Wilco

Since their 1995 studio debut, A.M., Wilco has grown from one of the defining alt-country bands into arguably one of the most important bands of their generation. With 1999’s Summerteeth, singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy indulged his studio-pop fascination, and by 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004’s A Ghost Is Born, he had transformed the band into avant garde innovators of American music. Each release is a left turn. Their newest album, Sky Blue Sky, for instance, takes Jeff Tweedy’s occasional Steely Dan fascination to new extremes. It’s an album filled with laidback songs and big guitars, with few traces of the experimental oddness of recent albums or the alt-country twang of yore. Tonight Wilco plays the second of two sold-out concerts at the Pabst Theater.