The Autumn Defense live review
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy once responded to an accusation that his band was dad-rock with, “I’m a dad, and I like Merzbow – does that make Merzbow dad-rock?”, and while devotees will cite plenty of the group’s catalogue that draws from post-rock, drone and krautrock, it’s an understandable charge. What’s more, one gets the impression that those Wilco fans who have come tonight to see two of the band’s rhythm section – bassist John Stirratt and guitarist Pat Sansone – perform as an acoustic duo are not exactly expecting anything particularly challenging.
And that’s just as well: Stirratt and Sansone stick to the Beatlesy, 70s AOR blueprint that has peppered their mother band’s recent records so tastefully, and the congregated Men Of A Certain Age – virtually the entire audience is male, over 40 and demonstrating the full ranges of both male-pattern baldness and Marks & Spencer leather jackets – listen and nod reverentially. Indeed, the reverence is somewhat disarming to Sansone, who begins by thanking the crowd for their silence but ends sounding slightly desperate for something more than the polite applause that greets the end of every song.
But that polite applause is deserved – Stirratt and Sansone perform elegantly and effortlessly, harmonising and playing together in that tightly-coiled manner of musicians who’ve spent far more time as the backbone rather than the head of a rock band, while unfurling a repertoire that treads delicately between Byrdsian jangle and – especially when Sansone takes to the piano – the wistful nostalgia of Magic FM yacht-rock. It makes for a deeply comfortable, winsome and unjarring Sunday evening; quite what Stirratt and Sansone’s boss might make of it all is another matter.
