Wilco have always found success on their own terms. Early on, they insisted that Being There, their sophomore effort for Reprise (the label whose dumping of them last year caused the well-publicized delay of their widely lauded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), be a double disc. They won. The release went on to put them on many a Top 10 list in 1996; more important, it won them a faithful audience.

Six years later, Wilco may be a very different group, but they’re no less feisty. While retaining his love for rootsy Americana, band leader and main songwriter Jeff Tweedy has expanded his musical horizons. The follow-up to Being There — 1999’s Summer Teeth — found him adding the Beach Boys and the Kinks to his list of revered influences. And for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot he turned to Chicago avant-rock guru Jim O’Rourke for input on production and arrangement.

In light of his refusal to play by industry rules, it made perfect sense that Tweedy would open the band’s show a week ago Wednesday at Providence’s Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel — their first area performance since the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which was first available for download on the Internet and has now been released by Nonesuch) — by playing a song that isn’t even on the album. His stark introduction to "Not for the Season," a tune penned for a collaborative release with O’Rourke, ended in a discordant guitar mess more redolent of Sonic Youth than of the group’s alterna-country peers.

It’s Wilco’s willingness to reinvent themselves that’s always distinguished them. And the Lupo’s gig showcased just how wide a sonic spectrum the band are comfortable with. The stormy keyboards of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" nestled alongside the strummings of "Kamera"; the gloriously cacophonous conclusion of "Ashes of American Flags" led into the soothing ballad "Reservations."

Given the recent departure of multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, the now four-piece band chose to emphasize keyboards and percussive elements, which they did to beautiful effect in the poppy intro to "Shot in the Arm" and the dub-like breaks of "Heavy Metal Drummer." Not that they’ve lost their guitar dexterity — they pile-drove through the stomping "I Got You (At the End of the Century)" before segueing into the similarly styled "Outtasite (Outta Mind)."

The moodiness of the music was offset by the band’s high spirits. Introducing the rarely performed Carter-family classic "When The Roses Bloom Again" (which wound up on the Tweedy-directed Chelsea Walls soundtrack), Tweedy implored the audience, with a smile, to "take good care of our record. We held on to it long enough. Now it’s all yours."