Of all the things one can do with one’s rock band—take it out on tour, put it on hiatus to start up a side project, break it up, reunite it, etc.—the tricky art of remaking a group is one reserved for only a rarified few. Mull it over for a minute: Unless you’re Radiohead, the Beatles, Neil Young or the like, bringing your band along for whatever creative joyride your impulses have currently hatched mathematically enhances the chances of killing it outright or rendering it completely irrelevant. Not many have pulled off the Houdini of complete metamorphosis without trapping themselves underwater in the effort.

All of which is precisely why the powers that be in Cleveland should be making plans today to set aside a locker in the Hall for those post-alt-country psychedelic legends-in-the-making called Wilco.

For those of you who haven’t been checking your mail this past year, Wilco is currently to alt-country what Robin Williams is to situation comedy (i.e., a zip code the band has left in the rearview mirror, a distant memory that its audience continues to invoke but otherwise appears to bore the group senseless). On the current leg of its U.S. tour supporting this year’s weirdo opus Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (a record that proved the undoing of Wilco 1.0, forcing the departures of multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett and drummer Ken Coomer while accelerating the divorce-in-progress with former “legacy-artist haven” Warner/Reprise), all can bear witness to the glory of Wilco 2.0 rising triumphantly from the ashes of its brush with a music-biz death. After buying back Yankee’s masters for a mere 50 large (and then completing the rock ‘n’ roll swindle by signing on with fellow AOL Time Warner imprint Nonesuch, thus peddling the same material to the same company twice), Wilco spiritual leader Jeff Tweedy has forged boldly ahead with his “difficult project” while fundamentally reshaping his group’s DNA.

The Wilco that touched down in Portland this evening was a band both loose of limb and serious of intent, determined to bury its ghosts but allow itself a few ironic yuks in the process. After a rollicking set from up-the-way neighbors the Minus 5 (whose forthcoming album, leader Scott McCaughey informed the audience, will be titled Down With Wilco), Wilco hit the stage to the creepy strains of the Willy Wonka track “Pure Imagination,” casting a dark light over the affair that never truly lifted as the band made its way through more than 20 songs covering the span between 1996’s Being There and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Back to my “remaking the band” theme: If you’re attempting to divine precisely what is intended with this phrase, look no further than the set’s first song. “Not For The Seasons” opened the evening with a flourish of prog and punk, equal parts Yes and Black Flag, this unreleased track locates percussion at the epicenter of the Wilco tornado, with new drummer Glenn Kotche swiveling this way and that, pounding mercilessly, filling effortlessly, playing a rack of bells with one hand and a series of cymbals and brushed percussion with the other. Over the top of this polyrhythmic anarchy floats the skronked-out fretwork of Tweedy, frequently departing from pitch and key with a flurry of “outside” notes only to return again before segueing altogether into the acoustic quietude of “Sunken Treasure.” It’s a breathless sequence, with Tweedy lost in the reverie of pure white noise before fluttering back down to earth.

Only a few short years ago, a chain-smoking Bennett would have bounded around the stage during this interlude in a bent-elbow display of epic guitar chops and attitude—part Replacements, part Cheap Trick and 100 percent rawk. Tonight, the four Wilco men occupy their own karmic slots, rarely venturing far from their marks, respectful of each other’s place in the scheme while nodding almost imperceptibly to one another as the songs change keys, frequencies and tempos. It really is a new Wilco up there tonight. There’s less billowing smoke, fewer half-drained drinks and a sense of purpose about the proceedings.

By the time the band makes its way through the chug-a-chug riff around which Yankee’s eerily prescient “War On War” is built, it’s clear that groove is in the heart for these guys now. Beats of various shapes and sizes emerge, subside and reappear again, with multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach stepping ably into Bennett’s shoes to provide the color and filigree at the edge while Tweedy fidgets center stage and bassist John Stirratt quietly holds down the bottom end. The members of Wilco have suddenly become rock ‘n’ roll pointillists, their sound deceptively smaller than before, more compact and narrower in scope but broader in reach and meaning.

Tweedy ends up playing an acoustic guitar for all but a few of the evening’s numbers, and yet the sonics are none the poorer for it. When the band reimagines the Spector-like walls of sound on Summerteeth’s “Shot In The Arm” and “She’s A Jar,” the compositions are shaded differently and feel more intimate and understandable than before. Tweedy’s closing line on the latter tune (“She begs me not to hit her”) is decidedly scarier than on record and lends his wounded-badger routine a dangerous edge that was previously missing. When he tells McCaughey to get off the stage after the latter begins to drunkenly pound along in time on some form of percussion, the crowd is left to wonder if Tweedy’s having a laugh or giving McCaughey a clue that there might be hell to pay backstage (a notion made more enigmatic when Tweedy later sarcastically points out that McCaughey was “certainly making some rock with that skillet back there”). I love that Wilco cares about its work; this, too, wasn’t always evident in previous incarnations of the band.

The beatfest continues apace when a ProTools-enhanced loop (a faintly glowing iMac is visible stage right; perhaps Wilco’s low-maintenance fifth Beatle?) undergirds Yankee’s roiling ode to summertime, “Heavy Metal Drummer,” before merging into a Sonic Youth-like reading of “I’m The Man Who Loves You.” After rapturous applause, the band threads its way through two sets of encores, with Tweedy strapping on a Fender Jazzmaster while chirpily lecturing the assembly that “we know a thing or two about rock.” Wilco then leans into favorites like “I Got You (End Of The Century)” and turns Mermaid Avenue number “California Stars” into an alt-rock hoedown, with McCaughey, Peter Buck and Rebecca Gates all crashing the stage for an epic Last Waltz-style ensemble number. One can’t help but notice that several thousand dollars worth of vintage guitars occupy a 10x10 space; in this respect, Wilco is the same as it ever was. But along its many other dimensions, the reconstruction of the group in the face of oblivion and Wilco’s emergence as one of the most unique voices among its contemporaries is a breathtaking sight to behold.

As Tweedy himself sings on “Shot In The Arm,” “What you once were isn’t what you want to be anymore.” The Wilco you thought you knew is dead; long live Wilco.