OTTAWA -- Wilco, the Chicago-based band, have been called the greatest band in the world. Okay, I may not agree with that just yet, but after their gig Wednesday night at the Capital Music Hall, I understand why they inspire that kind of passion.

It seems that every generation has to have one avant- garde pop band that egghead rockers can respect.

Forty years ago it was The Velvet Underground. Twenty years later, we had Talking Heads and Television to look up to.

Now it's Wilco, our "it" band.

God bless them.

In a business that's dictated by the bottom line, Wilco are one of the few bands left that seems intent on single-handedly saving alt-pop from Canadian Idol marketing hell with two unconventional discs, the highly uncommercial 2002 release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and their most recent Nonesuch release A Ghost Is Born.

Literate, symphonic and bravely lyrical, the two discs were Wilco's 21-song set list at a jam-packed Capital, crammed with serious-looking graduate student types who stared at their heroes with an expression resembling religious ecstasy.

The band that was born in alt-country flames now burns with the most cacophonous and imaginative progressive rock this side of Radiohead.

If there's one thing songwriter Jeff Tweedy loves more than a big fat juicy rock hook, it's pulling it apart and peeking inside with his bandmates, guitarist John Stirratt, drummer Glenn Kotche, keyboard guitarist Leroy Bach, Mikael Jorgensen and guitar contortionist Nels Cline.

Like an orchestra leader from the 1940s, Tweedy stood front and centre, looking like a tattered guitar-playing ragamuffin in his oversized Sally Ann sports jacket.

Fresh from a bout of detox for painkillers and depression, his famously acrimonious split with songwriting partner Jay Bennett and being the subject of the new documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, you'd think Tweedy would find the gig anything but uplifting, but the performance was mostly inspired.

And balanced.

Tweedy seemed content to play the romantic troubadour while Cline spasmed with distorted guitar lines which contrasted brilliantly with Bach and Jorgensen's spare but effective piano and mellotron accents on oblique ballads She's a Jar and The Lonely One, the psychedelic sonics of Handshake Drugs and the 10-minute-long finale Spiders (Kidsmoke).

The mood was anything but bleak with a dozen blood-stirring rockers such as I'm the Man Who Loves You, Shot in the Arm, I'm a Wheel and the crowd-pleasing Hummingbird.

Throughout the show, Tweedy pretty much kept to himself.

Which is fine by me, and, I daresay, most of the sold-out house. After all, unless you're as naturally funny and entertaining as, say, a Jann Arden or Rufus Wainwright, what's the point?

As brilliant as Wilco were, I could have done with a little less of Cline's noise.

After listening to A Ghost Is Born, I knew what to expect. Clever, challenging pop. What I didn't expect was that pop could be this artfully musical.

JAM! Rating: 4.5 out of 5