Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 21/11/05
Label: Nonesuch

"I dreamt about killing you again last night and it felt alright to me", reveals Jeff Tweedy rather unsettlingly at one point during "Kicking Television". A little later, he recalls a visitation from the devil. Apparently "he was not red. He was chrome". Tweedy sounds like a lot of fun, right? The sort of guy you'd wanna share an evening of your life with and then have it documented forever on CD? Should you get that chance be advised that any exultations of pleasure are, as here, likely to be met with a volley of abuse from the curmudgeonly, bristling genius that is Wilco's pioneering, questing leader.

Recorded live in May across four nights in their hometown of Chicago, "Kicking Television" documents a band on fire and a frontman in clarion clear voice. It's a similar show to the one that called at London's Astoria a year or so back. At the time, Tweedy was famously possessed by all kinds of demons. Such mental paralysis was put down as an explanation for the appearance of his band at the galling time of 8pm that night, when some rather foolish Wilco fans - this one included - entered the venue halfway through the gig. For us, this album is a potent reminder of what we missed and also a document for everyone else of what Tweedy has unleashed.

Aside from the grumpy sideswipes, he's in trailblazing form on these recordings, while his band rage like Crazy Horse fronted by the new generation's Neil Young. With the set-list comprising a heavy selection from the last two Wilco albums - "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and "A Ghost Is Born" - this is not a ten year anniversary nostalgia trip through their back pages, rather a snapshot of the band's current, vaulting headspace. It's also an opportunity for Tweedy to take some of his most recent compositions and batter them into thunder-struck new shapes.

With Wilco now abetted by noise machine Nels Cline on guitar, tracks like "Handshake Drugs", "Muzzle Of Bees" and "Shot In The Arm" become nihilistic car wrecks, great flumes of twisted and bent guitar pyrotechnics pouring from the stage. This reaches a cataclysmic crescendo on the 11-minute, motorik Neu! steamroller "Kidsmoke". Indeed, even when Tweedy bares his stark, ravaged soul - "At Least That's What You Said" and a fittingly aired "Via Chicago" - they're ultimately, inevitably beaten and brutalised to exhilarating effect.

Of course, Wilco's mainbrain is smarter than to just constantly toss petrol over these lost, tormented but very human dispatches. This is seen to striking effect on "Handshake Drugs", "Radio Cure" and a pair of confessional Woody Guthrie covers, which give the set flesh and balance. Throughout, Tweedy is a dominant presence. The disarming transcendence of "Ashes Of American Flags" finds him questioning "why do we listen to poets, when nobody gives a f*ck?" The rapt homecoming crowd of "Kicking Television" surely give considerably more than that about Jeff Tweedy's twisted rock'n'roll storytelling.

    by Ben Gilbert