Wilco - Kicking Television: Live in Chicago

Artist: Wilco
Kicking Television: Live in Chicago

Nonesuch Records
2005, 2010

It sure is nice to have friends in high places.  Richmond, VA's Plan 9 Music received only two copies of the vinyl box set of Wilco's live opus, Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, and my good friend behind the counter turned away more than 10 people on Record Store Day so that he could deliver this beauty directly into my hands.

Other than a few tracks from friends here and there, I first really heard Wilco in Cameroon of all places.  I was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, and at the volunteer house in the capital, Yaounde, I discovered a cassette tape that would forever change my life: on one side, the dreamy post-punk psychedelia of Sonic Youth's A Thousand Leaves, and on the other, Wilco's perfect bittersweet pop confection, Summerteeth.  Since my previous Wilco experience was with the alt-country of A.M. and Jeff Tweedy's previous launchpad, Uncle Tupelo, the first thing I felt was confusion.  Summerteeth's Americanized Beatles melodies and too-sharp-for-radio pop hooks were a revelation.  I don't know how old that tape was before I checked it out of the PC library, but I played it so much it broke about three weeks before I was due to return to the States.

Needless to say, my first trip to the record store (the now defunct Town & Campus Records in Harrisonburg, VA) was quite fruitful, and Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot were among the many gems I gleefully added to my collection.  A Ghost Is Born was equally revelatory, and by 2005, I had already seen Wilco three times and was consuming just about everything of theirs I could. 

Kicking Television captures Wilco at the very top of their game, focusing mostly on material from YHF, Ghost, and Summerteeth.  The sound is amazing, perfectly capturing the ballistic crash of the closing cadence of "Misunderstood" and the serene quiet of "Muzzle of Bees."  Tweedy's social commentary is at once cryptic ("Hell Is Chrome," "Poor Places") and direct ("Kicking Television," "Comment"), and his diverse songwriting gifts are all over Kicking Television.

Though the late Jay Bennett left the band shortly after his tremendous contributions to the recording of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco's line-up at the time of the recording of Kicking Television (May 4-7, 2005) has mostly held together up to now, and is one of the most solid bands on the road.  Drummer Glenn Kotche sounds like a six-armed man, and Nels Cline's solo on "Ashes of American Flags" is sure to go down as one of the most beautiful of this decade. 

Since Kicking Television, Wilco's sound has wandered back into a dreamier Americana form of the alt-country of their early days on Sky Blue Sky, and tamer, more restful indie pop on Wilco (The Album), and whether they'll return to the massive, deconstructionist pop-rock of their golden days is yet to be seen.  I've no idea what the chances are for a vinyl re-reissue of Kicking Television, but with eight new tracks, and the clearest sound I've heard on a live album in decades, there's no doubt that demand for this retrospective of the greatest years of one of the '00s greatest bands won't be waning anytime soon.  So maybe next time they'll send us a few more copies....