The Kills at Metro

In case you're a technophone (or rather, a techo-music-phobe), here's a band that uses drum machines but never sounds synthetic. The Kills are all about raw, powerful, grungy blues rock with a bit of a dance beat. The White Stripes and PJ Harvey filtered through an electronic grid. Or something like that. Whatever it is, I like it, especially when I see the Kills in concert, as I did last night (May 9) at Metro. It's just two musicians, singer/sometimes-guitarist Alison Mosshart and guitarist/sometimes-singer Jamie Hince. They play off each other like they're both grabbing an electrical wire and jumping back from the shocks.

I was unfamiliar with the opening act, Telepathe, which was more on the electronic-pop end of the spectrum. I enjoyed their set, though few of the melodies leapt out at me.

See my photos of the Kills and Telepathe.

Dead Meadow at Abbey Pub

It was a last-minute decision for me to see Dead Meadow last night (May 3). Good band. I've seen them once before, opening for Sleater-Kinney at the Riv, and I've been enjoying their recent album, Old Growth. Live, this trio delivers pretty much what you expect if you know their recordings: Drony, heavy, psychedelic rock, with lots of pounding drums and bass and long, spiraling guitar solos. I'm most familiar with the last couple of Dead Meadows records, and the songs from those sounded strong. Clearly, a lot of the fans at the Abbey Pub were eagerly waiting for the older songs that I don't know, and when Dead Meadow launched into some of those songs at the end of the show, they were met with enthusiastic applause.

See my photos of Dead Meadow.

Constantines and Oakley Hall

A belated concert report... I saw a double bill of the Constantines and Oakley Hall last week (April 24) at the Empty Bottle. It felt a little strange, since the first time I saw both of these bands was back on Jan. 15, 2005, when Oakley Hall was opening for the Constantines at, yep, you guessed it, the Empty Bottle. I loved both bands when I saw them in 2005, and I've expecting big things from both. Somehow, neither band has gained quite as large of a following yet as it deserves, but they were still going strong last week.

Still going strong in Oakley Hall's case meant playing with an incredibly shrinking lineup. I'm not sure what has happened, but Oakley Hall was down to just three musicians for its show at the Bottle, with guitarist-singer Pat Sullivan remarking that the group has been losing members as its tour goes on. Hopefully, that's just a temporary thing. Some of the Constantines supplemented the Oakley Hall lineup. The result was a less lush and more ragged version of Oakley Hall,, with Sullivan and Rachel Cox switching off on vocals and playing off each other's guitar lines. Oakley Hall is better with the full band, but this night brought the more aggressive elements of its songs into sharp focus. "Lazy Susan" sounded especially good.

The Constantines have an excellent new album out today, Kensington Heights, which pretty much offers more of what fans have come to expect from this Canadian band after its three previous records: Tough, tense, anthemic rock. The band put on a pretty solid show, although it was not until the last batch of four songs that the group really caught fire, whipping up a frenzy with its guitar riffs and concluding the night with a cover of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." My only disappointment was that the Constantines did not play my favorite song off the new album, "I Will Not Sing a Hateful Song."

See my photos of Oakley Hall and the Constantines.

Kelley Stoltz at Empty Bottle

I already raved here about Kelley Stoltz and his great (but too short) performance at SXSW, and his excellent new CD, Circular Sounds, so I won't go on and on again... but he put on another really good show last night (April 21) at the Empty Bottle. For my money, Stoltz is one of the best songwriters right now, and his live set was loose, good-natured and more rocking than you might expect. Stoltz's records show a various '60s and early '70s influences, but last night the influence I picked up the most was the Kinks, which is not a bad influence at all...

The set got a little shaggy at the end, with covers of the theme to "Midnight Cowboy," a Link Wray song and the Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing." It was all in good fun. I enjoyed the opening sets by the Syllable Section and Sharks and Seals, though I'll have to hear more of their music before forming an opinion about it. And it was so dark at the Bottle last night, I'm not going to bother posting my grainy shots of the opening bands.

See my photos of Kelley Stoltz.

Laurie Anderson at the Harris Theater

Laurie Anderson's in a category all her own. What exactly is she? Pop musician? Classical? Performance artist? Monologuist? Some combination of all those, I suppose. I saw her for the first time last night (April 16) in a Museum of Contemporary Art concert at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, and it was just as unusual of an experience as I expected.

On this tour, Anderson is performing a piece she calls "Homeland." Given her history of commenting through her music on the strangeness of the modern world, it's not surprising that she would be doing music and monologues now commenting on terrorism, war, security, insecurity, all of those peculiar things and moods that are in the air these days. Anderson's performance pieces are not exactly coherent, single works of art. They certainly don't stick to lyrical or music themes as consistently as, say, an opera. In a way, they're what used to be called concept albums. So last night, it felt mostly like Anderson was presenting a new set of songs, with a few common themes running through them.

Anderson's music sounds a little less electronic and little more classical than it did when she first became known in the 1980s, but there's still a certain '80s sensibility to the keyboard sounds and soft breathy electronic palette of her music. At a few points, Anderson and her trio of backing musicians sounded a lot like a Peter Gabriel record – or was that Peter Gabriel imitating Laurie Anderson back in the day? I'm not sure who influenced who more.

Anderson's never been a great writer of melodies, assuming that she has even tried. When she sang last night, the slight tunes were pleasant enough to carry the audience along, although we'd be hard-pressed to hum any of it afterward. When she spoke – sometimes in that altered voice that sounds male – Anderson delivered the evening's most memorable moments. She referred to the models on billboards as the "underwear gods" and imagined them descending onto the streets of New York. And in one bit that combined her humor and political insights, she acted out an archetypal scene from old Western movies – the man rushing into a tavern and exclaiming, "There's trouble at the mine!" – and turned it into a metaphor for the state of affairs in our country today.

See my photos of Laurie Anderson.

Caribou at Empty Bottle

Caribou's album from last year, Andorra, was a wonderfully trippy set of psychedelic songs. I love the layers of weird stuff going on in the background (or sometimes, foreground) of just about every track. I saw them live for the first time last night (April 11) at the Empty Bottle, and it was quite a show. The most notable thing was the drums. They were noticeable even before Caribou started playing, when the group set up its equipment in an unusual arrangement with two drum kits at the front of the stage. On one side, Caribou frontman Dan Snaith sang, played keyboards and guitar and periodically sat down at the drums for some incredibly driving double-drumming rave-ups. All the while, a projector was shining patterns on a sheet hanging behind the band, as well as the band itself. The combination of charged rhythms with psychedelic sounds was terrific (although the mix might have sounded better if I hadn't been standing so close to the drums).

The opening act, Fuck Buttons, played lively electronic music with a few real drum solos thrown on top. The music was decent enough to get you dancing, though it got to be monotonous after a while.

This was my first day shooting pictures with a new camera. See my photos of Caribou.

Bon Iver at Lakeshore Theater

The recent debut album by Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, is one of my favorites of the year so far. (And some may count it as one of the best of 2007, if they were lucky enough to get a copy of it when it first came out as a very limited release last year, before Secretly Canadian picked it up this year for a well-deserved re-release.) Bon Iver, a.k.a. Justin Vernon, came to Chicago on Thursday (April 10) for two sold-out shows at the Lakeshore Theater, a nice sit-down venue that used to be the Broadway movie theater years back. It was a perfect venue for the sorrowful, beautiful, largely acoustic music of Bon Iver. But while I was expecting that side of my music, I wasn't quite prepared for how much the songs would rock when Vernon and his two backing musicians cranked things up. Vernon sings in a falsetto filled with longing. His songs are a little bit folkie, but they remind me more of the acoustic ballads that a 1960s or '70s rocker might have recorded, with some melodic phrasing worthy of the great power-pop acts from those days.

Vernon sat down the whole show, switching between various guitars (most of them pretty old-looking), and when he'd played every song from his album, he told the audience that's all there was and left without an encore. In his between-song comments, he seemed genuinely appreciative of the warm reception he received.

The opening act, Josh Scott, also sang a lot of falsetto notes, aiming at times for Jeff Buckley territory. His vocal delivery was impressive, and most of his songs were pretty good. A few might have benefited from backing musicians and fuller arrangements. One thing I have to give this guy credit for is having a very winning and humorous personality. His dry remarks between the songs had the audience laughing pretty hard at times.

See my photos of Bon Iver and Josh Scott. (Thanks again to Kirstie Cat for loaning me her camera.

Tift Merritt at Schubas

I'm still getting to know the new album by Tift Merritt, Another Country, but my lack of familiarity with the new songs didn't detract at all from my enjoyment of the Merritt concert Friday (April 4) at Schubas. I loved her 2004 album Tambourine, and Friday's show featured plenty of the older songs. If anything, the new songs sounded livelier with the live backing from her band, with more of that Tambourine country-rock sound. Merritt deftly switched between guitar and piano, but of course her beautiful voice was the main attraction. (She's beautiful, too, which doesn't hurt – but how painful was it for me to watch her without a decent camera, thinking what lovely photos I could have taken.)

During the encore, the crowd hushed down for a really lovely moment when Merritt sang "Good Hearted Man" by herself on piano, transforming the soulful studio track, which features horns and backup singers, into a pensive and pretty ballad. Throughout the night, Merritt was charming whenever she spoke with the crowd, scoffing good-naturedly when some fans loudly whooped at the slightest guitar chord. She seems down to earth, someone who could become a huge star but who really enjoys playing before a small crowd at a place like Schubas. She's spent some time lately in France, and she closed with a song in French, "Mille Tendresses," leaving us all with our spirits lifted a little bit.

The opening band, the Everybodyfields, played a strong opening set of country rock with male and female harmonies, a perfect fit for the main set by Merritt.

Jens Lekman at Logan Square

Catching up on some recent concerts I saw... I decided at nearly the last minute to see Jens Lekman last Monday (March 31) at Logan Square Auditorium. Even though the show was supposedly sold out, some tickets were available when I checked Monday afternoon. I really like Lekman's early collection Oh You're So Silent Jens and some of his other recordings, but last year's album Night Falls Over Kortedala drifted too far into cheesy lounge-rock territory for my tastes. Still, I always hear such great things about his live show, so I decided it was worth seeing. And he did put on an awfully good show. Maybe having the string players live on stage keeps the cheesiness factor at a minimum. And Lekman has such a nice, quirky personality.

One of the opening acts was a strange Swede going under the name Honeydrips, who sang along with a laptop playing backing tracks. The dude strapped on Jens' guitar but never actually played it, and whenever one of the songs entered an instrumental passage, he just stood there, barely nodding his head in time to the music. It was funny for a while, sort of like an extended Andy Kaufman joke, but the shtick got old pretty fast. And the music was just OK.