TORONTO - It's been 10 years since Wilco's breakthrough, alt-country-defining album, Being There came out, and it seems like they haven't sat still for a minute of it.

The Chicago-based band has changed labels and nearly all its members over the years, while gradually mutated into a genre-defying guitar rock entity with elements of alternative folk and experimental noise-rock. Sometimes they even change styles back and forth in the same song.

At Wilco's sold-out Massey Hall show last night -- part of their first cross-Canada tour since 1997 -- the band showcased several new songs from their forthcoming album, expected next spring, along with a few old favourites. Each tune, however, was rejigged to suit their latest configuration -- original singer-guitarist Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt, plus avant-jazz guitarist Nels Cline (who occasionally played a mean lap steel), keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone.

Sometimes it's interesting to add guitar freakouts and keyboard rumbles to perfect pop songs, like the staccato attacks that break into dreamy riffs in So Misunderstood and At Least That's What You Said -- and sometimes you wonder why it's necessary. But Tweedy seems committed to the multi-guitar, and sometimes multi-keyboard approach, and at least no one can accuse him of stagnating.

It did take a while for the band to warm up to the crowd, though. They were a dozen songs into their set when Tweedy finally said hello, then apologized for not being more effusive. Later, he chastised the crowd for being too laid-back, then apologized again. As the show went on, he became much more relaxed and friendly, eventually persuading the entire audience to stand up and scream like non-Canadians during Kingpin, one of only two songs from Being There.

The set list relied heavily on the band's last two albums, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, including I'm The Man Who Loves You, Hesitating Beauty, Heavy Metal Drummer, Theologians, Hummingbird and Handshake Drugs. There was nothing from the first album, A.M., but they did reach back to Summerteeth for the sing-along Shot In The Arm and to the second Mermaid Avenue Woody Guthrie project for Airline To Heaven.

Interestingly, the new songs are generally more straightforward and poppy than those on the last two albums. Perhaps that signals a new direction for Tweedy; perhaps they'll change again before they're recorded. In any case, we'll be listening.