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	WILCO OUT OF THE COUNTRY

Early in Wilco’s set at Agganis Arena last Friday, frontman Jeff Tweedy joked, "Welcome to our arena-rock tour." Which it was in terms of the wall-shaking volume. But you might also call this Wilco’s post-therapy tour, with songs that sounded cold and insular on disc being transformed into something confident and outgoing.

The set drew mainly on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born (both Nonesuch), the "non-commercial" albums that made the band headliners and turned Tweedy into a star. Yet few of those songs sounded anything like their recorded versions — or even the way they sounded on stage two years ago, when Wilco were a more keyboard-driven band. Gone were the icy electronic soundscapes of original member Jay Bennett and collaborator Jim O’Rourke, save for a drum loop or two. In their place was plenty of building and peaking and more than a few ripping guitar jams.

And though Agganis isn’t quite Madison Square Garden, Wilco reveled in the larger-than-life setting. When the full band crashed in during "At Least That’s What You Said," a wall of orange lights went off behind them. "Theologicans" found Tweedy giving a raised-fist salute on the chorus "A ghost is born," turning the disc’s title into an anthemic catch phrase. Most transformed was "Spiders (Kidsmoke)": on disc an exercise in Kraftwerk-like repetition; on stage a pulsing jam that climaxed three times, each with a more frenetic guitar solo.

One key to this transformation was Nels Cline, the kind of guitar soloist who can play thrilling stuff without losing a song’s emotional heart. But the show also attested to Tweedy’s new-found generosity. On disc, the upbeat "Heavy Metal Drummer" and "The Late Greats" were arranged to be grating and ominous; on stage, they were pop pleasures with no double edge. Yet the dark undertow was still there when needed: "Misunderstood" began and ended with bursts of noise that underlined the lyrics’ anger.

Tweedy was also more into stage banter than usual, at one point taking a straw poll on the audience’s favorite Wilco album. And the eight-song encore ended with a quintessential ’60s sing-along: Dylan’s "I Shall Be Released," on which Cline’s pedal steel was a rare reminder that this used to be an alternative country band.