Wilco

LENOX - If it had been any other band, the opening stretch of Wilco's much-anticipated show at Tanglewood on Tuesday would have seemed insanely temperate. Who greets a pumped, rabid crowd with a laid-back soft-rocker ("Either Way"), a gentle pop tune ("Hummingbird"), and a winsome country-folk song ("Remember the Mountain Bed")? Wilco does - precisely because the band has built a relationship of uncommon trust with its audience. Intensity and noise would materialize, in a pitch-perfect tangle of earthy comforts and perilous adventure, during a stellar set from the planet's most radical roots band.

Michael Rapaport clearly loves music. It's evident in every moment of his documentary, "Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest," the actor's directing debut about the influential hip-hop group. The film includes the rift that divided the Tribe as well as the tensions that linger today, but a deep admiration for the music itself shines through. So with the Grammy Awards on Sunday, where "Beats, Rhymes & Life" is nominated for best long form music video, we asked Rapaport to take over the Five Most space to pick his favorite music documentaries.

Since the David and Goliath tale that surrounded its album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," the Chicago band Wilco has continued to mature musically. In a powerhouse two-hour set at Agganis Arena on Friday evening, the sextet proved that its performance chops have grown with a steady consistency matching its studio efforts. The band took the stage wordlessly and launched into the Woody Guthrie-penned "Airline to Heaven" that by its conclusion had reached the hoedown enthusiasm frequently achieved on its earliest rootsy releases.

Deer Tick has spent its career working so hard to avoid being pigeonholed as a country band (or roots, or blues, or folk …) that "Divine Providence" aims to prove that it's all and none of the above. The result is that, intentionally or not, the Rhode Islanders' fourth album emulates Wilco's second album, and not just because of the ramshackle rock 'n' roll charms of "Funny Word" and "Let's All Go to the Bar. " There's an eager sense throughout of "What can we do now?" familiar to fans of "Being There," and Deer Tick comes close to nailing that record's scope on the Supertrampy ballad "Now It's Your...

Rock Wilco Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch ESSENTIAL “Deeper Down’’ Wilco plays at LeLacheur Park in Lowell on July 11. Sometimes “important’’ bands just want to make good rock records. Which isn’t to say that the adventurous spirit that elevated Chicago rockers Wilco from alt-country upstarts to vanguard indie experimentalists isn’t rattling around the group’s seventh album. That specter has simply taken on a mellower form on “Wilco (the album)

When Wilco released its debut album in 1995, the outfit was a well-liked, fairly straightforward alt-country/roots pop band, in the vein of Uncle Tupelo, the group from whose wreckage Wilco emerged. Over the course of time and personnel shuffles - the current lineup includes frontman Jeff Tweedy, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Sansone, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, bassist John Stirratt, and drummer Glenn Kotche - the Chicago-based band has evolved into a much more eclectic collective.

Like so many of the songs on Wilco's new album, "a ghost is born," the opening track begins gently, tunefully, with a strummed guitar and warm piano and the band leader Jeff Tweedy singing hesitantly, almost sheepishly. "When I sat down on the bed next to you/ You started to cry/ I said maybe if I leave you'll want me to come back home/ Or maybe all you mean is leave me alone/ At least that's what you said. " Then, in a shape-shifting jolt that quickly becomes this album's signature, Tweedy stops singing and starts saying what he really feels -- in a...

Wilco: Learning How to Die , By Greg Kot, Broadway, 256 pp., $14 Much of "Wilco: Learning How to Die," Greg Kot's passionate history of the bold, restless band that for some represents the salvation of rock 'n' roll, is devoted to its leader, Jeff Tweedy, and the harsh education through which he learns to live with himself and his art, if not his bandmates. Kot, a music critic for the Chicago Tribune and a Wilco loyalist, is occasionally led astray by his beliefs, and the results are hysterical.

If Wilco has clearly transcended its origins as an alternative country band, that's probably due in no small part to the fact that the band that took the stage at the Wang Center on Friday night is fundamentally different from the one that released "A.M. " almost a decade ago. For all the gnashing of teeth that accompanied guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennetts ouster during the "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" sessions, it was simply business as usual for a band that has featured a different lineup for each of their five albums, with bandleader Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt as the only...

LOWELL - A starting lineup was beamed on the scoreboard Saturday night at LeLacheur Park, but instead of listing pitchers and hitters it was guitarists and drummers as rockers Wilco took the field. In a set cut short by rain but still long on sonic pleasures, the sextet eagerly roamed through its catalog old and new, stopping at every style along the way from swinging alt-country to warped folk to interludes that deftly intertwined cacophony and tenderness, classic rock and contemporary free-spiritedness.

It was, as the saying goes, like riding a bike. And in this case, a bicycle built for six. Last year, after roughly 15 years of steady touring amid recording seven albums, Wilco - the Chicago alt-country band-turned-sound collage adventurers - decided to take a rare break from the road before hitting the studio to make its new album, "The Whole Love," (which comes out next week on the group's own in-house label, dBpm Records). But, as Wilco demonstrated before a sold-out house at the Wang Theatre last night, you don't unlearn instinct, a honed sense of balance, and the ability to ride...

When Wilco released its debut album in 1995, the outfit was a well-liked, fairly straightforward alt-country/roots pop band, in the vein of Uncle Tupelo, the group from whose wreckage Wilco emerged. Over the course of time and personnel shuffles - the current lineup includes frontman Jeff Tweedy, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Sansone, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, bassist John Stirratt, and drummer Glenn Kotche - the Chicago-based band has evolved into a much more eclectic collective.

SOLID SOUND FESTIVAL With Wilco, the Levon Helm Band, Syl Johnson & the Sweet Divines, Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy, the Autumn Defense, Pronto, Jamie Lidell, Liam Finn, Here We Go Magic, Thurston Moore, and others. At: Mass MoCA, North Adams. June 24-26. Tickets $124.50. Schedule and information at www.solidsoundfestival.com. After a successful first-run in 2010, Wilco is bringing its Solid Sound Festival back to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams this weekend.

THE GILDED SPLINTERS CUT N’ RUN Self released Some sounds never go out of style. The combination of crisscrossing Telecaster guitars (or what sound like Telecaster guitars), a hearth-heated bed of keyboards, and petulant lyrics about walking out on your lover before she — or he — walks out on you, is one of them. On the follow-up to their ’07 debut, “January,’’ the Gilded Splinters mine the familiar torn and frayed temperament of the Stones and Faces, as filtered through subsequent generations of bands with similar penchants,...

LOWELL - A starting lineup was beamed on the scoreboard Saturday night at LeLacheur Park, but instead of listing pitchers and hitters it was guitarists and drummers as rockers Wilco took the field. In a set cut short by rain but still long on sonic pleasures, the sextet eagerly roamed through its catalog old and new, stopping at every style along the way from swinging alt-country to warped folk to interludes that deftly intertwined cacophony and tenderness, classic rock and contemporary free-spiritedness.

Rock Wilco Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch ESSENTIAL “Deeper Down’’ Wilco plays at LeLacheur Park in Lowell on July 11. Sometimes “important’’ bands just want to make good rock records. Which isn’t to say that the adventurous spirit that elevated Chicago rockers Wilco from alt-country upstarts to vanguard indie experimentalists isn’t rattling around the group’s seventh album. That specter has simply taken on a mellower form on “Wilco (the album)

Wilco performed Thursday night on a stage stripped to nothing, with the bones of the Bank of America Pavilion exposed, and no visual bells or whistles to beef up the entertainment quotient. Wilco isn't the only rock group whose music can stand alone -- but it's the only band of its caliber that would risk it. The Chicago outfit has built a brilliant career from combining sturdy American songcraft with a fearless sense of adventure, and its Boston show was no exception. Wilco is on the road in support of "Sky Blue Sky," a collection of warm folk-rock and alt-country gems...

Deer Tick has spent its career working so hard to avoid being pigeonholed as a country band (or roots, or blues, or folk …) that "Divine Providence" aims to prove that it's all and none of the above. The result is that, intentionally or not, the Rhode Islanders' fourth album emulates Wilco's second album, and not just because of the ramshackle rock 'n' roll charms of "Funny Word" and "Let's All Go to the Bar. " There's an eager sense throughout of "What can we do now?" familiar to fans of "Being There," and Deer Tick comes close to nailing that record's scope on the...

Jazz The Bad Plus For All I Care Heads Up ESSENTIAL "Lithium" The irreverent jazz trio known as the Bad Plus has made its name covering rock songs such as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Iron Man," even while the band's bread and butter has been off-kilter original compositions. For its fifth studio album, "For All I Care," the Bad Plus has upped the ante by adding a vocalist and doing all covers. Call it the Bad Plus plus one. Bringing in an unknown vocalist, Minneapolis alt-rocker Wendy Lewis, may sound like a risk, but it works exceedingly well.

So many great new CDs, so little space - which means a lot of music never receives the praise it deserves. To remedy that, we present our 10 favorite overlooked albums of 2008. HOTEL LIGHTS Firecracker People (Bar/None) As the drummer in the piano pop trio Ben Folds Five, Darren Jessee proved both gifted timekeeper and zany foil for the piano man. In 2004 he stepped out as a multi-instrumentalist with his own band and unearthed the gentle, country-tinged heart beating within.