Wilco's Deepest Cuts

On Jeff Tweedy live at The Vic

Adam here. On Saturday, I saw Jeff Tweedy of Wilco perform an unusual solo show in Chicago. Each spring, he typically hosts two benefit shows at The Vic with a setlist made up of requests from the first twenty people in line for the show.

“These people aren’t like us,” he says, and insists at the start and throughout that the show will be horrible. “Don’t blame me.”

He also plays unreleased songs, familiar to fans from his lockdown Instagram show, including “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter,” one of my favorite moments of the show.

About a third of the songs selected by fans came from Wilco’s three most recent albums. Jeff clearly appreciated that “these people” had selected some of his newest songs. I was surprised. I haven’t fully embraced them: 1) It’s hard to compete with the love accrued over decades for the older stuff, and 2) I think Jeff’s vocals are too low in the mix recently — even on some of his solo records. The Vic show — and Wilco’s live shows — prove, to my ears, there’s no reason to bury his vocals.

Each of the recent Wilco albums also has its own monolithic tone. The Vic show shuffled great songs from Ode to Joy, Cruel Country, and Cousin, fractured those monoliths, and allowed more variety. The new songs were great live and they’re great shuffled up a bit.

So I took the setlists of the Saturday show (and the previous night’s show with the same format) and made a playlist of the fans’ picks — minus the usual suspects. [Listen to the playlist on Apple Music]