Vier Tage traten Wilco im Mai 2005 im The Vic Theatre in Chicago auf. Vier Heimspiele für Sänger und Songwriter Jeff Tweedy sowie seine Band also, und die Atmosphäre der Shows überträgt sich auf das Live-Album Kicking Television: Live In Chicago. Die Fans können die Songs tatsächlich mitsingen, und sie lassen sich diesen Spaß nicht nehmen. Kein Wunder, dass die amerikanische Alternative-Country-Rock-Gruppe da zu großer Form aufläuft. Damit nichts schief gehen konnte, hat Tweedy eine exzellente Mannschaft um sich versammelt. John Stirratt kennt er schon seit alten Zeiten mit Uncle Tupelo, Glenn Kotche (Loose Fur), Mike Jorgensen (Sea & Cake, Bobby Conn), Pat Sansone (Autumn Defense) und Nels Cline stehen außerhalb von Wilco auf eigenen Beinen. So ist Tweedy der König unter Prinzen. Trotzdem bemerkenswert: Wilco gelingt auch ohne den zumeist nur im Studio anwesenden Elektronik-Weirdo Jim O’Rourke der Spagat zwischen digitalen Verschrobenheiten sowie schroffen Klangexperimenten zum klassischen Rock-Song, zwischen Avantgarde und Country. Dabei war zu befürchten, dass Tweedy nach der Überwindung seiner Depressionen und Drogenprobleme die schrägen Seiten seiner überragenden Songs glättet. Darauf weist auf Kicking Television: Live In Chicago gar nichts hin, und das ist auch gut so.

(Sven Niechziol, Amazon)

While Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born established Wilco's reputation as one of America's most interesting and imaginative rock bands, both albums were the product of a band in flux, and this was particularly evident to those who saw the group on-stage after the release of YHF. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot may have blazed new sonic trails for Wilco, but the departure of Jay Bennett in the latter stages of its production left the band with an audible hole when they played the new material on-stage, and while multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach may have been a technically skilled player, he looked and sounded like a cold fish in concert, unwittingly emphasizing the cooler surfaces of Wilco's new music and negating much of the passion of Jeff Tweedy's songs. However, by the time Wilco hit the road following the release of A Ghost Is Born, the group's latest round of personnel shakeups had the unexpected but welcome effect of spawning one of the group's best lineups to date; after Bach amicably left Wilco, the addition of keyboard and guitar man Pat Sansone and especially visionary guitarist Nels Cline gave the band players whose energy and passion matched their technical skill, and suddenly the band was playing its challenging new material with the same sweaty force Tweedy and company conjured up in the band's earlier days. Thankfully, Tweedy had the good sense to document the prowess of Wilco's latest incarnation on-stage, and Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, recorded during four shows at the Windy City's Vic Theater, offers a welcome second perspective on the band's more recent work. With the exception of two numbers from Wilco's collaborative albums with Billy Bragg (in which they set Woody Guthrie's poems to music), Kicking Television focuses exclusively on their "post-alt-country" work, but while many of the songs featured here sounded cool and mannered in the studio, here they gain new muscle and force, not to mention a great deal of enthusiasm, and while tunes like "Ashes of American Flags" and "Handshake Drugs" are never going to be crowd-pleasers in the manner of "Casino Queen," the élan of this band in full flight shows that the fun has been put back in Wilco, albeit in a different and more angular form. Nels Cline's guitar is especially bracing in this context, and his marriage of melodic weight and joyous dissonance fits these songs while expanding on their strengths at the same time. And the title cut thankfully proves that Wilco still can (and still does) rock on out. Kicking Television is the best sort of live album -- a recording that doesn't merely retread a band's back catalog, but puts their songs in a new perspective, and in this case these performances reveal that one great band has actually been getting better.

(by Mark Deming, All Music Guide)