Wilco - Kicking Television: Live in Chicago
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Free Music Notes for Kicking Television: Live in Chicago
Free Music Review: Almost like being there
Hit: 5 Stars
This terrific recording opens up with a rocking performance of Misunderstood which as it turns out also opens Wilco's seminal recording "Being There". There's no saying that if this was a clever dig from Tweedy telling us that Kicking Television is the next best thing to 'being there' in person. There's nothing quite like witnessing a great live band at the top of their game but failing that this album bears witness to the sublime skills that Wilco are able display on stage.
Recorded at the splendid Vic Theatre over multiple nights in their hometown of Chicago the band manage to replicate the sonic landscape that have defined them since the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
In fact the two disk set is dominated by tracks from 2002's Foxtrot and last years A Ghost is Born with a total of 15 from the 23 tracks coming from one or the other.
Live Wilco are a tight band that plays loose. Once the reluctant guitarist/frontman Tweedy comfortably banters with the crowd weather mocking fans for travelling to Chicago from Kansas City to see a Wilco show or suggesting that they are up past their bedtime.
As a touring band Wilco have become very familar with their stagecraft and a responsive hometown audience enables them to connect to a defree that many live recordings fail to capture.
There are many,many highlights on disk one not the least the A Ghost is born outake 'Kicking Television' after which the disk is named. The piano work is reminicient of Jerry Lee Lewis at his best while Jeff's guitar work is frentic and furious and dips in and under the song to carry it.
'Late greats' has as much bounce as the studio version.... the guitar solo that concludes 'At least that's what you said' is immaculate........'Company in my back' seems like a living, breathing thing as it marches along....'I am trying to break your heart' is a smorgasboard of sound....with "The astray says you were up all night" 'Shot in the arm' has one of the all time best opening lines and the crowd joins in for a boisterous sing along......'Jesus etc' is as brilliant as ever with the "tuned to chords" on display coming courtesy of some dazzling slide guitar work and an impassioned vocal from Jeff....'I'm the man who loves you' is a stone cold jam with guitars, drums, horns and saxaphone cascading of one another to make musical stew.
The second disk opens with the underrated 'Via Chicago' an obvious home town favorite.....Glenn Kotche pounds the skins with gusto for the bands best rocker 'Heavy Metal Drummer'....'Hummingbird' incites immediate toe tapping......"I would die if I could come back new" had the very air I breathe catch in my throat the first time I heard it and resonates just as deeply today and Tweedy gives a heartfelt, poignant treatment to 'Ashes of american flags' to a transfixed audience.....there is some brilliant improvisiation on 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)that were not apparent on the album version and the end result is an eleven minute masterstroke.....the Guthrie tracks 'One by One' and 'Airline to heaven' are gems. The closing song 'Comment' is a somewhat surprising choice seeing as it not a Wilco original and I myself would have prefered to hear 'Theologians' or 'Reservations' if a "wind down" song was what the band was aiming for. Personally I'd also liked to have seen the punk blitzreg of 'I'm a Wheel' included somewhere as well but I have no complaints. This is definatley a treasured purchase and I recommend it to any fan of live music whether they be a Wilco fan or not.
Free Music Review: Spinning out webs of deductions and melodies on a private beach in Michigan
Hit: 5 Stars
Some things are so good you don't want to spoil them all at once. I've had books that were this good - so good that I didn't want to rush through to the end, opting instead to dole out the pages at a leisurely pace, preferring to read at just the right time when I could really take it all in. And this is an album that falls in this category - regardless of it being live, regardless of it being filled with songs I already know (aside from one,) I want to let each moment breathe and be something special for fear that if I rush through to hear it all I'll somehow spoil it. And so the truth is that while I've listened to almost nothing but <em>Kicking Television</em> since Tuesday morning, I've yet to actually hear the whole thing - when I've gotten distracted for any period of time, I've restarted listening to it from the beginning.
At the time of this writing, I'd gotten close, but I hadn't even reached the monstrous Can-meets-Rolling-Stones epic "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" (track 10 of 11 on disc 2,) from whence my sub-header is stolen, yet I can say that this is one of the best live albums I've ever heard. The sound is stunning - it's honest and warm, untouched other than getting some loving tweaking at the mixing stage. No overdubs where the musicians flubbed a note or two, or where the vocals weren't just right, and that's the way a live album should be, especially for a band like Wilco and even more especially for <em>this</em> version of Wilco, who are easily the finest grouping of musicians Jeff Tweedy has assembled to back him. And even though the songs were recorded over four separate concerts on as many nights, everything meshes perfectly. There's no attempt to hide the fact that this isn't one concert, but more a representation of what a Wilco show can be.
The clarity is amazing - in front of a noisy audience with 6 musicians making as much of a racket as they can (such as at the end of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" or the subway-inspired noises in "Via Chicago,") every noise and every instrument is perfectly clear. For people who really enjoy listening closely, this is a real treat. (Jazz guitarist Nels Cline's fascinating contributions are audible in the left channel, Pat Sansone's guitar and keyboard work are in the right, and Jeff Tweedy's guitar is just slightly right of center while the rest of the band pans out between the three of them.)
It's so good I have to carry it around with me, so I can look at the lovingly designed (but slightly minimal) artwork, a hallmark of Nonesuch-label projects. I just can't commit it to simple mp3 files in my Ipod just yet - I'm not ready to give up on the tangible goods. It all, as a whole, needs time to soak in before I can file it away in the collection. If only every live album could be this lovingly prepared. Or every studio album, for that matter.
(The only downside to the whole thing is not getting the accompanying DVD that had been planned and filmed, but has since been scrapped by Tweedy as not "<a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/05-11/01.shtml">giving a sense of the audience, a sense of the time and place</a>." It's a real shame not getting to <em>see</em> this band performing this material, but I have no doubt in the future we'll get some live video from them.)
Free Music Review: Kicking Television: Kicking some serious...
Hit: 5 Stars
About 6 months ago an acquaintance of mine loaned me his copies of AM and A Ghost Is Born. I had never heard of Wilco before (what rock have I been living under for the last 10 years??) so they sat on the shelf until I got my first mp3 player this last Christmas, then I casually loaded them in along with the rest of my CD collection. When their songs came up in the rotation I really didn't pay too much attention, possibly because I mainly use my mp3 player for background music at work and am usually too busy to focus on any one particular song. Then one day my friend told me about Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, he absolutely raved about it and the live show that he recently flew back East to see (Nashville, I think?), so I picked it up and have not been able to put it down since.
Kicking Television is for all intents and purposes my first real exposure to Wilco. First impressions: "What a great live sound they have". "I love this guy's voice." "Wow the crowd really seems to be into it." "Did he just say what I think he just said??" "My GOD, what chord is that they are playing??"
I have a very limited CD collection, but this one absolutely belongs, without a doubt. I have been a musician all my life and I have been playing guitar for almost 14 years now. I also happen to have a alot of classic rock influences. I buy/listen to/play songs because of the music first and foremost, the lyrics are just an added bonus. The first track on this album that I listened to was "Via Chicago" (Disc 2, track 1). At first the simple, 3-chord country feel to it had me reaching for the SKIP button, but no sooner had Tweedy mouthed the words "I dreamed about killing you again last night, and it felt allright to me...", I was totally and inexplicably captivated. The music got better and better as I listened through each disc, and the lyrics continued to be brilliant, original, personal, captivating.
Kicking Television mainly consists of tracks from A Ghost Is Born and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - which is just fine with me because these are both great albums, I've come to find. Many of the compositions have evolved and as a result are much more refined, and arguably sound even better played live when compared to their original album versions. Bottom line is, this is a GREAT album and one of the best live albums I have ever heard. It is a great starting point for new Wilco fans and I highly recommend it to anyone.
My favorite tracks are "Company in my Back", "Handshake Drugs", "Via Chicago", "Muzzle of Bees", "Poor Places", "Heavy Metal Drummer" and "Ashes of American Flags" (awesome guitar solo at the end!)
Free Music Review: Saved By Rock 'n Roll
Hit: 5 Stars
In the past ten years, Wilco has evolved from alt-country, to sunny pop, to most recently avant garde explorations. And though bandleader Jeff Tweedy is generally known for his sure-footed artistry, that last step was a real doozy.
Wilco's two most recent studio efforts appeared to be less an evolution and more a departure from earlier work. Songs were extended into gnarled feedback jams and bathed in concrete musique tape tricks. Tweedy, formerly a raucous front-man, had all the anime of a sleepwalker as he hoarsely whispered obtuse lyrics. Production was muted and cold, further encouraging the sense that Wilco had, to some degree, sacrificed soul for artistic exploration.
The live show has always been any band's best response to creeping concerns of continuity and vibrancy, and Kicking Television indeed saves Wilco's soul. Whether it's that Tweedy and Company have had time to become comfortable with the recent material, or that the tunes themselves are more conducive to this warts-and-all format, new feels right at home next to old, and conveys a warmth that's missing from the studio takes.
"Spiders (Kidsmoke)," an eleven minute sonic exploration with flat production and a monotonous song structure, sounded oddly like Krautrock in studio form. Here in looser confines, it comes off like a combination of early Pink Floyd psychedelia and the angular, extended jams of Television. Granted, that's still a far cry structurally from the bash-n-pop that launched Wilco's career. But when presented in this more organic manner, it's easy to see the ties that bind it to, say, "A Shot In the Arm" - a roomy song from 1999's Summerteeth that's built around a repetitive, five-note progression and is also given a workout on Kicking Television.
It's not just the new songs that benefit from the live treatment. "One By One," a throwaway cut from 1998's Mermaid Avenue grows into one of the most resonant parts of band's repertoire. On the album version, Tweedy's mumbling vocals are further hollowed out by a touch of reverb, giving the impression that the listener is intruding on a private rumination. All instrumentation is evenly mixed throughout the song, and with nothing popping out front at all, the whole thing sounds like background music. Live, the vocals are more clear. Organ riffs, piano chords and guitar solos well up between verses, the musical punctuation breeding an inviting pathos lost on the listener in the song's first go-around.
Free Music Review: Live Deconstruction
Hit: 5 Stars
I don't know what people are talking about when they say that Wilco is too faithful to the studio versions in some of the reviews below. Wilco takes their deconstructive studio approach (see their comments on this in their movie _I Am Trying to Break Your Heart_) and ups the risks by deconstructing their songs more than skillfully on stage. Listen to "Via Chicago." Yes, the song is played almost verbatim to the studio version for the majority of the song. It is the three percent of the song that is played differently that deconstructs it. The squalls are different than they are on _Summer Teeth_, sometimes louder and more violent than on the studio version, definitely way off time, an approach similar to what Bob Dylan does with his vocals in concert. It is certainly unnerving and exciting at once, not so "safe" as other reviewers would have you believe.
Truth be told, the addition of Nels Cline on guitar here makes them more brilliant than they ever have been. Maybe people protest to the immaculate worksmanship that he cements further in the band. This can only be good. Clines's platinum ear never misses an opportunity to make just that perfect difference in the song, be it the slightest of timbre changes ("Muzzle of Bees") or the most apocalyptic of avant-guitar tech-shred excesses ("Handshake Drugs"). He is certainly a pro, but he's one that goes so much farther out onto a limb than most of us can even dream of doing. This just brings two tendencies that always defined Wilco's music into clearer relief than ever before: a solid Midwestern work ethos with a solid Midwestern desire to watch one's work stray into the oblivion of a blizzard of thought and emotion.
Lest my thoughts on this get too cerebral (easy to do with Wilco!), let me just say that this live performance does the highest duty that a conscientious deconstruction can do: it takes the endless yearning to feel experiences as old as the sun in new and emotionally meaningful ways, puts it in a blender in just the right (wrong?) places, and puts the pieces back together in a way that awes you with the artistry of it all. Wilco continues its ascent to the highest reaches of the rock pantheon with this one. Their first studio work to feature Nels Cline on guitar should conceivably have people mentioning Wilco in the same breath as John Coltrane and the Beatles by the spurs to the sublime evidenced on _Kicking Television_.