A live album is, first and foremost, an album: a simulacrum of reality, not the thing itself. Yes, Virginia, studio enhancements are as old as the form, but the presentation extends to which songs are chosen, which banter snippeted, and indeed, even which phase of a performer's career gets chosen for immortalization. This distinction between art and archive is a crucial one for Wilco, as each of the band's albums has represented a progression, or at least a transition-- a unified statement of the group's identity at the moment that it was recorded. Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, a 2xCD live album recorded last year in the Second City's Vic Theatre, is no exception.
In its 10+ years of existence, Jeff Tweedy's post-Tupelo project has cycled through several lineups and styles: alt-country, Beach Boys-splashed Americana, Radioheaded abstraction. Then, after 2002 masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came last year's confusingly lateral move to listener-unfriendly classic-rock, A Ghost Is Born; "I will turn on you," Tweedy sang in "I'm a Wheel". The tables turn again with Kicking Television, which casts its predecessor's songs in hotter light and serves as a coming-out party for Wilco's newest, six-member incarnation: a drinking man's avant-jam band.
Where I work, "continuous improvement" is part of the mission statement, and hey it's apparent in Tweedy's guitar soloing, as well. Both he and Nels Cline torture their six-strings as if the Vic were a covert U.S. detainee camp in Eastern Europe: piercing the infernal night in "Hell Is Chrome", cavorting Grateful Deadward on "Handshake Drugs", and sprawling across the dark center of the universe over the Neu!-like drone of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)", which reinvigorates the studio version and is the release's crowning achievement. So this is what A Ghost Is Born is supposed to sound like.
Indeed, the tracklisting is heavy on Wilco's latest studio effort, for better and worse. "Hummingbird" is where the shelved DVD version of the album would come in handy, as the song's straightforward "Penny Lane" piano allows Tweedy to go guitarless for once. "The Late Greats", which sounded like a jangly obscurantist afterthought at the end of A Ghost Is Born, could probably have been trimmed here, as well. "At Least That's What You Said" opens with hushed electric guitar, rather than moody piano, then crashes into a jagged mountainside of swirling guitar noise in its massive breakdown. The punky title track, however, an A Ghost Is Born castoff with washer-and-dryer guitars, is a letdown even if it allows Tweedy to utter, "I'm serious/ I've been working on my abs."
Though the band loosens up the new songs, the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot numbers remain consistent with previous live renditions-- that is, still awesome. Tweedy's clenched voice is consumes by noise on "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", xylophones ever-tinkling. "Let's get this party started...with some midtempo rock," he jokes, then fulfills his pledge with "Jesus, Etc.", slide guitar replacing violins on the chorus and the verses sprinkled with reggae-tinged synths. He tries humor again leading into "I Am the Man Who Loves You", announcing, "This is my favorite part of the show: I love you!" before unleashing an erection of guitar noise and a porno-funk intro to an uptempo performance with bright Sgt. Pepper's horns. Faithful renditions of "Radio Cure", "Ashes of American Flags", "Poor Places", and poppy "Heavy Metal Drummer" round out the second disc.
Wilco's Nonesuch albums get preference here, but earlier highlights appear, as well. Summerteeth murder ballad "Via Chicago" elicits a slow surge of that's-us-dude applause. From the same album, "A Shot in the Arm" is always welcome, its straining pop grandiosity hinting at the classic record to follow. Mermaid Ave. Vol. II's "Airline to Heaven" is a live favorite for its pastoral stomp, as is Vol. I's sleepy "One by One". There's also a farewell singalong cover of "Comment (If All Men Are Truly Brothers)", originally by 70s funk figure Charles Wright.
Press clippings indicate that Tweedy's laconic stage presence has grown more easygoing, but the banter here is mostly as ho-hum as my earlier examples. "How dignified is it to come from Kansas City to Chicago to see Wilco?" Tweedy muses at one point. Of course, the truly important part of this presentation is the music, and there Wilco rarely disappoints. On the first track, Being There opener "Misunderstood", with a jubilant crowd singing along, Tweedy's dry-paper voice rasps a few magic words-- "Do you still love rock 'n' roll?"-- and thanks us all for "nothing/ nothing/ nothing/ nothing/ nothing."
