Wilco – Shepherds Bush Empire

It was almost like an old school album launch seeing Wilco the week they release their new album ‘Sky Blue Sky’.

The show started bang on 9pm, which is good news with the 11pm curfew on a Sunday night.

As expected, a lot of the new album was played kicking off with the two-fer of “Side With The Seeds” and “You Are My Face”.

I’ve still only listened to ‘Sky Blue Sky’ a few times right through, and my initial reaction was it was a bit same-same, with only a few songs really jumping out at me – so I was interested to see how the material came up live.

For the most part it was much better - particularly songs they’ve been playing for a while like “What Light” and especially the rockier tracks like “Walken” and “Shake It Off”.

My feeling is the latest incarnation of Wilco really need to chew a song up and spit it back out before they reach the truly definitive version of it. At least this was the case for a lot of the older material played tonight – especially the pulsing “Handshake Drugs”, an mesmerising “Hummingbirds”, and a truly schizophrenic “Via Chicago”.

The final encore closed with a true highlight, as a visibly awed Jeff Tweedy shared vocals with the aging Bill Fay (making his first stage appearance in almost 30 years) for a version of Fay’s “Be Not So Fearful” – a cover that’s been popping up in both Wilco and Tweedy solo sets for the last few years.

Full setlist:

1. Side with Seeds
2. You Are My Face
3. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
4. Handshake Drugs
5. Shot in the Arm
6. Impossible Germany
7. Sky Blue Sky
8. At Least That’s What You Think
9. Shake it Off
10. Muzzle of Bees
11. Hummingbird
12. Via Chicago
13. Jesus, etc.
14. Walken
15. I'm the Man Who Loves You
Encore 1:
16. Late Greats
17. War on War
18. Poor Places
19. Spiders
Encore 2:
20. What Light
21. Airline to Heaven
22. Be Not So Fearful (w/ Bill Fay)