Wilco

"You still love rock and roll," crooned front man Jeff Tweedy, opening Wilco's show at the Trocadero Friday night with "Misunderstood," the lead track from Wilco's 19-song double album, Being There. It was a fitting beginning to a show that played like a tribute to rock's grand tradition. Tweedy isn't shy about wearing both his heart and his influence on his sleeve. Wilco blazed through a diverse set of material that gave nods to Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones on "Casino Queen," the Big Pink era of the Band on "Kingpin," and Pet Sounds-Beach Boys on "Outtasite (Outta Mind)

On Saturday night at the Tower Theater, Wilco was merely great. The qualifying "merely" is hard to explain, because, on its face, the show had all the makings of a bragging-rights concert experience. Totally jazzed, way-sold-out crowd? Check. Storied, acoustically friendly venue? Check. Legendary opening act, one John Doe, tragically ignored by most in favor of the beer line? Check. Must-see headliners with a live rep for fireworks ready to throw down? Check. Perhaps the only thing missing was the element of surprise.

Being regarded as America's most important rock-and-roll band must get overwhelming after a while. Sure, Jeff Tweedy asked for it, with a series of albums that telegraphed Wilco's artistic seriousness, from the double-disc Being There in 1996 to the avant-noise experiments on A Ghost Is Born in 2004. But on Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch . ), the Chicago sextet's sixth album, Tweedy sounds relieved not to have to worry about his reputation anymore. Instead of coming off like an art project - a weakness of both the migraine-inspired A Ghost Is Born and its ballyhooed predecessor, 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Sky Blue Sky is content with the sound of five musicians standing around a room, enjoying playing music together.

After months of struggling with panic attacks and increasing dependence on prescription painkillers for his chronic migraines, Wilco singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy felt like a cliche: "I didn't want to admit to the world that I was the stereotype" of the rock-and-roll addict. "I probably could have gotten help sooner if I wasn't so appalled by the connotation," Tweedy says from his Chicago home, explaining the health crisis that delayed the release of Wilco's jarring fifth album, A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch . . out of four stars)

There was a moment during Wilco's sold-out show at the Theatre of Living Arts Monday night when if you had turned your back, you would have sworn you were listening to Dylan and The Band circa The Basement Tapes. The song was "She's a Jar" from Summer Teeth, Wilco's best and most eccentric recording to date. Amid the warbling swells of calliope and the hazy lyricism, Jeff Tweedy, Wilco's frontman, struck the classic Dylanesque pose with acoustic guitar and harmonica. Those are mighty big shoes to fill, but then again Wilco is the Bigfoot of the current roots-rock scene.

Near the end of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," the first song Wilco performed Saturday at the Electric Factory, guitarist and singer Jeff Tweedy dropped to his knees and began turning dials on sound-shaping devices. He soon enough changed the song, one of several from the band's unreleased new work, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: The melody dissolved into distorted machine noise; its singer-songwriterly proclamation became aural chaos. It was a fitting start. In the years since 1999's acclaimed Summerteeth, Tweedy has evidently grown restless with rock business as usual.

It took Wilco a long while to get going at the Theater of Living Arts on Thursday night. The first hour of the roots-rock quintet's show was flat and poorly paced. Beginning with a slowed-down cover of Doug Sahm's "Give Back the Key to My Heart," the group couldn't gather any momentum, and it didn't help that a bad sound mix rendered Max Johnston's fiddle, banjo and Dobro almost inaudible. Save for the stutter-step "Too Far Apart" and John Stirrat's yearning "It's Just That Simple," none of the warm-hearted, country-tinged tunes from the band's A.M. (Sire/Reprise)

It's not easy for a rock band to maintain creative momentum over a decade and a half and, truth be told, Wilco's career has had its ebbs and flows since the group led by Jeff Tweedy released its engagingly rootsy debut, A.M. , in 1995. With its last two efforts - 2007's bucolic Sky Blue Sky and 2009's ingratiating Wilco (The Album) - the Chicago sextet seemed to have settled into a comfortable middle age. A perfectly pleasant bunch of guys to hang around with, but with their daring days behind them.

When Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy began working together last year, the leader of the Chicago rock band Wilco gathered up songs he hoped would meet with the approval of the gospel-soul vocalist. Tweedy even had a title in mind for a song that he wanted to write for the 71-year-old Staples. The singer's husky contralto powered such early-1970s hits as "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There," both recorded with the Staple Singers, the family band led by her father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples.

Since his departure from Wilco in 2001, Jay Bennett has kept busy. The multi-instrumentalist/singer-songwriter teamed last year with longtime friend Edward Burch to release The Palace at 4 A.M., where the beauty of his mixed-in-heaven production and leathery voice singing what sound like undiscovered gems from Elvis Costello and Rockpile doesn't really hit you until the third or fourth listen. In between constant touring and recording an acoustic version of Palace called Palace 1919, Bennett has found time to produce other artists, such as the Sun. The Columbus, Ohio, group's debut EP, Love & Death (Reprise)

Conan (11 p.m., TBS) - Casey Anderson; Wilco performs. Late Show With David Letterman (11:35 p.m., CBS3) - Mark Wahlberg; Heather Morris; Snow Patrol performs. The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (11:35 p.m., NBC10) - Michelle Williams; Josh Lucas; Chris Cornell performs. Jimmy Kimmel Live (midnight, 6ABC) - Kiefer Sutherland; Bear Grylls; Young the Giant performs.

Ry Cooder Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down (Nonesuch)   F-ed Up David Comes to Life (Matador)   Girls Father, Son, Holy Ghost (True Panther Sounds)   Jay-Z and Kanye West Watch the Throne (Roc-A-Fella)   The Roots undun (Def Jam)   Tune-Yards w h o k i l l (4AD)

It's not easy for a rock band to maintain creative momentum over a decade and a half and, truth be told, Wilco's career has had its ebbs and flows since the group led by Jeff Tweedy released its engagingly rootsy debut, A.M. , in 1995. With its last two efforts - 2007's bucolic Sky Blue Sky and 2009's ingratiating Wilco (The Album) - the Chicago sextet seemed to have settled into a comfortable middle age. A perfectly pleasant bunch of guys to hang around with, but with their daring days behind them.

When Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy began working together last year, the leader of the Chicago rock band Wilco gathered up songs he hoped would meet with the approval of the gospel-soul vocalist. Tweedy even had a title in mind for a song that he wanted to write for the 71-year-old Staples. The singer's husky contralto powered such early-1970s hits as "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There," both recorded with the Staple Singers, the family band led by her father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples.

The marquee headlining act at the Philadelphia Folk Festival this year might seem an odd choice as poster boy for a venerable institution's brave new youth movement. When the festival sets up camp on the Old Pool Farm in Schwenksville next weekend, as it has every August since 1962, Jeff Tweedy will take the stage Saturday afternoon with only an acoustic guitar, the most traditionally folkie of instruments. Tweedy is a 42-year-old guy whose music - reaching back to his beginnings with the alt-country band Uncle Tupelo - has always retained ties to the hallowed American vernacular traditions that the Folk Festival celebrates.

Wilco was so awesome in Wilmington on Friday that even the vegetables got up and danced. OK, so it was just one vegetable: Mr. Celery, the salty Wilmington Blue Rocks mascot, who stalked Jeff Tweedy and crew onstage toward the end of the celebrated Chicago band's two-hour-plus show at Frawley Stadium, the sextet's only scheduled Philadelphia-area appearance on this tour. It was a lovely evening for a doubleheader at a single-A minor-league baseball stadium, with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band opening.

Watching the video discs of two new DVD/CD concert packs drove home the point how "targeted" (or divisive) musical performers have become in the post- Michael-Jackson age. A GUY THING: Whenever the film director shifts from the Paris stage to audience reaction shots in Bjork 's "Voltaic: The Volta Tour" (Nonesuch, B) , the view shows a sea of guys. This quirky, global pop diva's screechy, incantational vocals and halting, "Bjorklish" ruminations - here revved up with scorching synthesizers and pounding percussion, an all-female brass ensemble and florid tribal costuming and dancing - add up to a heavy, disorienting assault to the senses.

The music business makes its money on tour these days, and summer is the season when everybody hits the road, fingers crossed, in hopes that with school out and the temperature rising, live music still seems like a necessary entertainment expenditure. It's the season for outdoor shows in familiar places. The 48th annual Philadelphia Folk Festival will take place, as always, at the Old Poole Farm in Schwenksville, with this year's edition (Aug. 14-16) spruced up with Iron & Wine, the Low Anthem, and the Rebirth Brass Band.