A Wilco crescendo at Tanglewood
LENOX - If it had been any other band, the opening stretch of Wilco's much-anticipated show at Tanglewood on Tuesday would have seemed insanely temperate. Who greets a pumped, rabid crowd with a laid-back soft-rocker ("Either Way"), a gentle pop tune ("Hummingbird"), and a winsome country-folk song ("Remember the Mountain Bed")?
Wilco does - precisely because the band has built a relationship of uncommon trust with its audience. Intensity and noise would materialize, in a pitch-perfect tangle of earthy comforts and perilous adventure, during a stellar set from the planet's most radical roots band.
Tanglewood rarely presents nonclassical music, and the special circumstances weren't lost on Wilco. "We were up all night sewing," cracked sly frontman Jeff Tweedy of the group's sparkling, Nudie-style suits. "Do you guys shout requests at the BSO? 'Mahler!' " he shrieked, and then gave the people what they wanted: "Jesus, etc."
Marveling at the venue's deep history, Tweedy noted that the graffiti in the men's room - "Music Iz Gay" - must predate the modern usage of that adjective. "This song is really gay!" went the introduction to "What Light," and so it was: an ebullient waltz sandwiched between a rough rock song ("A Shot in the Arm") and Woody Guthrie ("California Stars").
The inspired collision of sturdy songcraft and genuine fearlessness has become Wilco's signature. The group's nearly 2 1/2-hour concert was a beautifully proportioned blend of the two, spread out on a canvas of lush pop, heavy rock, psychedelic soul, and country music.
Avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline, the newest member in Wilco's famously unstable lineup, can turn the sweetest song into a thrill ride. With a few punishing notes, he stiffened the soft breeze blowing through "Muzzle of Bees" and lifted the mellow midtempo of "Impossible Germany" to heights of majesty on the back of his searing, serpentine solo.
Cline's mind-altering excursions were the loudest, proudest piece of the puzzle. But the current Wilco lineup (Tweedy, Cline, bassist John Stirratt, drummer Glenn Kotche, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and pianist Mikael Jorgensen), supported by a three-piece horn section, is a phenomenally dynamic machine.
It takes a village to bring off "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," a sprawling shape-shifter that morphed last night (I've heard three wildly different live incarnations of this song) from sinuous and humble - the Middle East meets Middle America - to a primal singalong, and finally splintered into pieces on a blood-red stage. Wilco is occasionally and erroneously slapped with the dad-rock tag; rest assured, this is not your father's alt-country.
Singer-songwriter, violinist, and virtuoso whistler Andrew Bird opened the show with a set of riveting little dramas built of loops and Latin flavors, the Beatles and spaghetti Westerns, mysterious neuroses and impossibly smart wordplay. Somebody give this man an independent film to score.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music, go to www.boston.com/ae/music/blog. 