Safe Harbour review: Wilco close tour with triumphant gig at Cork Opera House
Jeff Tweedy of Wilco on stage at Cork Opera House for Sounds From a Safe Harbour. Picture: Bríd O’Donovan
Wilco mark 30 years as a band in 2024 and release their 13th studio album, Cousin, at the end of September. They're one of those bands who we've probably taken for granted. Do you like Wilco, we're asked over the course of the third day of Sounds from a Safe Harbour in Cork. How can you not?
They hit the stage at the sold out Cork Opera House at 9pm and leave almost exactly two hours later, clocking up 22 songs, too many guitar changes to count, and likely inspiring many chin-strokers in the crowd to go home and wail out a guitar solo.
It looks like they're having so much fun, a big six-piece band playing what is for them an intimate show. Maybe they've found a new audience in recent years with a couple of songs featuring in The Bear, the acclaimed show about a restaurant on the brink. But ultimately Wilco just do what they do best: Country-edged guitar music that goes hard. If you draw a throughline of 'the Great American Band', Wilco feature in there somewhere.
Tweedy is flanked by bassist John Stirratt, who's been there with him from the start, and Nels Cline and Pat Sansome, their three-guitar squall a thrill throughout the night. The centrepiece of the set is 'Impossible Germany', a showcase of Tweedy's writing nous if you want to get lost in the lyrics rather than the guitars.
'A Shot in the Arm' precipitates a call and response from the crowd before the triple-threat encore of 'Falling Apart (Right Now)', 'Via Chicago', and the ten-minute-plus 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)'. Songs from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, their 2002 masterpiece, are met with unbridled joy, the playful 'Heavy Metal Drummer' like an old friend we haven't seen in too long.
Tweedy is playful throughout, a bow and a wave here, a joke and showbusiness and Dublin there. "Thank you for inviting us to your opera house," he says at one point. "Do they really do opera here?"
Cork is the final night of Wilco's European tour - Wicklow singer-songwriter Anna Mieke has supported on the Irish stretch of shows. "Do you still love rock'n'roll?" Tweedy asks during 'Misunderstood', about halfway through the set. After this two-hour heavyweight masterclass, the answer is obvious.
Wilco capped a busy day at Sounds from a Safe Harbour, a festival with a focus on experimentation and collaboration. The former was on display with the tender Caroline Rose at the Pavilion in the afternoon, a guitar string serving serving as radio antenna that she turned to Ireland's Rugby World Cup opener (well we think that's what we were listening).
Meanwhile at Live in St Lukes, Scottish piper Brighde Chaimbeul collaborates with the English singer-songwriter Anna B Savage. Like a lot of what you might see at Sounds, it just works perfectly.
