Wilco on Saturday's PHC

Wilco are scheduled to rock the respectable folks of Minneapolis as guests of Saturday's Prairie Home Companion. A peculiar bill for them maybe, or not, depending on which Wilco shows up. Mermaid Avenue-Wilco fits all right alongside Greg Brown, Robin & Linda Williams, the Shoe Band. A Ghost Is Born-Wilco: not so Prairie. Though it's fun to imagine a dry Keillor outro to "Kidsmoke."

Wilco are also scheduled to stop at a Charlotte arena on their summer tour -- but Jesus Christ, who can afford the tickets? PHC is about as close to live Wilco as I'm likely to get this year.

I listened to Sky Blue Sky on Wilcoworld.net a few weeks ago, and it left a better initial impression on me than A Ghost Is Born did. I didn't come around to enjoying Ghost until I heard some live recordings that freed the songs from that album's uniformly brushed-metal-textured production value.

What lingers from my first listen to Sky Blue Sky is the sense of a retrospective embrace. An enfolding of the group's entire evolution of textures and moods, the way you fold solid ingredients into a batter. The twin steel guitars of "What Light" and the gentle country shuffle of the title track throw right back to the languid summer night mood of early alt-country tunes like "Far, Far Away," while a chalky overdriven Wurlitzer on "Hate It Here" suggests a nod to, or a haunting by, the jettisoned Jay Bennett. In other words Sky Blue Sky seems to integrate, with maturity and a new subtlety, all the varied terrain that Wilco have covered across the last ten years. Which may wash out boring, or emerge a sunken treasure. Or maybe I'll hear it again and not hear any of this.

I can tell you for sure that I dislike the Jonathan Livingston Seagull inspirational lecture that are the lyrics to "What Light." I'd much rather chew on the opaque poet-boy in-joke language-stew of something like "Company In My Back."

Who's heard the new album? What do you think?