'SKY'S NOT THE LIMIT L.A. GUITARIST NELS CLINE LENDS ECLECTIC STYLE TO WILCO.

Byline: FRED SHUSTER

>MUSIC WRITER

Among mainstream American rock bands, Wilco is more musically ambitious than most due to the addition of free-form jazz guitarist Nels Cline.

What's essentially a sleepy blend of country-informed guitar rock and ballads showcasing the plaintive voice of singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy is now something more intriguing.

As Wilco's sixth album, "Sky Blue Sky," makes evident, Cline's adventurous approach and background in improvised music lends a mercurial subtext to Tweedy's gently reflective songs. The band appears tonight at the Greek Theatre (and Thursday on NBC's "Tonight Show With Jay Leno").

"I like working with Wilco," says Cline, who's been a fixture on L.A.'s avant-garde music scene since the late '70s. "I don't feel like I'm pulling some sort of public relations scam when I say I'm uniformly proud of what I'm doing. I'm a band kind of a guy and I have room to do what I do best, whether it's answering the singer with my guitar or doing solos and parts. There's no grotesque dysfunction, no drama. It's a smooth-running band."

It wasn't always that way. Wilco rose from the ashes of alt-country mainstay Uncle Tupelo, which disbanded in 1994. In the years that followed, the band underwent numerous personnel changes, record company hassles, Tweedy's drug rehab and other mini-dramas.

But the music never suffered, and the mostly Chicago-based group won two Grammy Awards, including best alternative music album, for its fifth album, "A Ghost Is Born."

Critics have dubbed Wilco the "American Radiohead," while Rolling Stone called the band "one of America's most consistently interesting bands" and "America's foremost rock impressionists."

Shows on the current tour have drawn equal acclaim.

"Wilco has progressed nicely," said Mike Marrone, program director of satellite radio XM's The Loft (channel 50), which has 75 Wilco tracks, including live material, on its playlist. "Nels has the chops to help them embody the spirit of free-form jamming within a framework. You don't know what you're going to get when you see them."

Away from Wilco, Cline works on his own projects, such as the recent free-form Nels Cline Singers album. Over the past two decades, he's dabbled in relatively straight-ahead jazz (with Charlie Haden), avant-rock (Thurston Moore, Mike Watt) and roots (Carla Bozulich of Geraldine Fibbers). With percussionist Gregg Bendian, Cline even reinterpreted John Coltrane's monumental "Interstellar Space."

"The outside projects I do bring something back to the band," says Cline, whose recent case of chickenpox led Wilco to cancel a couple of shows. "I feel like the luckiest man alive. I'm doing quality work and having marvelous experiences. And I get to sell my own CDs on the Wilco merch table at the shows."

Fred Shuster [phone]

[e-mail]

WILCO

>Where: Greek Theatre, 2700 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles.

>When: 7:30 tonight.

>How much: $35 and $40.

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Well-known for his experimental guitar work on the L.A. independent music scene, Nels Cline, third from left, brings a definite contrast to the sound of Wilco.