Wilco at the Roundhouse was mesmerising and fantastic. Lovely setlist with 7 or so of the best songs from
The Whole Love, opening with 'One Sunday Morning'. My two favourite Wilco guitar fests in 'Impossible Germany' and 'At Least That's What You Said', in which the solo appears to be Tweedy more than Cline, indicating that it's wrong to assign all the out there, amazing solo work to him. Lots of YHF songs. My request of 'I'll Fight' via wilcoworld was met (though no dedications, but it was for my wife, who was with me, and like the song says 'I'll kill for you...', and I've just read that someone else requested the same song as his wife has just come through surgery and it's her favourite Wilco song). They were dark, beautiful and very powerful. I think the only equivalent experiences of a band where each individual is so impressive in their own right but where the collective sound manages to be significantly more than the sum of these parts would be EC & the Is (or of course As back in the day), and possibly Radiohead.
Here's a nice clip of 'Pot Kettle BLack' with good sound (even if it's mislabelled:
And here's 'War on War', which was also played and is a real fave, but this one's from Glasgow. Recommended for close studying of their stage set-up, Glenn Kotche's amazing power and precision on the drums, the sound man crouching behind, their pedals, etc.:
And for all you Nick Lowe lovers, get this. Second song in the encore was preceded with 'We've been touring all over the US with Nick Lowe as our support, well he's in town and we're proud to invite him to the stage' and out he came and did, not 'I Love My Label' as was done in the US, but 'Cruel to be Kind', and boy did it sound good. Hoping a video clip or better still bootleg will surface. They then ended with 'Heavy Metal Drummer'. Fabulous stuff.
Highly recommend the Roundhouse for its style, looking thoroughly modern whilst retaining its historical look and feel and top notch acoustics. Just a pleasant and not too sterile venue. They sounded so good, and apparently this second night was quite bit better than the first. Only other time there was July 1996 with Elvis in his final months on a stage with Bruce Thomas. I remember the venue being pretty rough-edged then, but really enjoying it. Top memory was 'Black Sails in the Sunset', which I'd never heard before. The setlist shows several entries for 'Daddy Can I Turn This?', which I seem to recall was them just going inexplicably into the opening bars every now and then when they felt the urge:
http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... 1996-07-27