Wilco rocked sold-out Hill Auditorium, but style sometimes overshadowed substance

Tight and polished almost to a fault, Wilco was businesslike and efficient in nearly laying waste to Hill Auditorium on Friday with the guitar-and-keyboard onslaught that has become the band’s calling card during recent years.

Jeff Tweedy and co. spanned the band’s 14-year career with a set that, while not necessarily mailed in, seemed to be lacking some energy, despite its two-hour, 27-song duration.

It might be that the former country-rock band of modest abilities and enormous heart has become just the opposite: enormously talented, but left wanting in the inspiration department.

There’s no question that Wilco can turn on the pyrotechnics at will. With avant-jazz wizard Nels Cline on guitar and Glenn Kotche on drums, the band has an extra gear that it employs perhaps too regularly, rendering even the best-intentioned feedback freakout almost boring when it seems to infuse every song.

It's kind of a shame, because Jeff Tweedy, despite a limited vocal range and awkward frontman persona, writes engaging songs that don’t require a lot of embellishment.

At their best, on records like “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” Wilco uses unique electronic effects to complement Tweedy’s songs. But on Friday, the wall of effects became the message, drowning out the tunes’ subtleties.

None of which seemed to matter to most of the audience, who appeared to eat up each and every one of Cline’s overwrought solos and body contortions and auxiliary guitarist Pat Sansone’s guitar-god poses.

But it’s impossible not to love Tweedy. And, thanks to him, the show had some genuinely touching moments, as when he led the audience through a singalong version of his gorgeous “Jesus, Etc.” and on a lovely reading of “California Stars,” the unfinished Woody Guthrie song that the band set to music.

Wilco performing “California Stars” earlier this year in Los Angeles:

And longtime fans were treated to a rocking rendition of “Box Full of Letters,” the power-pop nugget from the band’s debut record, “A.M.”

But these moments, when the band backed away from the bombast, only seemed to underscore how much overkill was present during the majority of the show. And kind of made us long for the days when Wilco was able to accomplish a lot more with a lot less.

Will Stewart is a free-lance writer for AnnArbor.com.