Wilco

Since their 1995 studio debut, A.M., Wilco has grown from one of alt-country’s defining bands into one of the most important bands of their generation, period. 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 his roots-loving rock band into avant-garde innovators of American music. Each Wilco release is a left turn. Their newest album, Sky Blue Sky, for instance, revealed Tweedy to be a closet Steely Dan fan. 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 first of two sold-out concerts at the Pabst Theater.