Fractionals

I guess the moral is you probably shouldn't go to see a band who's last record you hate and second last record you don't care about. Don't get me wrong, Wilco were good enough live - the two-song stretch where we got an incredible "Via Chicago" complete with irruptions of noise followed by a very sweet "Jesus, Etc." was good enough that if they'd kept up that pace I would have been a convert, and I quite liked Nels Cline the entire show. But they massacred "Sunken Treasure" as an opener (I like it when bands change up songs live - but when they remove everything good from a song, they have to put something else good in, or it sinks) and then followed up with two crap new songs, and I thought I was doomed until they launched into a fine, burning "A Shot in the Arm." Of course, I was really there to see someone else, so it was worth it, and that alone was a weird sensation. I don't hate all of Sky Blue Sky, not quite; over multiple listens at work, "Either Way" has been revealed as a fine, supple if low-key song that I really like. Everything else sucks, though.

It's kind of weird to have the climax of your concert going night at about 8:40, but that's what happens when you go for the opener. I'll give Kicking Television a listen, and I'd love to hear this lineup of the band tackle the whole of Summerteeth, but put me down in the not impressed column.