Philly loves you, Wilco. Would you please come see us more often?

Philadelphia loves Wilco. And Philadelphians would appreciate it if Wilco would stop bypassing the city on tour, and come around and see them more often.

But not to worry, Philly fans: Wilco is well aware of the way you feel.

“It’s nice to be in Philly,” bandleader Jeff Tweedy said in the break between “Sunken Treasure” and “Jesus, Etc.” during the band’s excellent and exhilarating 32-song, 2-hour-and-40-minutes-long, sold-out show at the Met Philly on Tuesday.

Then he paused, as if unsure whether he really wanted to say what he was about to say.

“Of all the cities in the world, this is the city that complains the most that we don’t come here,” he said.

“I’m sorry! I’m glad we’re here. I’m sorry we haven’t come here more. There are so many cities! We love your city. And if we haven’t been here enough, that’s on us. I’m sorry.”

Then he stated the obvious, and what really mattered most: “We’re here now.”

Truth be told, the Chicago band hasn’t been so horribly derelict in its duty to play Philadelphia. Some tours have bypassed the city, but they did play the Mann Center in 2021, and band members regularly bring their various solo endeavors through.

Nels Cline, the virtuosic and impeccably tasteful guitarist whose solo on “Impossible Germany” was — as ever — a showstopping centerpiece on Tuesday, does regular Ars Nova Workshop residencies at Solar Myth in South Philly.

Bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone’s Autumn Defense is playing Ardmore Music Hall — fittingly — this autumn. And Tweedy is coming to Union Transfer on Oct. 20.

But yes, Philadelphia could certainly use more Wilco in its life, and Tuesday’s show argued for that in many ways. It was billed as “An August Evening with Wilco,” and the important part of that designation is “an evening with” means no opening act. So an unhurried time was spent with the band whose A.M. debut is now three decades old.

The show was divided into two sets, surveying a long career during which Tweedy has been disciplined in following his muse wherever it takes him, whether that be the noisy blasts of distortion in “Via Chicago” or sweeter, more melodious excursions from 2007’s Sky Blue Sky.

That album — which gives its name to Wilco’s music festival in Riviera Maya in Mexico in January — was the night’s most-songs winner of all 13 Wilco albums with six.

They included the lovely “What Light,” showcasing intricate, intuitive but never showy guitar interplay between Tweedy, Cline, and Sansone.

And it also put the slimmed-down Tweedy’s “you be you” life advice in uncharacteristically direct language, offering “paint what you see” and “sing what you feel” tips to would-be artists. “Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong,” he sang.

The show took its time but never dragged. In the first set, Tweedy typically started a song by scratching out a melody with an acoustic guitar and his raspy voice, never a wide-ranging instrument but one that has held up well as Wilco aged into their position as lords of the Dad rock universe.

That opening set was expertly paced. The sextet, anchored by drummer Glenn Kotche and including keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen, added textural accents to “Evicted” from 2023’s Cousin and “Annihilation” from last year’s Hot Sun Cool Shroud EP.

The latter is a particularly Tweedyesque love song: “A kiss like this is endless tonight,” he sang. “This type of annihilation is alright.”

When Wilco arrived in 1995, they were pigeonholed as an alt-country band, emerging from Uncle Tupelo, the roots rock trio that Tweedy fronted with Jay Farrar. Tweedy spent a couple of decades distancing the band from that limiting label, pushing off into sometimes noisy, sometimes dreamy, often arty directions.

All those elements are present in the now 30-year-old Wilco, and warmly appreciated by its loving, mostly middle-aged audience. But while the band still plays with plenty of energy and likes to raise a ruckus in snappy songs like “Random Name Generator” and the crowd-pleasing “Heavy Metal Drummer,” they’re now at ease with resurfacing that country and folk strain.

On Tuesday, that meant two songs from Mermaid Avenue, the 1998 album in which Wilco and Billy Bragg put music to words by Woody Guthrie. There was the staple “California Stars” but also “Hesitating Beauty,” the lovely, affectionate bluegrass-flecked valentine Guthrie wrote for his daughter Nora.

A burst of songs from 2022’s Cruel Country reached to the band’s beginnings and also expressed fraught feelings about a nation where meanness runs amok.

“I love my country like a little boy, red, white, and blue,” Tweedy sang in the title cut. “I love my country like a little boy, stupid, and cruel.”

That circle back included two songs from A.M. The perfect power-pop of “Box Full of Letters” resonated in the here and now: “I wish I had a lot of answers / ‘Cause that’s the way it should be.”

And better still, was “It’s Just That Simple,” which Stirratt, the only band member with Tweedy from the beginning, took over lead vocals on a gorgeous expression of devotion as understated as its title implies.

The second set was shorter and tougher, highlighted by “Hate It Here,” a self-deprecating song about being barely able to function when your wife’s not around.

A high-energy flurry included “I’m the Man That Loves You” from 2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and an encore of “Monday” and “Outta Site (Outta Mind)” from 1996’s Being There.

That one-two punch left the crowd knocked out and in a euphoric mood, hopeful that the last words Tweedy spoke meant that they won’t have so much to complain about in the future: “See you soon.”