"This is the first time in a while that we’ve played for people who are sitting down," remarked Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy near the middle of the band’s show Saturday night. He’d obviously never performed at the Orpheum, a place where the red velvet seats induce inertia. His quip got most of the sold-out crowd on their feet, but the venue was only partly responsible for an experience that was often more like seeing a movie than (to crib one of the band’s album titles) being there.

With their latest album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco have won well-deserved praise for expanding their sound palette to include noise and reprocessed sound. But their efforts to reproduce the album live made for a less spontaneous and involving show — it certainly didn’t help to see a guy at one side of the stage apparently playing a Mac Powerbook. Especially in the slower, noise-drenched songs the band are favoring these days, the whole thing had a studied, self-conscious air to it.

Perhaps the mantle of "indie band of the moment" has made Wilco uncomfortable with just being a rock band. But if Tweedy wanted to get the crowd involved, he sure picked a strange way to open the show. "How To Fight Loneliness," a dark mid-tempo ballad, was followed by "Not for the Seasons" and "Sunken Treasure," two drone-based songs that offered a lot to admire but not much to get excited about, especially in a place like the Orpheum. This kind of material works better in the more intimate atmosphere of Lupo’s in Providence, where the band played about six months ago.

All of which is a shame, because the current line-up is an outstanding band, with or without the noise. The terrific drumming of Glenn Kotche and the imaginative layers of counterpoint offered by keyboardist and guitarist Leroy Bach formed a complex, shifting background to Jeff Tweedy’s scratchy, lonely voice. And the two sets of encores reminded everyone that Wilco are a great folk band ("California Stars" and the new "Bob Dylan’s Beard"), a great power-pop band ("Monday" and "Outtasite (Outta Mind)"), and a great, noisy rock band ("Misunderstood"). Yet the carefully induced layers of noise that ended "Poor Places" and "Reservations" left me wondering why the show, good as it was, never quite came together. The venue? Road-weariness? The Powerbook guy?

Tweedy seemed to realize there was a problem, since he followed his quip about everybody sitting down with a suite of the more vigorous songs from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — "Heavy Metal Drummer" (complete with a sing-along), "Pot Kettle Black," and "I’m the Man Who Loves You" — that showed the new material at its best and had everyone dancing. I left thinking that Wilco really could be the world’s greatest band if they would only let themselves.