"The veteran Chicago band pulled heavily from Ode To Joy, but the 2.5 hour set left plenty of room for other corners of their extensive discography."
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Must See
Deep Sea Divers and Wilco
20 Monroe Live // Grand Rapids, MI // November 4th, 2019
Photos by Kendra Petersen Kamp // Review by Jordan Petersen Kamp
Deep Sea Divers
Wilco
Wilco performed at 20 Monroe Live in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 4 in support of their latest album, the hushed and serene Ode to Joy.
The veteran Chicago band pulled heavily from Ode To Joy, but the 2.5 hour set left plenty of room for other corners of their extensive discography. When “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” the sweeping, seven minute opening song from their fabled 2001 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, showed up as only the third song in the set list, it suggested a band with a wealth of material to pull from.
With a set list that long and a discography as varied as Wilco’s, the band’s live show reveals the extremes in their music that are otherwise easy to miss. Wilco is dronier, heavier, quieter, goofier and more serious than you think they are.
If Wilco has a celebrity in their midst, it’s Jeff Tweedy— he‘s appeared on Parks & Recreation, Late Night with Stephen Colbert and just released a memoir called Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) . The celebrated songwriter, however, often comfortably sinks into the backdrop of the rest of the band. Instead, the spotlight is shared most obviously by drummer Glenn Kotche and guitarist Nels Cline, who masterfully weaves in and out of the band’s inhale-exhale steadiness, playing textured swells in one breath and winsome guitar solos in the next.
Despite the brilliance and stamina of the night, Tweedy couldn’t let go of a slightly off-key vocal entrance to “If I Ever Was a Child” from 2016’s Schmilco— he brought it up in stage banter three different times throughout the night. He wasn’t beating himself up, as his self-deprecating jokes remained light hearted. Yet underneath the humor was the push of one of the best bands in the world characteristically trying to make a perfect night even more perfect.
