Wilco, an infallible spell at Poble Espanyol

Once again, the Poble Espanyol welcomed the Alma festival with Wilco, the band led by Jeff Tweedy and company, who returned to Barcelona four years later, this time with Nels Cline on stage. The Los Angeles-based guitarist was absent from the band's final performance due to a sudden positive case of COVID-19, the disease that was supposed to make us better, preventing fascist businessmen from coming to power or democratically elected governments from promoting genocide.

To combat the dismay surrounding the current situation, the Chicago indie country band put on a flawless concert, as usual, with exquisite details from the opening track "Company in My Back" in a concert that briefly introduced their two latest works, "Cousin" and the EP "Hot Sun Cool Shroud." And although both were played last night, the intricacies of the performance, and what the audience expected, focused on the band's early work, with the albums "A Ghost Is Born," "Sky Blue Sky," and, of course, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" standing out, demonstrating the genre-bending ability of this band linked to country in its early days, a legacy of Uncle Tupelo, who, upon disbanding, gave rise to Wilco.

The band's first albums featured a concert in which Nels Cline acted as 'guitar hero'

The torrid atmosphere of the day refused to leave the main square of Poble Espanyol, enveloping it at 10 p.m. in a delicate torpor in keeping with the expectant attitude of the audience, which mingled with the band's die-hard fans (the majority) and those who wanted to enjoy the Friday atmosphere that the city fosters now that it's starting to empty out of residents. Both sides allowed themselves to be lulled by the slow rhythms that characterize Wilco's latest albums, as they demonstrated with "Evicted" shortly after the last light of day began, before "Handshaked Drugs" gave way to Cline's first celebrated solo, scratched by distortion.

Tweedy soon took over the stage, looking as if he'd just gotten dressed to welcome a stranger. He was flanked by, in addition to Cline, John Stirrat on bass, Glenn Kotche on drums, Mikale Jorgensen on keyboards, and Pat Sansone as multi-instrumentalist. The band played with the same level of perfection that the band has become accustomed to (they already demonstrated their level of skill on their last visit, when they all filled in for the missing guitarist).

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After threatening to revolutionize rock and spending years experimenting in various directions, it seems settled on an extremely fine-tuned version of classic concepts, whether from rock itself, folk, pop or country in mixes like Side with the Seeds –with a free solo guitar hero– or the catchy melody of I am trying to break your heart amidst nursery trills and xylophones.

More expectant than participating, the audience barely allowed itself to be carried away by the pop tunes of If I Ever Was a Child , the melancholic Jesus etc. or that Beatles monument that is Hummingbird . Meanwhile, they followed the band's complex creations attentively, such as the progressive three-guitar interplay of Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull, one of the pieces from Cruel Country that still survives among the two dozen songs that make up the band's regular setlist on this tour.

Impossible Germany was greeted with one of the few resounding ovations before facing a long guitar solo that turned the piece into an ambient crescendo offset by the cheerful Heavy metal drummer and the cacophonous Spiders (Kidsmoke) with which Tweedy made the audience sing before leaving the stage. The obligatory Califorina stars was left for the encore, "we don't have time for more" said Tweedy, and he seemed sincere even though they then gave away the rockers Walken and I Got You (At the end of the century) as they said goodbye to their umpteenth exercise of musical magic.