Rating: NNN
If you’ve seen Sam Jones’s stunningly well-made I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, you know the juicy potential for band drama when cameras are turned on Jeff Tweedy. That’s not the case in Ashes Of American Flags, the band’s live performance DVD.
[rssbreak]
In fact, Ashes is kind of the doc’s antithesis. Members speak glowingly of each other. Tweedy even goes so far as to say Wilco wouldn’t continue if it lost founding bassist John Stirratt – a long way from his firing of Jay Bennett in I Am Trying. We’re left to focus on the shows, a tour document of five “quintessentially American” venues in Mobile, Tulsa, New Orleans, Nashville and Washington, DC. Competently shot, and with a set list of songs gleaned from the last three albums, Ashes succeeds as a live fix for fans, but delivers little else.
Top track: Via Chicago
