"There is something wrong with me" croaks Jeff Tweedy amid the funereal death-march of 'Radio Cure'. The crowd in the Astoria universally nod heads and take another deep intake of breath.
That Tweedy is a troubled soul has been painfully obvious for a while, although the consequent impact on Wilco live has not been experienced in London for three years. Which is perhaps why a show that is as sublime as it is disengaged, comes as such a profound disappointment.
Wilco have rightly been showered with plaudits in recent years, having injected a considerably skewed vision into the stale alt.country 'movement', culminating with the dense and utterly fascinating 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' long-player.
Clearly Tweedy is not fu*king about with his dark side, as lyrics elsewhere this evening, such as "she begs me not to hit her", "I know I would die, if I could come back new" and "you have to learn how to die, if you wanna be alive" quite obviously amplify.
However, what this audience is perhaps not prepared for, is the prickly, awkward and thoroughly diffident aura of the Wilco mainbrain, and the general feeling that you've actually walked into a band rehearsal and they couldn't care less anyway. There are moments tonight, especially on extracts of the new LP, that stand like heat-kissed sunflowers, only to be hacked down by the oddly detached delivery.
Opening with an unreleased track is clearly an uncompromising way to start, particularly when it's as lifeless as 'Spiders', but Wilco quickly make amends, with the mighty cut-and-paste abstraction of 'I'm Trying To Break Your Heart'. Elsewhere though, the likes of 'War On Wars' and 'Kamera', despite their challenging presentation on record, suffer from a flat, troubling lack of dynamism and, moreover, the apparent realisation that there is no way Tweedy will be communicating, in voice or facial expression, to the roundly devoted crowd.
He does eventually speak, with an intense but astute "Hello London, welcome to Wilco" dry proclamation. It's that kind of aloofness that balances this performance on a knifedge, between compelling and wholly frustrating.
Not that there aren't highs, like the technicolour piano strokes of a rollicking 'Shot In The Arm', valedictory 'I'm The Man' and rumbustious 'Heavy Metal Drummer'. And even when the group don't break stride, there is a charge to the likes of 'Jesus etc' and a desolately sad 'American Ashes' - despite a disgusting 'Metal Machine Music' guitar solo - to heal the wounds being scratched at by Tweedy.
Clearly this is a man with a truckload of trouble on his mind. But the ultimate impact - saying nothing of a closing slog through some tawdry, hum-drum Uncle Tupelo and early Wilco standards - is to dilute a sound and vision that is rarely touched in contemporary music.
As the show draws to an end, a broken-throated Tweedy admits "I've got reservations". He's not the only one.
