Four and a half years have passed since the last time indie folk-rock band Ida played in Chicago. And the group hasn’t had a new record since Lovers Prayers, one of my favorite albums of 2008. But the trio was finally back in town Sunday (Jan. 29). One member, Elizabeth Mitchell, was playing a concert of children’s music early Sunday at the Old Town School of Folk Music, which led to an opportunity for Ida to play a free show in the evening at the Saki record store.

The members of Ida remarked that they’d barely had any time to prepare for the show, but they certainly didn’t skimp on playing a generous selection of songs for the 40 or so fans at Saki, performing for 90 minutes. It was a delightfully intimate show, showcasing the hushed harmonies of Mitchell, Daniel Littleon and Jean Cook. They played some of Ida’s best songs, along with covers of songs by Richard and Linda Thompson, the Band, Bill Monroe, the Minutemen, Michael Hurley and the Secret Stars. A former member of that last band, Geoff Farina, opened the show and joined Ida for a couple of songs. Jon Langford also sat in with Ida for one song. But the main attraction was seeing Mitchell, Littleon and Cook sitting together and quietly meshing their singing, guitar, harmonium and violin into lovers’ prayers.

This show was the latest in a series of performances at Saki recorded by Epitonic, so look for a recording of it to show up in the Epitonic Saki Sessions.

Geoff Farina

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra makes stirring, majestic rock music with a strong orchestral sound that rivals anything else today. Few bands deliver live performances as powerful as Silver Mt. Zion’s, and the ensemble proved its excellence once again with its show Saturday (Jan. 28) at Lincoln Hall. It wasn’t just the beautiful sound of those violins melding with the guitar, drums and upright bass to create epic peaks of sound — it was also the way all five of the musicians joined their voices together in otherworldly hymns.

The band (which includes members of the older and recently revived group Godspeed You! Black Emperor) played three new songs that carry on Silver Mt. Zion’s tradition of making long, dramatic pieces of music: “Take Away These Early Grave Blues,” “The State Itself Did Not Agree” and “What We Loved Is Not Enough.” That last song, along with another new one called “Psalms 99,” were for sale at the merch table in a limited-edition set of two 7-inchs — the songs are so long that each is split up into Parts 1 and 2 on these singles. Now there’s something you don’t see too often. Silver Mt. Zion played eight songs Saturday night. Few, if any, clocked in at less than 10 minutes, but every minute felt absolutely necessary.

Campbell bravely let the world know he had Alzheimer’s disease. And he announced he would make one final album (2011’s Ghost on the Canvas) and tour one last time. His “Goodbye” tour included two shows this week at the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet.

At the concert on Thursday evening (Jan. 25), Campbell never directly said anything about his illness or his imminent retirement from making music. It didn’t need to be said. You could sense the deference, love and admiration that Campbell’s backup musicians (including three of his children) and the audience of longtime fans felt for him. And Campbell kept saying how glad he was to be there and thanking everyone for showing up. That’s boilerplate stage banter you might hear from any musician, but it took on a whole different depth of emotion this time. Campbell seemed to be thanking all of the fans who had ever come to his concerts and bought his records, thanking them one last time while he still could. It was a sad occasion, but it was also a beautiful celebration of this man’s terrific career as a singer-guitarist who transcended genre boundaries and recorded some of the great songs of the ’60s and ’70s.

Campbell showed some of the effects of his illness and age, but he seemed remarkably sure of himself. It helped that he had such a good band playing behind him, and it must have been comforting for him to know that his children were there at his side. But he was still essentially standing alone out at the front of the stage, a 75-year-old man who’s losing his memory facing an auditorium full of people. It appeared that he was reading lyrics off three screens arrayed along the front of the stage — his need for the prompter was more obvious when he performed a few of his new songs than when he did the old standards. Whenever one of the new songs started, he would declare, “I like this song!”

Campbell seemed uncertain where to stand. He kept moving the microphone stand away from center stage, as if he were being drawn to the side for some reason. But when he sang one of the old songs, you could almost see the memory of those words and melodies clicking into place and bringing a smile to his face. His voice was a little weathered, but still strong and confident. At a few points — including the last note of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” — his voice ascended into a falsetto and hit a high, lovely “ooh.”

During “Galveston,” composer Jimmy Webb’s lyrics took on a new poignancy, as Campbell sang about being afraid of death: “Galveston, oh Galveston, I am so afraid of dying/Before I dry the tears she’s crying/Before I watch your sea birds flying in the sun/At Galveston, at Galveston.” As the song ended and the applause welled up, Campbell started playing the opening riff of “Galveston” all over again on his guitar — until his daughter, Ashley, interjected: “We just played that, Dad.”

Campbell spent much of the show with his blue Strat strapped over his neck, holding onto it for the moments when he would play a guitar solo. (He complained a couple of times about how heavy that guitar felt on his shoulders.) When those moments came, Campbell looked down at the neck of his guitar — and you had to wonder: Can a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease remember all those notes? Campbell hesitated a few times, but once his fingers started moving, they really moved, and the notes rang out loud and clear. All of the night’s guitar solos belonged to Campbell, and they offered plenty of proof of his skills.

At one point during the concert, Campbell apologized for playing something not quite right — whatever it was, it was a barely noticeable mistake. Campbell told the crowd, “Always remember this, friends: If you do it perfect, they’ll want it that way every time.” Wise words worth remembering from a great musician.

Glen Campbell finished the show with a lovely, wistful song from his new record, “A Better Place,” which he co-wrote with producer Julian Raymond. Campbell sang: “One thing I know/The world’s been good to me/A better place awaits, you’ll see.”

SET LIST: Gentle on My Mind / Galveston / By the Time I Get to Phoenix / Try a Little Kindness / Where’s the Playground Susie / Didn’t We / I Can’t Stop Loving You / True Grit / Lovesick Blues / Dueling Banjos / Hey Little One (sung by Ashley and Shannon Campbell) / Any Trouble / It’s Your Amazing Grace / Country Boy / The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress / Ghost on the Canvas / Wichita Lineman / Rhinestone Cowboy / Southern Nights / A Better Place

The Louisville singer-songwriter Cheyenne Marie Mize has performed with Will Oldham, and now she’s establishing a solo career of her own. Her introspective 2010 debut, Before Lately, had an intriguing mix of styles, and her adventurousness continues on the new EP, We Don’t Need. When Mize performed Wednesday (Jan. 25) at Schubas, she started off her set with the song that opens the EP, “Wishing Well,” which features little more than her singing and chanting to a drum beat. Throughout the rest of her set, she switched between guitar, keyboards and violin, while two other musicians (a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist) provide subtle backing but kept the songs sounding spare and direct.

The Montreal band Plants and Animals doesn’t easily fit into any of the typical rock genres. Their music has a bit of late ’60s/early ’70s hippie vibe, and there’s a tendency toward jamming, but they don’t sound to me like a jam band. Their 2008 record Parc Avenue is a strong set of songs with unusual turns that stick in your mind. Somehow, I completely missed their 2010 album La La Land until now, and now they’re on the verge of releasing another album, The End of It. They played at Schubas on Jan. 12, part of the bigger-than-ever Tomorrow Never Knows festival. The Parc Avenue songs were excellent in concert, and the new ones were promising.

The evening also featured opening sets by Canon Blue, Herman Dune and the local acoustic folk-rock trio Cloudbirds, who include former members of The M’s. (Cloudbirds are giving away their album online.)

Cloudbirds

Cloudbirds

Herman Dune

Herman Dune

Canon Blue

Canon Blue

1. BILL CALLAHAN: APOCALYPSE (Drag City) — Bill Callahan speaks as much as he sings. It’s as if he’s telling you something important in a private conversation. Something important, and yet cryptic. Afterward, you find yourself asking: Just what did he mean when he told me, “Hey, no more drovering”? This recording lets you play back the conversation, and the next time you hear it, it sounds as if he means something different than you’d thought before. The words become more and more musical with each listen, until the lines that seemed like monotone spoken word become indelible melodies. His sentences transform into songs, and the songs themselves seem to morph as they go along, dancing from one shape into another, trembling and buzzing as they go. A strange and singular masterpiece. dragcity.com

2. GILLIAN WELCH: THE HARROW & THE HARVEST (Acony) — Old-fashioned musical idioms — mountain folk songs and murder ballads — become timeless and somehow even contemporary when channeled through the intertwined voices and guitars of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Welch’s rustic tales of woe are as evocative as ever, and there’s no need to add effects or other instruments when the music is this perfect and beautiful. gillianwelch.com

3. THEE OH SEES: CARRION CRAWLER/THE DREAM (In the Red) — They turned it up to 11. Everything is cranked up to almost alarming levels of intensity on this California band’s newest record, with one rampaging garage rock tune after another. When Thee Oh Sees get into a groove and keep it going for a while, it pummels you into a trancelike submission. It all crackles with electricity, while the constant male-female harmonies emit a spooky, ethereal atmosphere. intheredrecords.com

4. BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY: WOLFROY GOES TO TOWN (Drag City) — The latest in a string of very, very good records by Will Oldham. No further proof was necessary that he’s a genius singer-songwriter, but here it is anyway. Gentle folk rock with a sense of stillness and introspection at its core, the music is punctuated with a few of Oldham’s typically shocking lyrics, as well as some beautiful harmonies with a spiritual air about them. The sacred and profane are both in abundance here. dragcity.com

5. TOM WAITS: BAD AS ME (Anti-) — So many of Tom Waits’ strengths as a storyteller, musical craftsman, songwriter and singer — yes, a singer! — are on display here. It’s a well-rounded collection of memorable new songs by one of the all-time greats, with poetic and funny turns of phrase, a little bit of the Spanish tinge, roadhouse rock ’n’ roll, wistful ballads, and even a touch of Waits’ early Beat-poet-hanging-out-at-the-bar vibe. On songs like the opening track, “Chicago,” Waits channels one of the great American musical genres, the blues, into a dark, churning form that’s all his own. And when he breaks out into a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” at the end of the album — well, haven’t we all been waiting years for him to do that? tomwaits.com

6. YUCK: YUCK (Fat Possum) — So they sound like some other band. Or a bunch of other bands. So what? Who doesn’t sound like someone else? Influences and resemblances don’t matter as much as whether the songs stand up on their own. And Yuck’s songs were among the year’s catchiest, filled with wonderfully loopy guitar riffs and power-pop choruses. What an enjoyable listen this album is. myspace.com/yuckband

7. P.J. HARVEY: LET ENGLAND SHAKE (Vagrant) — The always-inventive P.J. Harvey did something novel on her latest record: She sampled. Not the sort of sampling heard in hip-hop, but borrowing some unexpected musical elements. A xylophone melody lifted from the old novelty tune “Istanbul (Not Constantinople.” Some Russian folk lyrics. A line from Eddie Cochrane’s “Summertime Blues” (“I’m going to take my problem to the United Nations”). A bugle call grafted onto one of Harvey’s songs, sounding at first like it’s jarringly in the wrong key and out of tempo with the song, but then gradually defying logic and seeming like an indispensible part of the track. These mash-ups seemed to inspire Harvey to make one of her most diverse and unusual sets of songs, with a lyrical point of view that’s both expansive and introspective. pjharvey.net

8. MICKEY: ROCK ’N ROLL DREAMER (HoZac) — Garage rock was hot in 2011, especially in Chicago, where the HoZac record label is the center of an exciting scene. One of the bands in this scene, Mickey, plays fun but frequently sloppy live shows, filled with drunken energy. The band tamed that rambunctious recklessness just enough to let the strength of its songs shine through on this debut studio album, which sounds like a lost classic of the ’70s era of proto-punk and glam. Long live rock ’n’ roll dreamers! hozacrecords.com

9. CHARLES BRADLEY: NO TIME FOR DREAMING (Dunham/Daptone) — Charles Bradley’s bio was one of the year’s most moving stories, and he had a terrific debut album to match — a debut album he recorded at the age of 62. Like Sharon Jones before him, Bradley is a soul singer who performed for decades without getting much attention until being discovered by the folks at the Daptone label. The songs are inspired by the frustrations and tragedies Bradley has dealt with in his life, including the murder of his brother, and they sound like classic ’60s soul. Despite the retro sound, the record is a searing and powerful statement on today’s America, a plea for a better world delivered with passion by a man who really, really means it. thecharlesbradley.com

10. RADIOHEAD: THE KING OF LIMBS (TBD) — Radiohead carries on with its transformation, heading further in the direction of experimental and ambient art rock … and yet, underneath all of the pulsing sonic haze, the band is still making songs that stick with you. Somehow, Radiohead manages to sound chilled-out and twitchy at the same time, and the results are consistently intriguing, whether you’re dancing or supine as you listen. radiohead.com

11. The Feelies: Here Before (Bar None)
12. Sam Phillips: Cameras in the Sky (self-released)
13. Wild Flag: Wild Flag (Sub Pop)
14. Wussy: Strawberry (Shake It)
15. Mekons: Ancient & Modern: 1911-2011 (Sin/Bloodshot)
16. Drive-By Truckers: Go-Go Boots (ATO)
17. Wilco: The Whole Love (dBpm/Anti-)
18. Chad VanGaalen: Diaper Island (Sub Pop)
19. Cults: Cults (Itno)
20. Cave: Neverendless (Drag City)
21. Low: C’mon (Sub Pop)
22. Cass McCombs: Wit’s End (Domino)
23. Woods: Sun and Shade (Woodsist)
24. John Luther Adams (performed by Stephen Drury, Scott Deal and the Callithumpian Consort): Four Thousand Holes (Cold Blue Music)
25. St. Vincent: Strange Mercy (4AD)
26. The Skull Defekts: Peer Amid (Thrill Jockey)
27. Lyyke Li: Wounded Ryhmes (Atlantic)
28. I Was A King: Old Friends (Sounds Familyre)
29. Tinariwen: Tassili (Anti-)
30. Eleventh Dream Day: Riot Now! (Thrill Jockey)
31. Heavy Times: Heavy Times (HoZac)
32. Marissa Nadler: Marissa Nadler (Box of Cedar)
33. Fungi Girls: Some Easy Magic (HoZac)
34. My Brightest Diamond: All Things Will Unwind (Asthmatic Kitty)
35. The Go! Team: Rolling Blackouts (Memphis Industries)
36. Mannequin Men: Mannequin Men (Addenda)
37. Raphael Saadiq: Stone Rollin’ (Columbia)
38. The Singleman Affair: Silhouettes at Dawn (Cardboard Sangria)
39. A.A. Bondy: Believers (Fat Possum)
40. Bodies of Water: Twist Again (Secretly Canadian)
41. yMusic: Beautiful Mechanical (New Amsterdam)
42. The People’s Temple: Sons of Stone (HoZac)
43. Boston Spaceships: Let It Beard (Guided By Voices)
44. NRBQ: Keep This Love Goin’ (Clang!)
45. Girls: Father, Son, Holy Ghost (True Panther)
46. White Hills: H-p1 (Thrill Jockey)
47. Tune-Yards: Whokill (4AD)
48. Disappears: Guider (Kranky)
49. Nick Lowe: That Old Magic (Yep Roc)
50. Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)

1. ALABAMA SHAKES (Dec. 15 at Hideout). “Wow, did Alabama Shakes live up to the hype. This was the most joyous, energetic and lively musical performance I’ve seen in 2011, and a Hideout crowded with enthusiastic fans was the perfect place to see and hear Alabama Shakes. … The crowd was shouting for more at the end — even if it meant playing some of the same songs over again.” (Original blog post and more photos.)

2. CHARLES BRADLEY (Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements festival Sept. 17). “Some of his soul shouts gave me chills. … His feelings clearly came out of real experience as he belted the chorus, ‘Why is it so hard to make it in America?’ As the curtain closed on the stage, Bradley jumped down and hugged everyone he could.” (Original blog post and more photos.)

3. THEE OH SEES (Nov. 23 at Empty Bottle). “Somehow, Thee Oh Sees manage to make everything sound like it’s turned up and sped up a notch beyond expectations. … The fantastic, charged music of Thee Oh Sees … sent the crowd into a writhing frenzy.” (Original blog post and more photos.)

4. WILD FLAG (Oct. 9 at Empty Bottle). This was the second time I’d seen Wild Flag perform in 2011, following a July 23 set during Wicker Park Fest. That was a great set, but the four members of Wild Flag were really on fire on the second night of their fall return to Chicago, lifting their songs to another level as they jammed out with joyous abandon.

5. GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR (March 26-27 at Metro). “The eight musicians … said barely a word to the audience over the course of the last two nights, concentrating intently on their dark, brooding and apocalyptic music. … The visual accompaniment added to the sense that these ‘songs’ (if that’s even the right word) tell stories, despite the lack of lyrics. And no singing was necessary to convey emotion, either. It was music capable of raising goosebumps.” (Original blog post and more photos.)

6. ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS (May 15 at Chicago Theatre). “It was truly a ‘show,’ not just a typical concert. Reviving a gimmick he featured in a 1980s tour, Costello gave audience members a chance to come up on stage and spin the big wheel, which had about 40 songs or ‘jackpot’ slots on it … Costello put on a top hat and grabbed a cane … (and) guided Sunday’s audience through a diverse set of songs…” (Original blog post.)

7. MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND WITH THE CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Aug. 8 at Millennium Park). “How beautiful it was to hear the concert begin with the opening notes of ‘Dragonfly’ from My Brightest Diamond’s 2006 debut album, Bring Me the Workhorse — those swooping, sweeping violins. The concert was filled with terrific moments like that…” (Original blog post and more photos.)

8. SKULL DEFEKTS (March 31 at Hideout). “With his gray beard, (Daniel) Higgs resembled an Old Testament character or a crew member of an old whaling vessel as he commanded the stage Thursday with his unrestrained vocals. The rest of Skull Defekts — two drummers and two guitarists — never let up with their jagged punk-garage riffs.” (Original blog post and more photos.)

9. WILCO (Dec. 13 at Riviera). “This is one exceptional group of musicians, seemingly capable of playing anything. … It felt like the band could play until morning…” (Original blog post.)

10. RICHARD THOMPSON (Sept. 12 at Evanston Space). “As always, Thompson made his guitar sing, often sounding like an entire band — or two or three guitars, anyway. … The dark, quiet songs were especially haunting…” (Original blog post.)

Honorable mentions:
Bill Callahan (Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements Sept. 16)
The Flaming Lips (July 7 at Aragon)
Le Butcherettes (Nov. 4 at Subterranean)
Neil Young and Bert Hansch (May 6 at the Chicago Theatre)
M. Ward (Dec. 4 at Schubas)
NRBQ (Aug. 27 at FitzGerald’s)
Drive-By Truckers (Feb. 26 at Vic)
Gillian Welch (July 22 at the Vic)
Tune-Yards (Pitchfork Music Festival July 15 at Union Park)
Mavis Staples (Hideout Block Party Sept. 24 at Hideout)
Screaming Females (Tomorrow Never Knows festival Jan. 14 at Lincoln Hall)
Soul Train 40th anniversary concert with the Chi-Lites, the Emotions, the Impressions, Jerry “The Iceman” Butler (Sept. 5 at Millennium Park)