On Sunday night of CityFolk I watched Wilco play. My motivation was to review them from the lens of an ex-girlfriend, but hopefully without being washed out by said bias. Let me elaborate.
My ex-boyfriend and I used to fight about a lot of silly garbage—topics such as whether or not it’s worth our while to get three cans of tuna or one when there is a three-for-five-dollar sale. Or his belief that I am perpetuating an evil society that encourages the practice of breeding abominations of evolution, known to me fondly as my family dog Mona, the Basset-Hound. A fight that came up most of all was about Wilco and my ex-boyfriend’s lord and saviour, Jeff Tweedy, Wilco’s frontman.
He is of the opinion that Wilco is musical genius, and I’ll be honest, I don’t have the musical knowledge to refute that. All that I have that I can trust is my own gut reaction, and that is that they are boring. Death-defyingly boring. Beige. Beige as fuck. I don’t hate them—that would imply that they can make me feel any strong emotion.
My ex loved Wilco for nearly all his life. His love for them was passed down from his father, and will be passed down to his own son. As such, his love and my apathy sparked dumbass fights too often in our dumbass relationship. He’d make sweeping statements such as, “Wilco is more influential than the Beatles,” and that’s just dumb and can’t be left to live. Badaboom badabing—we’re in a fight that’ll end in him leaving in a huff or me crying. So pardon me for being a bit jaded about Wilco.
For all my distaste towards them, I’d never sat down and listened, really listened to them for any longer than the length of two songs. Don’t get me wrong—it was always playing, but it never begged for my undivided attention. When I heard they were playing at CityFolk I decided it was my responsibility to watch them, and this was my experience.
Clearly I have some bias, but I thought going in that my opinion would be altered dramatically. My thought was they would be cool guys so they wouldn’t move around a lot. I thought there would be cool solos because they’re “musical genius,” and I thought the crowd would consist of a lot of white dudes in jean jackets.
I was right on a lot of accounts. There were a lot of white men, a lot of jean jackets, a lot of beards, and who I think was Jeff Tweedy was wearing a cowboy hat. There were enough solos for me to be impressed. But in the end, I’ve got to say, my opinion has not been swayed. They are some vanilla beige custard motherfuckers.
Even their solos made me bored. And I love a solo. I can listen to a four-minute-long solo and still be jamming, but they didn’t even move other than to bob up and down to the beat. And here’s the kicker: they had great vibrant lights and I was thinking, wow, I’m in for a visual treat at least. Nah, the lights barely synced with the music. It made me sad.
Are they good artists? I assume so. Was I entertained? No. I had to force myself not to leave. (I stayed for the Everyone Orchestra which was damn good fun, 10/10, would recommend.) Do I think I’m biased? I probably am. I harbour some ill will for my ex. Do I think that bias matters? No. I genuinely think they are boring and their hype is not warranted. But I remain open to someone who wants to change my mind, so long as they don’t try to tell me that Wilco is more important than the Beatles.
