Wilco is a band with a unique ability to appeal to multiple points of symbolic impact for listeners inducted into the band’s zeitgeist. The music concocted by front man Jeff Tweedy and fleshed out by his particular band of mates can reach out to the head, heart, libido, the catharsis-seeking zones, and elsewhere — sometimes in the course of an album, concert, or sometimes a single song.
As if to demonstrate that special balancing act up front, Wilco's exhilarating concert at the Arlington last week (on October 13) opened with the strange brew of “Infinite Surprise,” also the opener of their striking new album Cousin — given an enticing production thumbprint by Cate Le Bon. The song is a conundrum and a seductive curiosity combining one of Tweedy's simplest and most infectious melodies from the new album and an avant-psychedelic wash of sound surrounding that deceptive simplicity — courtesy of the ever-flexible guitarist Nels Cline and other forces in the band.
With that strange brew of a concert appetizer, Wilco's game was fully on for two hours and nearly two dozen songs proving why they remain one of America's great existing rock bands. And one of the reasons for their artistic potency is their willfully stubborn refusal to be easily categorized.