During his July 25 concert at Millennium Park, Ted Leo gave the audience some good advice about what to do later that night: Go see Cass McCombs at the Hideout. McCombs has developed into a songwriter of great subtlety and artistry over the past several years, and his latest album, Wit’s End, is a beautiful collection of soft, sometimes whispered ballads with intricate arrangements. McCombs seems to be taking inspiration from the classic American Songbook style of songwriting as much as he is from the chamber pop music of bands such as the Zombies.
Last week at the Hideout, McCombs and his band played these songs and older tunes with a loose, at times apparently improvisational feel, creating the sensation that they were sculpting each song on the spot. Playing a bit like a jazz combo, the musicians took turns soloing during some of the songs. McCombs sang most of the songs with a light touch, softly hitting the high notes with just a touch of vibrato in his falsetto. The lights were set on dim — which was not helpful with my efforts to take photographs, but did fit the music’s late-night vibe. After starting out quietly, the 90-minute set stretched out into country and folk rock and then more rocking jams. It all wrapped up at a pretty late hour for a Monday night — just past 1 a.m. — but it was dreamy rather than sleepy. myspace.com/cassmccombs http://cassmccombs.com
The opening act, Lower Dens, is the new band led by singer-songwriter Jana Hunter, and the group played a cool set to start out the evening, climaxing with some music that had a strong Krautrock pulse. myspace.com/lowerdens http://lowerdens.com
Millennium Park’s Monday-night rock concert series, “Downtown Sound,” wrapped up on July 25 with a show by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists — but it’s hardly the end of this summer’s music at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. The “Made in Chicago” jazz series begins Thursday, while the “Lunchbreak Music Series” and Grant Park Music Festival continue. And Monday nights will shift to the “Dusk Variations” theme next week — experimental classical music mixed with electronica, folk, rock and the avant-garde — including a must-see performance Aug. 8 by My Brightest Diamond. Check out the schedules here.
Like some of the other concerts at Pritzker, Monday’s featured a somewhat odd pairing of headline band and opening act. Ted Leo is a real rocker, while opener Rachel Ries is more of a troubadour type. Pritzker’s concert bookings can make for some unusual contrasts, but it’s rather cool to see this sort of diversity on the same stage in the same night. Ries (until recently, a Chicago resident) played a nice set of folk rock songs with a jazzy tinge. And then Leo and his Pharmacists treated the crowd to a complete performance of his first album from a decade ago, The Tyranny of Distance, preceded by several songs from his other records. Leo was playing with an injured knee, and he apologized for not being to jump around quite as much as usual, but it didn’t stop him from singing and playing those guitar chords with sweaty vigor.
As I said last month, the Illinois Centennial Monument in Logan Square is a pretty cool place to see a concert. The Empty Bottle’s series of free concerts at this lovely little picnic spot continued Sunday (July 24) with the great psychedelic garage rock band, Thee Oh Sees. Like last year’s show at Lincoln Hall, this one featured one catchy riff after another as well as some longer jams — and this time, the band had two drummers. The band played right in front of Logan Square’s tall monument with the eagle on top, and fans climbed into every available space around Thee Oh Sees, dancing and singing along. myspace.com/ohsees
The well-chosen opening act was Chicago band Football, which includes members of various other local bands such as the Ponys, Baseball Furies, Hot Machines, Tight Phantomz, France Has the Bomb and A/V Murder. The guys were all wearing white Indian-style outfits (apparently purchased on Devon Avenue, if I heard right), and they sang indecipherable but head-bopping songs for 20 or 30 minutes, stomping and leaping with glee. Football’s facebook page
A band with two members of the late, great Sleater-Kinney (Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss)? Plus Mary Timony of Helium and Rebecca Cole of Minders? Where do I sign up? This was definitely a band I wanted to hear, and it’s understandable why their forthcoming debut is one of the year’s most anticipated albums — among us indie-rock fans, anyway. Wild Flag delivered on the promise Saturday night (July 23) with a headlining set of top-notch rock ‘n’ roll at Wicker Park Fest, playing what must be all of their songs with the same sort of energy and excitement I came to expect from Sleater-Kinney. And then they closed out the night with an encore consisting of two covers: the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden” and Patti Smith’s “Ask the Angels.” That one broke down midsong, as Timony and Cole veered off into two different keys. The band stopped. Brownstein said, “Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t perfect. I don’t give a shit.” And then, after Brownstein acted out a scene of encouragement, channeling the coach on “Friday Night Lights,” the band played the song over again — sounding even more raw, but this time, in tune.
It’s hard to believe it had been seven years since the last Gillian Welch concert in Chicago. Playing Friday night (July 22) at the Vic, Gillian Welch and her indispensable partner, David Rawlings, picked up right where they left off: beautiful songs with subtle harmonies and head-spinning guitar solos. Welch writes that sort of lyrics that strike you anew with their poetry and truth as you hear them sung in concert, even if you’ve heard them a hundred times before.
As the doors to the concert hall opened and fans began filing in, I noticed Welch walking on the sidewalk in front of the Vic. No one else seemed to notice she was right there. Onstage, her persona was not shy, exactly — but she seems modest, humble and matter-of-fact. “We may not look excited, but we’re really very excited,” Welch remarked at one point. Rawlings frequently won midsong bursts of applause for all those long runs of notes he pulled out of his guitar with what seemed like no effort at all. This is truly a duo, not a solo singer-songwriter act — the duo of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, who perform under the name Gillian Welch.
The showiest Welch herself got all night was during “Six White Horses,” which she introduced semi-apologetically, explaining that it was recorded in the studio without much thought as to how the performance would look onstage. Here’s how it looked: Welch played the rhythm by slapping her hands on her thighs and clapping … and she even did a little dance during one part of the song, using her boots like tap shoes. It sounded remarkably close to the studio recording — and it was quite fun to watch, winning Welch one of the evening’s most enthusiastic rounds of applause.
Welch played all 10 of the songs from her excellent new album, The Harrow & the Harvest, which is one of the year’s best. After a lively version of the 2003 song “Wrecking Ball” — second time Welch and Rawlings had played the song so far on this tour — Rawlings said, “I think we’ll do you one better and play you one we haven’t played on this tour at all. I feel like we’re in friendly territory.” That was the intro to “My Morphine,” a classic song from Welch’s 1998 album Hell Among the Yearlings. Welch’s songs tend to be sad, but that one is among the darkest of all. The crowd loved it. Afterward, Welch remarked, “I figured most of you guys didn’t come to hear happy songs, so what the hell.”
The applause at the end of the night was loud, enthusiastic and sustained. Welch and Rawlings rewarded the crowd with two encores, including a cover of the country classic “Jackson” and finishing on a perfect note with “I’ll Fly Away.”
SET LIST: Scarlet Town / Elvis Presley Blues / My First Lover / The Way It Goes / Annabelle / The Way It Will Be / Wrecking Ball / My Morphine / Hard Times / Red Clay Halo / SET BREAK / No One Knows My Name / Tennessee / Silver Dagger / Miss Ohio / Six White Horses / Sweet Tooth (Dave Rawlings Machine song) / Dark Turn of Mind / Revelator / ENCORE 1: Down Along the Dixie Line / Jackson / ENCORE 2: The Way the Whole Thing Ends / I’ll Fly Away
One last gallery of photos from the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival.
Neko Case Julianna Barwick Woods No Age Zola Jesus Fleet Foxes The Fresh & Onlys Yuck OFWGKTA audience OFWGKTA audience EMA Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti Superchunk Tune-Yards Deerhunter Thurston Moore Cut Copy HEALTH Street musician Jeff Austin, outside the park Gil Scott-Heron cut-out artwork
The big story of the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival was Sunday’s performance by the hip-hop group Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (also known as Odd Future or OFWGKTA). Pitchfork’s decision to book this outfit sparked controversy, since Odd Future’s lyrics are pretty much a nonstop barrage of misogyny and violence. But hey, it’s got a good beat, right? During its midafternoon show, Odd Future delivered exactly what its fans were hoping for and its critics were lamenting. Band members jumped off the stage into the arms (or onto the heads) of their fans in the mosh pit … who were lifting their middle fingers into the air and crowd-surfing with reckless abandon. One person after another got pulled out of the crowd by the security staff (and kudos to those guys for dealing so well with a difficult and potentially dangerous situation). The audience sang and rapped along with a good many swear words and chants about killing police and causing various other sorts of mayhem. Most of the crowd seemed to be having a great time (although there must’ve been some people unhappy about getting crushed), and it’s doubtful many of them will go out today and do any of the bad stuff Odd Future was singing about. It all made for an exciting spectacle, but if you paused for two seconds to think about the foul lyrics, it was also unsettling.
Odd Future grabbed the most attention on Sunday, but the musical highlights for me were the Fresh & Onlys, Yuck, Kurt Vile and the Violators, Superchunk, Deerhunter, HEALTH and TV on the Radio. As for the other bands, I either didn’t hear enough to weigh in with much of an opinion (see: Darkstar, How to Dress Well, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti) or it just wasn’t my cup of tea (see: Baths, Toro Y Moi, Cut Copy).
HEALTH
For that matter, I must confess that I was able to catch only a couple of songs by HEALTH before I had to hurry over to the line for the TV on the Radio photo pit, so I can’t really review that set, but what I did see was damn impressive, full of energy and creativity.
Yuck
I’ve seen some folks remarking that Yuck’s performance fell flat for them, but I loved hearing the loopy guitar riffs and catchy vocal melodies from Yuck’s self-titled debut album (one of the year’s best) lifting up into the hot summer air. The band is still a little bit lacking as far as looking engaged onstage, but they’ve loosened up a bit since they played at Lincoln Hall this spring.
Superchunk
Superchunk was in no need of loosening up — when they played last year at the Taste of Randolph, singer-guitarist Mac McCaughan bounced around and jumped all night. He was at it again at Pitchfork, and if anything, bassist Laura Ballance was even more jumpy as the band cheerfully pounded out one great power-pop tune after another.
Kurt Vile and the Violators
Kurt Vile can sound like a folk-rocker, with some touches of Bob Dylan in the way he writes and sings, but when he’s backed by his band, the Violators, the music has more of a droning, almost garage-rock edge to it, and that blend sounded wonderful Sunday afternoon, as the wind whipped around Vile’s long mane of brown hair.
Deerhunter
Deerhunter also delivered a solid performance (some of which I missed, alas). The band seems to be getting even better than it was when it made its debut at Pitchfork a few years ago, and the songs from last year’s Halcyon Digest album rang out strong and clear.
Jeff Austin
Before the headline shows each night of the festival, photographers were required to line up near the press entrance on the northwest corner of the park. On Saturday, around the corner from where we were standing, I heard a drummer on the sidewalk, just out of view, playing some jumping, jazzy rhythms. On Sunday night, he was playing outside the park again, but this time I got a chance to see him and drop a dollar in his basket. His name’s Jeff Austin, and his talent and inventiveness as a drummer were immediately clear. “You should be playing in there,” I told him, pointing to the park. “I’m working on it,” he said.
TV on the Radio
TV on the Radio fit the profile for a Pitchfork Fest headliner: a band with lots of critical cred as well as a big fan base. The group’s most recent album, Nine Types of Light, is somewhat lackluster, but the band still sounded vibrant in concert Sunday night, especially when it stuck with the bolder and more uptempo songs from earlier records. “Wolf Like Me” got the crowd moving and singing along, as you’d expect, and then the Pitchfork fans responded enthusiastically when TV on the Radio offered an unexpected cover of Fugazi’s “Waiting Room.” As one of today’s bands paid tribute to an older generation, it felt like a fitting end to another Pitchfork Music Festival.
My photos from Day Three of the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago’s Union Park (Sunday, July 17).
The Fresh & Onlys The Fresh & Onlys The Fresh & Onlys Darkstar Yuck Yuck Yuck Yuck How to Dress Well How to Dress Well Kurt Vile and the Violators Kurt Vile and the Violators Kurt Vile and the Violators OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA OFWGKTA Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti Baths Superchunk Superchunk Superchunk Superchunk Superchunk Deerhunter Deerhunter Deerhunter Deerhunter Toro Y Moi Cut Copy Cut Copy Cut Copy HEALTH HEALTH HEALTH HEALTH TV on the Radio TV on the Radio TV on the Radio
The 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival ran the musical gamut — from the softest and prettiest music to the loudest and most aggressive. And sometimes, the contrasting musical styles could be heard simultaneously, thanks to the sound bleed of noise from one stage wafting through the hot summer air to the other end of the park.
Julianna Barwick
As the day began, the hip-hop of Crissy Murderbot and MC Zulu intruded on the lovely harmonies of one-woman choir Julianna Barwick. Thankfully, if you were close enough to the “Green” stage, Barwick’s sublime voice overpowered everything else, as she used looping to build so many layers of vocals — it was hard to tell at time if it was four parts of harmony or 25. It was a beautiful benediction of sorts to begin the day with.
Woods
Other highlights Saturday included the early-afternoon set by Woods, who have released three strong albums in as many years. The latest record, Sun and Shade, features a few longer jams and even some Krautrock-style beats — and the band offered up all of that during its Pitchfork performance. Singer-guitarist Jeremy Earl sounded vulnerable with his appealingly warbly falsetto, while G. Lucas Crane, as usual, sang into a headset and manipulated sounds from tapes to add psychedelic touches to the mix. (It’s hard to tell exactly what he is doing or contributing to the band just from watching him, but he seems to be a key player in making it all work.) Woods’ folkier songs sounded nice, but the bigger jams were the best, with the guitar/tape/whatever solos shimmering out across the park.
No Age’s pummeling punk rock (also using some tape effects) got the audience at the “Red” stage revved up — lots of people seemed to be throwing their water instead of drinking it.
Off!
Also on the noisy end of the Pitchfork spectrum, the band Off! (a sort of punk-rock supergroup with members from the Circle Jerks, Burning Brides, Red Kross and Rocket From the Crypt) played punk of a more old-school variety — you could actually hear some melodies hidden inside the growls — generating a similarly raucous response, including some crowd surfing. As singer Keith Morris remarked before the set, “We are going to bring a different flavor to the party.”
Destroyer
The band Destroyer inspires either love or hate reactions, and that was true of its set Saturday at Pitchfork. I like Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar’s contributions to the New Pornographers well enough, but his nasal, affected vocals put me off. Bejar’s fans insist there’s some real genius in his songwriting, but I’m just not hearing it. And Destroyer’s latest incarnation, with lots of soft-rock trumpet and sax, was particularly annoying.
The Dismemberment Plan
The reunited Dismemberment Plan was buoyant, practically giddy, during its set. The guys certainly looked like they were having a good time playing their old songs. When they stuck with the more straightforward post-punk rock, with clean guitar lines, it sounded pretty good, too. The band’s forays into hip-hop and dance music were less successful.
Zola Jesus
I was peripatetic at Pitchfork on Saturday, running from one stage to the next and trying to get photos of everyone. I wish I’d seen more of the set by Zola Jesus, who completely dominated her stage. When I saw her two years ago at the Wire Fest at the Empty Bottle, she was an intense performer, but much more contained. (Here’s a photo of her from that show.) This time, she was striding the stage in a outlandishly frilly dress and singing with force.
DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow began his set by climbing into a giant golf ball and then staying inside it for a good 20 minutes or so, with nothing apparently happening on the stage… just a scintillating musical mash emanating from inside the ball. At least, we think it was emanating from inside the ball. The problem was that he was scheduled to play at an hour when the sun was still up, so the video projections onto the sphere were almost completely invisible. After a while, the ball spun around, revealing an opening on the other side, where DJ Shadow was sitting with his equipment. He asked if anyone had been able to see any of the projections, seeming disappointed that the environment wasn’t working for the show he’d planned. He continued to play an inventive mix, but the lack of visuals was a big minus.
Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes turned out to be an excellent act to finish the night. They’re a pretty mellow band for that headlining spot, but their smartly composed folk rock and art-rock suites had a lively, spry feel, and the audience clearly included a lot of people intimately familiar with these songs. Cigarette lighters were lofted. Up-raised hands swayed. Some people even danced. On their second album, Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes has gone almost baroque with complexity on some of its songs, and the band’s interplay on mostly acoustic instruments was as dead-on as the vocal harmonizing. A little too mainstream for Pitchfork? Maybe, but the music was some of the best heard all day.
My photos from Day Two (Saturday, July 16) of the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago’s Union Park.
Julianna Barwick Chrissy Murderbot featuring MC Zulu Woods Woods Woods Sun Airway Sun Airway Sun Airway Cold Cave Cold Cave G-Side No Age No Age Wild Nothing Wild Nothing Gang Gang Dance Gang Gang Dance Gang Gang Dance Gang Gang Dance Gang Gang Dance Off! Off! Off! Off! Off! Destroyer Destroyer The Dismemberment Plan The Dismemberment Plan The Dismemberment Plan The Dismemberment Plan The Dismemberment Plan DJ Shadow DJ Shadow Zola Jesus Zola Jesus Zola Jesus Zola Jesus Zola Jesus Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes
This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival includes some reruns from previous year’s editions — such as Friday’s headliner, Animal Collective — as well as the usual smattering of new acts that have received the Pitchfork website’s stamp of approval. It’s a reasonably diverse lineup and considerably more interesting than what’s coming up later this summer at the other big summer fest in Chicago, Lollapalooza.
EMA
In some previous years, the fest’s first day featured a theme, such as bands performing albums in their entirety or playing songs requested online by fans. This time, it was just a Friday full of music, with the show starting mid-afternoon. EMA (aka Erika M. Anderson, former member of the Gowns) got things off to a good start with her band’s set, which built from quiet verses to louder moments — not loud choruses or solos, so much as instrumental passages when the volume of the guitars and violin and drums went up, with Anderson showing a wakening sense of urgency, lifting up her guitar or kicking. For her last song, “California,” she put down her guitar and chanted to the crowd, almost like Velvet Underground-style spoken word, to dark, doomy string accompaniment. It was an odd mismatch with the rest of EMA’s music.
Tune-Yards
Tune-Yards (aka Merrill Garbus) was one of the day’s highlights, agilely reconstructing the complex, quirky layers of her studio recordings with assistance from three backup musicians, some looping pedals, a ukulele and her strong, brassy voice. Her latest album, W H O K I L L, has been praised by some critics as one of the year’s best records. As a live act, Garbus seemed like she was having a lot of fun. Making that complicated music wasn’t work for her — just a cool game. Her face often took on the intense look of someone screaming in anger, but then she would flash a disarming smile. And when the clattering percussion cut out in some passages, allowing her voice to come through almost a cappella, you could feel its strength.
In one of the scheduling conflicts that can drive music fans crazy, Tune-Yards was playing at the same time as Battles was across the park; I caught some of each set. Battles seems to have survived the departure of its multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Tyondai Braxton just fine. The emphasis was still on tricky time signatures, a sort of indie-rock version of math rock.
Thurston Moore
Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who recently released a mostly acoustic and mostly mellow album, Demolished Thoughts, played a, yes, acoustic and mellow set of his solo music. “You guys want to hear songs about rape, incest and carnage?” he asked sarcastically just before playing alongside a harp and a violinist. “We’ll do the best we can.” If anything, Moore’s set was a little too lulling for the festival scene, but it’s a fascinating musical exercise to hear the sort of droning chords and alternate tunings he plays with Sonic Youth with all of the noise stripped away. Some of the songs feature just a small smattering of vocals, more like haiku than typical rock lyrics.
Guided By Voices
The reunited “classic” lineup of Guided By Voices — that is, to say, the version of the band that played on classic records such as Bee Thousand — played a set of greatest hits mostly from that era. Neko Case joined the band on harmony vocals on the first song of the set, “Echos Myron.” Robert Pollard already seemed to be fairly sloshed as the band began playing — although I heard another GBV fan remark that he seemed less drunk than usual. Either way, he was right on target with his singing of all those fantastic lyrics, even if he wasn’t at his sharpest with the kicks and jumps and microphone twirls. This lineup of GBV is apparently going back into retirement soon, but Pollard continues to be prolific with solo albums and other projects. And it will be a surprise if GBV doesn’t surface again in some form. Friday’s made a good case for keeping the band going until the end of the universe.
Neko Case
With her usual casual and unassuming air, Neko Case beautifully sang a strong set of songs, mostly drawn from her last couple of albums, plus a couple of new ones. Judging from that evidence, it doesn’t sound as if she’s going to make any dramatic change in her style of music on her next record — which is perfectly fine, considering how staggeringly great her last couple of albums have been, proving that she’s not just a fabulous singer but also a true poet of musical and lyrical form. Case’s band and harmony vocalist Kelly Hogan know exactly how to provide the perfect accompaniment for her. It was not only a joy to hear Case’s and Hogan’s voices blending, but also the way Jon Rauhouse’s pedal steel guitar sounds like a plaintive human cry, a third voice entering into the harmony.
Animal Collective
And then came the headliner, Animal Collective. This band has played some interesting music over the years, and its 2008 performance at Pitchfork wasn’t bad. As I noted back then: “Nice trance vibe, though I wish it had taken off into higher realms.” This year, Animal Collective’s attempts at creating a trippy ambience just fell flat. The psychedelic visuals on the big video screens failed to distract from the fact that the songs had taken on an almost grating edge.
My photos from the first day of the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago’s Union Park (Friday, July 15).
EMA EMA EMA EMA EMA EMA EMA Tune-Yards Tune-Yards Tune-Yards Tune-Yards Tune-Yards Tune-Yards Tune-Yards Battles Thurston Moore Thurston Moore Thurston Moore Thurston Moore Thurston Moore Guided By Voices Guided By Voices Guided By Voices Guided By Voices with Neko Case Guided By Voices Guided By Voices Guided By Voices Guided By Voices Guided By Voices Neko Case with Kelly Hogan Neko Case Neko Case band (Jon Rauhouse and Paul RIgby) Neko Case Neko Case Neko Case Kelly Hogan (with Neko Case) Animal Collective Animal Collective Animal Collective
When an artist makes an album as good as the Flaming Lips’ 1999 masterpiece, The Soft Bulletin, you long to see an equally fabulous concert of that music — or dare one hope for a concert that somehow even surpasses the recordings you’ve come to love so much? Unfortunately, when the Flaming Lips played at Chicago’s Metro on July 17, 1999, the concert did not live up to the album. Sure, it was a night with an interesting and creative concept — a headphone concert, with the music on stage being transmitted by radio signal to headphones worn by each audience member. But the headphones didn’t end up providing an aural experience all that much different from the usual sound of a concert filling a room, and the band was struggling to figure out how to play its latest and lushest music in concert. At that point, the Lips had been reduced to just three band members, at a time when the arrangements were becoming more elaborate and layered. The band tried to pull it off live by using a lot of recorded background tracks, and it came off at times like a karaoke version of The Soft Bulletin.
In the years after that, the Flaming Lips transformed their live shows into confetti-filled circuses — an unlikely turn of events for a band that spent many years as a scruffy small-label band barely noticed by anyone. The Flaming Lips somehow became the band that knew how to put on a ridiculously fun party of a concert. In fact, after a while, the Lips started to feel like they were in a rut. Sure, it’s a blast to see people dancing around in alien and Santa costumes while Wayne Coyne cruises on top of the audience inside a plastic bubble, but how many times do you need to see that? And while the Lips fell into this routine, they largely ignored many of the great compositions they’d recorded on The Soft Bulletin.
And so, it was exciting to hear that the Flaming Lips had decided to play the entirety of The Soft Bulletin from beginning to end — including a show Thursday night (July 7) at the Aragon in Chicago. Now that the Lips are supplemented on tour with three extra musicians, they don’t have the same problems they did back in 1999 duplicating this music onstage. And finally! To hear the Lips play some of the wonderful songs they’ve been leaving out of their concert repertoire for too long — what a joy.
The show still fell short of the perfect Soft Bulletin concert I had summoned in my imagination. One flaw was that Wayne Coyne just talks too much. If he were more succinct and didn’t ramble so much between songs, it would improve the pacing. Still, it has to be said that his introductions to songs such as “The Spiderbite Song” and “Waitin’ For a Superman” — explanations of the personal stories and thoughts that went into the songs — gave them more emotional depth. Introducing “Superman,” Coyne summed up the theme of the whole album: “Knowing the wold can be full of pain, and what are we going to do about it? We sing songs.”
In some ways, this looked and felt like a typical Flaming Lips concert extravaganza, launching with Coyne in his bubble, along with confetti, balloons and smoke filling the air as the audience clapped and danced. The party vibe was infectious, but it didn’t always fit the dark-tinged and quieter musical passages. It was a relief when Coyne encouraged the remaining balloons to be popped before he sang “The Spiderbite Song,” sobering up the atmosphere a little bit. And as always, the Aragon provided muddy, echoing acoustics, not ideal to hear all of the nuances.
Those flaws aside, it was magnificent to hear songs such as “The Spark That Bled” — expertly arranged art-rock suites with haunting lyrics — played in their full glory. “Waitin’ for a Superman” was quiet and stirring, just Coyne singing as Steven Drozd played piano. At this moment, when I didn’t expect it, I found myself tearing up.
In an odd way, the bridge of “The Gash” — or is it a chorus? — feels like the climax of the whole album. It’s one of those rare pieces of songwriting that shows restraint, offering a catchy, soaring musical moment and then failing to repeat it. (This is one of the key questions of songwriting: How often do you repeat something, how many times to do play it over and over, hoping it’ll catch the listener’s ear?) Drozd sang lead vocals on most of this dense song, but Coyne returned to the mic for those cathartic few lines: “Will the fight for our sanity/Be the fight of our lives?/Now that we’ve lost all the reasons/That we thought that we had.”
That was followed by an equally moving performance of “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” which Coyne said was the song he was most reluctant to play. It still apparently stirs some raw emotions for him, and you could feel it in this performance. (In his introductory remarks to the audience before the concert, Coyne had said of the album: “It’s still kind of fresh. It’s kind of nerve-racking and all that stuff.”) The closing instrumental track, “Sleeping on the Roof,” ended with Coyne leaning into a footlight and making an atonal electronic buzz.
Appropriately enough, the first encore was a couple of songs from another big album, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon: “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse.” There’s definitely some Floyd in what the Lips were doing on The Soft Bulletin, and the band played a strong version of these Floyd songs. The second and final encore was “Do You Realize?” The confetti cannons were firing full-blast once again. I saw a woman crying.
At a few of the recent concerts I’ve seen, good performances have been followed by rather tepid applause. Audiences seemed bored or too lazy or maybe too tired because of the late hour to clap loudly enough to demand an encore. This was not the case Sunday night (July 3) when Centro-Matic played at Schubas. The crowd was loud, sounding very glad indeed to hear this band from Denton, Texas, playing in Chicago for the first time in a couple of years. There was no doubt that these fans wanted to hear an encore, and they got it. (Actually, they got two encores.)
Centro-Matic recently released a album, Candidate Waltz, and the set featured a few of the new songs, including the standout track, “Only in My Double Mind,” which has all of the qualities of a trademark Centro anthem: ringing chords, a thumping beat and Will Johnson’s distinctive, slightly creaky vocals — all that, with a soaring chorus and lots of “ahhs.”
Of course, Centro-Matic also played some of its staple songs, including several tracks from the 2003 album that remains one of its best, Love You Just the Same. And the band dug out two songs from its very first album, 1996’s lo-fi Redo the Stacks, “Rock and Roll Eyes” and “Am I the Manager Or Am I Not?” And Centro-Matic can also be counted on to play a quirky cover, and this time, it was Lionel Ritchie’s “All Night Long.” Through it all, Johnson kicked up his legs as he played guitar while his longtime bandmates — Matt Pence, Scott Danbom and Mark Hedman — gave the music both driving force and subtle shades. It was yet another triumphant show for one of indie rock’s most dependable bands, with a pretty nice opening set by Sarah Jaffe.
Four years ago, The Believer published a remarkable article by Joe Hagan in its annual music issue about a singer-songwriter I’d never heard of: Bill Fox. And the magazine came with a CD featuring a beautiful song by Fox, “My Baby Crying.” Fox gave up playing music after releasing two albums of folk rock, Shelter From the Smoke (1997) and Transit Byzantium (1998). Before that, he’d played scrappy garage power pop in the 1980s in the Mice, who had one of their songs, “Bye Bye Kitty Cat,” covered by Superchunk. Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices was a Mice fan, as it’s easy to see why.
But by the time Hagan wrote his loving ode to Fox’s music in 2007, Fox didn’t even own a guitar. Fox, who has struggled in the past with manic depression, was working as a telemarketer. He declined to be interviewed. One of Fox’s friends relayed his reaction to the reporter: “Man, I don’t want to be on the internet.” Out of respect for Fox’s wishes, The Believer did not put its article about Fox online. However, it is on Hagan’s website here. According to Hagan, Fox’s brother, Tommy, described him as “a crabby loner and contrarian who barely makes ends meet and refuses to talk about his music with anyone, especially a reporter.”
It was a fascinating, poignant story, and as I soon discovered, Fox’s music was great, too — with touches of Bob Dylan and other classic folk musicians, along with the acoustic sides of Big Star and Guided By Voices, but more than anything, just heartfelt, well crafted melodic songs. (You can hear some of his songs on this myspace page.) Since The Believer article was published, Fox has begun playing a few shows now and then. Unbeknownst to me (or practically anyone) he came to Chicago in 2009 for a performance at Quenchers. And this past Saturday (July 2), he was back, playing in front of an appreciative audience filling a small room, Uncommon Ground on Devon Avenue.
Given what I’d read about Fox, I was both eager and a little apprehensive about seeing him in concert. I hoped for a triumphant return by a singer rediscovering his love for music and his fans. I feared … I’m not sure what, but something going awry. There did not turn out to be much drama — just a guy with an acoustic guitar, playing some excellent songs. I believe a few of them were either new songs or old ones he never released, but he also played some of his most memorable tunes, including “Get Your Workingman’s Things,” “Let in the Sun,” “Over and Away She Goes” and “Lonesome Pine.” After playing for a little under an hour, Fox left the stage. The crowd clearly wanted an encore, but that was all Fox was going to play on this night. I hope to see him again.
Kudos to Chicago singer-songwriter Dan Phillips, who performs under the name Zapruder Point, and who helped to bring Fox to Chicago as part of this show. Zapruder Point was originally scheduled as the headliner, but switched places in the lineup, opening for Fox with a nice set of his own songs. (His music can be heard on Bandcamp.)
This year’s Taste of Chicago was scaled down from previous years. No fireworks. And fewer famous bands playing on the concert stage. That was supposed to be the idea, anyway. As it turned out, this year’s festival actually included more musical acts that interested me than usual. Alas, I missed seeing Loretta Lynn on Friday night, but I did catch the Jayhawks Saturday afternoon (July 2) at the Petrillo Bandshell. Now, here’s a show that I thought would draw a decent-size crowd, since the Jayhawks seem to have a pretty good following, thanks in part to WXRT, which was sponsoring the free concert. But for whatever reason, the park had plenty of empty seats.
Still, it was a solid performance, a highly enjoyable set of the Jayhawks’ best songs from their early records, Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow the Green Grass — the albums the band made back when it had both of its key singer-songwriters, Mark Olson and Gary Louris. Olson left the group in the mid-1990s, and then Louris and the other Jayhawks carried on. Olson has rejoined the Jayhawks now, and it was a joy to hear Olson and Louris swapping vocal lines in those classic songs they collaborated on in the early ’90s, which have really stood the test of time. The songs were anchored by Louris’ melodic guitar riffs and solos, which were instantly recognizable to anyone who’s spent time listening to those albums.
The Jayhawks also treated us to a couple of songs from their forthcoming album — the first one featuring both Olson and Louris in 16 years. Can’t wait to hear the whole thing.
