Steve Hochman on September 16th, 2016

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Jeff Tweedy and his Wilco cohorts stood Tuesday at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel on a stage looking like a detailed pop-up illustration of a canopy of trees in a kids book, extra-magical for being in this stunningly ornate Deco-era room, the musicians lost in — or escaping to — the woods. Well, childhood did figure prominently in the generous, 27-song set the band played in this first of three Ace nights, particularly the opening sequence of the three songs that also kick off the recent album “Schmilco.”

With “Normal American Kids,” just Tweedy and lead guitarist (and hometown boy) Nels Cline to start, the singer recalled an adolescence of hating the titular herd, and hating his own failed, if half-hearted attempts to be part of it. Then, with the full band, in the album’s often subdued, semi-acoustic mode, “If I Ever Was a Child” (“I never was alone, long enough to know…”).

||| Photos by David Benjamin *

With music that long-ago moved far beyond the Americana movement Tweedy helped spark with Uncle Tupelo, but wants little association with now (that herd thing again), songs regularly touched on that childhood (and adulthood) struggle to figure out just who you are, or deciding not to. “You are so oblivious to yourself,” he sang in “Pot Kettle Black,” from the 2002 artistic breakthrough album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” in part to someone else, in part to himself. Then a couple of songs later, “How can I convince you it’s me I don’t like,” from the same album’s “Reservations.” Between them, 2009’s “Bull Black Nova,” Tweedy in a fevered, regret-filled bad dream, “high at the wheel” of the old clunker, driving along while the band crafted a tension-building pulse chugging down the road like an Americana “Autobahn.”

Yeah, those woods can be scary. And a refuge. This night the woods did contain some strange, mysterious, sometimes frightening creatures.

“The weirdest crowd …” Tweedy remarked at one point, having parried steady barrages of song requests, shouts of devotion and encouragement (“You’re doing great, man!”) in what at times became almost an audience-participation show, intensified by the relatively intimate setting. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of some of it, but handled it with frisky humor, drawing howls of laughter numerous times with offhand quips.

In these woods, the lights cycled through days and nights, through the seasons — the leaves brown, then purple, then green. The band cycled through sounds, the songs through moods — sweetly sentimental, introspectively isolated, sometimes removed, sometimes inviting, sometimes lilting and sometimes jaggedly cacophonous. Sometimes all that in one song. And yes, it takes an exceptional band to pull that off, and this is just that, with bassist John Stirrat, drummer Glenn Kotche, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and guitarist/keyboardist Pat Sansone along with Tweedy and Cline a stable lineup for 12 years now, masterful at every twist and turn.

The contrasts were used deftly and purposefully. As the crowd cheered wildly, brought to its collective feet and having its collective jaw dropped by Cline’s extended electric guitar excursion on “Impossible,” Tweedy said, “Always gets such a big round of applause, so we like to follow it up with a dirge. So sit down.” And the fans did, happy to sigh along for the gorgeous “Sky Blue Sky,” followed by the inside-out country-rock of the new album’s “Nope,” followed in turn by the inside-in country-rock of “Flowers,” echoing sweet-sad Gram Parsons.

Another sweet-sad, departed hero was evoked as well: Harry Nilsson. The new album’s title gives a little nod (“Nilsson Schmilsson” from 1971), but it all came home toward the end of the main set with an older Wilco song, “Hummingbird,” very Nilsson-like in its Tin Pan Alley-worthy melody, and even more so in its meditation on the childhood/adulthood struggles: “His goal in life was to be an echo,” sang the guy wandering in the woods.

The main set was filling and fulfilling, the encores a bonus treat, first a trio of songs serving as sociopolitical commentary: “Jesus, etc.” to start, then reaching back to Tweedy’s Uncle Tupelo years for a pointed “We’ve Been Had” and then back further to Woody Guthrie (via the Wilco/Billy Bragg “Mermaid Avenue” collaboration) for the even-more-pointed and pertinent “Christ for President” before the elegiac, expansive state of the State (of mind) sing-along “California Stars.” But they weren’t done quite yet, returning on boisterous demand and going all Krautrock-y on the extended pulsating Middle-American motorik of “Spiders.” The lyrics may have been kind of swallowed up by the big sounds of this, but just to recap, it touches on tax returns, blocked caller ID, the daily grind. Hey, the adult forest is really scary.

Opener Kevin Morby also impressed, the L.A. singer-songwriter and his three-member band very compatible with, but not sounding like, the headliner, its distinctive mix bringing to mind everything and anything from Neil Young to Talking Heads. Wilco’s three-night was followed Wednesday by an opening set from Tortoise guitarist (and recent L.A, transplant) Jeff Parker, and Thursday’s concert featured local heroes Dave and Phil Alvin.

Editor’s note: The review was from Tuesday evening’s show; the photographs are from Thursday.