Wilco — 29 June 2025, Valencia, Spain (La Marina De Valencia [Marina Norte]) [Nits Voramar]

[bböp]

And after four shows in four days, another Wilco tour of Spain is in the books. I think the most enduring memories of this little tour-within-a-tour will center on the oven-like conditions, and tonight was no exception. Even after the unrelenting sun sank below the horizon and gave way to the more-than-welcome darkness, the humidity generated by the seaside setting of this amphitheater made for a pretty sweltering evening.

 

I guess I should start by describing the venue, which I described to some friends as “the Northerly Island of Valencia.” It’s a reference that most Chicagoans will get, but basically it is a makeshift amphitheater set up in an asphalt lot on a parcel of land adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea. It might sound like a pleasant enough setting, but actually it was pretty charmless. Just, like, a very Live Nation-ish type of setting, with the added detriment of another enterprise called the “Marina Beach Club” next door that started pumping techno beats at some point, which bled over into the amphitheater (Jeff joked at one point, after asking the audience if they heard it too, that “I’ve been secretly dancing to that all night.”) From outside the entry gates, the venue/lot looked to be pretty huge, but it actually wasn’t as enormous as I feared. I suppose that was the only silver lining, though the stage setup was still pretty high and overall the vibe was more like that of a festival than anything else.

 

Anyway, by this point we have pretty much come to know what to expect when it comes to this tour. If you’ve been following along, the setlists have become pretty consistent with a couple of exceptions each night. I have no idea if or how true this is, but it seemed like for the non-festival shows here in Spain, Jeff and Co. were contracted to play two hours and that’s what they were going to deliver: no more, no less. Add in the heat and other factors, and you can sort of understand why these shows were kind of “Wilco by the numbers” more so than past shows in Spain. That’s not a criticism on my part, but just kind of an acceptance of reality. I do think Jeff and his bandmates genuinely love coming here and playing for Spanish audiences, but it does bum me out slightly that the band seems to be starting to play more typically American-like venues over here (or just these bigger sorts of festival-type setups).

 

Perhaps that evolution was especially stark to me having also attended Wilco’s previous show in Valencia, which took place three years ago in a kind of community auditorium on the outskirts of the city. You can read more about it in my recap of that gig, but it just had kind of a neighborhood block party feel in some ways and I really dug the atmosphere much more than this show in a generic makeshift amphitheater. Anyway, I won’t harp on this more than I already have. One good thing about Wilco returning to Valencia — which I learned is Spain’s third largest city by population, behind Madrid and Barcelona — was that the band was able to make “a small gesture,” in Jeff’s words, of contributing the proceeds from a special poster sold at the show to victims of some deadly flooding in the area last year, as Chrome Devil describes below.

 

That poster called the show “An Evening With Wilco,” which I guess technically it was, though not in the sense of the term that the band has been using to describe its two-set performances with no opening act. There was a support act for this show (and on the same stage as Wilco even!), a keyboard-playing guy called Luis Prado and his band who my Spanish friends actually enjoyed for the most part. I think perhaps those who enjoyed him a bit less were the Wilcrew, especially after Prado — who had already played for an hour — started one final song that took him a few minutes past his apparent set time. Jeff and Co. still hit the stage exactly at their appointed 10:30 p.m. start time, but I’m sure Prado going a bit long didn’t make the Wilcrew’s job any easier. And they had already had a rough few days, as Jeff shared when he took time out to thank them for their efforts.

 

“This tour we’ve been traveling around with the best humans who make this show happen every night,” Jeff said before Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull. “They’ve been traveling in the back of a trash truck, so I want to thank all of them. I’m not kidding about the trash truck. It’s been pretty brutal. They come off the truck and they’re about half the size they were.”

 

That was probably Jeff’s best visit to Banter Corner for the evening, when he discussed the poster and expressed his gratitude to the Wilcrew. Another funny bit, though — at least to me — came when he told the crowd before Quiet Amplifier that “we’ve got a lot more songs to play…we’re not even a tenth of the way there,” only to reverse course just a few songs later when he admitted, “I lied before. We’re getting close to the end,” and capped it with his usual punchline. In between those two quips came Impossible Germany, after which there was a brief “Oeee oee oee” chant by the audience. “We don’t have time for that,” Jeff insisted. “Let’s do a lot more of that at the end.”

 

Despite some of Jeff’s best efforts at urging the Valencians to sing along and participate, however, I would say that the crowd wasn’t nearly as raucous as some other Spanish audiences I've witnessed (and been a part of). But it certainly wasn’t bad at all, given the heat, the hour and the venue. Additionally, part of me also has felt that this whole European run has been a bit odd from the perspective that Wilco isn’t really promoting anything new and if the intention was to support more recent work such as Cousin and Hot Sun Cool Shroud, then why have Evicted and Annihilation pretty much been the only live staples from those records?

 

We’ll probably never really know the answer to that, and we’ll see when the next Wilco show in Europe winds up being. It could easily be next year, or it could be a decent while with the imminent Tweedy record figuring to be Jeff’s focus for some time after it comes out in September and his bandmates focusing on other projects as well. Here’s hoping it won’t be too long since the full band returns to this side of the Atlantic, however. I just hope that maybe the folks in Wilcoworld who make the touring decisions will choose a slightly cooler part of the calendar next time around. It’s clear that Jeff and Co. are getting more comfortable, at least in this corner of the continent, with each passing tour. “I know I’ve said (gracias) a million times, but we feel like we belong here, so thank you,” Jeff told the audience near the end of the show. “We love it in Spain. We used to want to take you home with us. Now we just wanna stay.”

 

Here was the complete setlist, as played (didn't get a look at a printed setlist, so can't say if there were any changes/omissions):

 

Company In My Back

Evicted

Handshake Drugs

Side With The Seeds

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

If I Ever Was A Child

Whole Love

Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull

Via Chicago

One Wing

Hummingbird

Quiet Amplifier

Either Way

Impossible Germany

Jesus, etc.

Box Full Of Letters

Annihilation

Heavy Metal Drummer

Spiders (Kidsmoke)

------------------------------------

California Stars

Walken

I Got You (At The End Of The Century)

[Albert Tatlock]

A drowsy (sies)ta.

[Chrome Devil]

On 6/30/2025 at 11:10 AM, bböp said:

And after four shows in four days, another Wilco tour of Spain is in the books. I think the most enduring memories of this little tour-within-a-tour will center on the oven-like conditions, and tonight was no exception. Even after the unrelenting sun sank below the horizon and gave way to the more-than-welcome darkness, the humidity generated by the seaside setting of this amphitheater made for a pretty sweltering evening.

 

Full recap to come, but for now, here was the complete setlist as played (didn't get a look at a printed setlist, so can't say if there were any changes/omissions):

 

Company In My Back

Evicted

Handshake Drugs

Side With The Seeds

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

If I Ever Was A Child

Whole Love

Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull

Via Chicago

One Wing

Hummingbird

Quiet Amplifier

Either Way

Impossible Germany

Jesus, etc.

Box Full Of Letters

Annihilation

Heavy Metal Drummer

Spiders (Kidsmoke)

------------------------------------

California Stars

Walken

I Got You (At The End Of The Century)

I can certainly attest to the heat and humidity. It has been relentless here in Spain for a month now. As bböp had alluded to on earlier dates, perhaps the heat (and it being a Sunday night) resulted in a more sedate crowd, though my comparison in a Spanish context is the raucous Alicante crowd from August '23 (a similarly sweltering evening), which would take some living up to. Not to say that the show wasn't easily B+ and very well received by the sizeable crowd, just that it was the standard excellence we come to (unfairly?) expect from Wilco.

 

A special poster had been designed for this show, memorialising the 200+ deaths as a result of the "DANA" flash floods from October of last year, with all proceeds going to the victims. Jeff announced from the stage that this was Wilco's way of "giving something back to a community that has given us so much over the years". After thanking the crew he exclaimed "Oh, Valencia, we used to want to take you back with us...Now we just wish we could stay" (if I'm paraphrasing it should only be slightly).

 

PS: On the walk back to the hotel a thermometer was reading 31 Celsius, and this at 1am, so it was indeed hot!

 

[bböp]

On 7/2/2025 at 3:58 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

A drowsy (sies)ta.

 

I am indeed quite drowsy and quite ready for my daily (sies)ta. Or perhaps it's (horcha)ta time!

 

I suppose my main accomplishment of today will be that I finally finished the recap for this one. Better late than never, right? Right?

[Albert Tatlock]

19 hours ago, bböp said:

I suppose my main accomplishment of today will be that I finally finished the recap for this one. Better late than never, right? Right?

Ta(rdy)

As I said elsewhere, next year Hampton Court Palace in June gets my vote.

 

P.S. Happy Revolution Day!