Wilco at Riviera Theatre review: The band was in great shape, sounding steady, focused and connected to the audience. Tweedy even gave out a trophy to a “best-behaved” concertgoer.
Chicago band Wilco plays the first of three consecutive shows at the Riviera Theatre on March 23, 2023.
It’s been a minute since Wilco played newer music that stood up with its strongest fare and earned its place on future tours. During the past decade, the sextet — which celebrates its 30th anniversary next year — has followed a pattern familiar to many bands of its vintage: longer gaps between albums and more attention shifted to the road.
Not that Cline needed to shoulder any load alone. This was Wilco reinvigorated, a group whose chemistry loomed larger than the contributions of any individual, a band that approached a majority of songs as pieces of clay that could be remolded. Tweedy and Co. weren’t content to just revisit older favorites such as the gooey “I Must Be High” or dour “How to Fight Loneliness,” they took the opportunity to lean into the angles of chord changes and search for possible trap doors in arrangements.
Amid his clever banter with the sold-out crowd, which included the presentation of a trophy to a “best-behaved” concertgoer, the ever-affable Tweedy never mentioned that the band drafted the set list around a specific theme. Still, it was impossible to ignore the country trappings of both unhurried and up-tempo songs, and how Wilco used rustic styles to address issues of identity, communication, despair, death and affection — subjects tied to the genre for roughly a century.
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