after the comparative disappointment of 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, is a question only album seven can answer. Fingers crossed.
