I assumed All Tiny Creatures would be getting a certain amount of buzz. If for no other reason, this band from Madison, Wis., has guest vocals from Justin Vernon of Bon Iver on its new debut album, Harbor. And well, Bon Iver is playing at big venues now like the Chicago Theatre and hanging out with Kanye West.
But it seems that most of the world hasn’t discovered All Tiny Creatures yet. The band played for just a handful of fans Friday night at the Empty Bottle. (Bad timing? Lack of publicity? Who knows why?) The room may have been fairly empty, but the music was worthy of reaching a bigger audience. All Tiny Creatures has some musicians in common with other Wisconsin bands, including Volcano Choir and the more experimental Collections of Colonies of Bees. The first track I heard by All Tiny Creatures a couple of years ago, “To All Tiny Creatures,” is an infectious, keyboard-driven instrumental song, with a strong Krautrock flavor. The band’s newer songs retain that minimalist vibe, with driving beats underneath shimmering patterns of keyboard and guitar notes, but softly sung vocals are a key ingredient now. It’s nice to see some innovative music coming from the state north of Illinois. The next time All Tiny Creatures comes to town, I’m hoping they get the bigger turnout they deserve.
Last weekend (June 10-12) the Empty Bottle hosted the second annual Neon Marshmallow Festival, three nights of experimentation, electronica, drones and full-on blasts of noise emanating from laptops and instruments. The artists who stood behind their computers and created shimmering, vibrating or pulsing waves of sound tended to blur together over the course of the weekend, but a couple of them stood out as more inventive than the others: Oneohtrix Point Never and Mike Shiflet (who also played guitar, though you’d be hard-pressed to identify what notes or sounds were coming from that instrument).
Outer Space was contagiously energetic, and Sword Heaven was more of an assault, as the drummer’s screams were picked up by a contact mic duct-taped to his throat. That wasn’t the only sonic attack of the weekend. Sickness made brief bursts of industrial noise, punctuated by silence — until an audience member decided to join in with sarcastic toots of a harmonica during those quiet interludes, which prompted Sickness to demand a stop to this silly embellishment on his music. The most difficult set to survive was that of The Rita, who blared a dissonant, ear-splitting explosion for more than half a hour, which practically drove me out of the building. Acoustic guitarist/incoherent moaner Bill Orcutt performed intriguing, hushed music with a mystical air, but the set felt tense thanks to his abrupt opening shriek into the microphone: “Shut the fuck up!”
The two definite high points were the closing sets on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, Pelt performed a gorgeous musical meditation, starting with prayer bowls and lightly brushed gongs and building to violins, harmoniums and banjo. On Sunday, electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick got behind his laptop and electronic gear, reconstructing the deconstructed pieces of his compositions into a truly impressive tapestry of sounds. The way he put them together seemed organic, even if the music was purely electronic. Subotnick showed the kids how it’s done.
Rene Hell White Rainbow Lucky Dragons Sword Heaven Outer Space Sickness Bill Orcutt Oneohtrix Point Never Pelt Mike Shiflet Morton Subotnick
Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys came to Schubas Thursday night (June 9) for a concert of his solo music, and he brought along a whole bag of tricks. Need some audio samples? Rhys played them the old-fashioned way, with a miniature turntable spinning records such as a BCC sound-effects collection while Rhys and his band performed. Rhys also had some sort of electronic drumsticks, a device with a glowing red appendage that sounded like a Theremin, a yellow safety vest just in case his airplane crashed, some big signs saying “APPLAUSE,” WOAH,” and “THANK YOU.”
Rhys also had a repertoire of catchy songs, of course, as well as a wonderful, Welsh sense of humor and whimsy, which he displayed with his fanciful song introductions. And it helped that he had such a sharp backing band, Y Niwl, who are also from Wales. Y Niwl was the opening act, too, performing a groovy set of instrumental rock hearkening back to ’60s surf, twang and party rock. Y Niwl then returned to the stage for the main set, playing behind Rhys as he played tunes from his new album, Hotel Shampoo, and two earlier solo records.
The high point of the concert for me came at the end, when Rhys played the epic “Skylon!” — which was 14 minutes long in the studio version on his 2007 album Candylion, and was as long or longer in the live performance, combining a narrative about an airplane flight with a cycling riff that had some of the chugging power of a Velvet Underground rave-up but more of a psychedelic aura. yniwl.com gruffrhys.com
Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion has a pretty full schedule of concerts all summer, not just the Monday-night “Downtown Sounds” shows I’ve written about earlier, but also classical, jazz, world music and more. The Thursday evening “Music Without Borders” series got started June 9 with the Mongolian-Chinese band Hanggai and Honduran singer-guitarist Aurelio Martinez.
Chicago’s mercurial and downright peculiar weather of late didn’t cooperate for this occasion. The temperature dropped from the 90s the previous day to the 50s, making for a pretty chilly outdoor show. The crowd was a small fraction of the audience that turned out a few days earlier, packing the park for Iron & Wine. (I missed that concert, but believe me, it was crowded. Just check out these photos at Time Out Chicago.)
Despite the sparse attendance and cool temps, Thursday’s concert featured two lively performances. Aurelio Martinez’s spry guitar playing and exuberant personality got the crowd moving a little bit, especially a small group of folks waving the Honduran flag. Martinez is not only an accomplished musician — he’s also a politician, a member of the Garifuna community and the first black person to become a deputy in the National Congress of Honduras. His most recent record (released by Sub Pop in January) is Laru Beya, and a couple of free mp3s are available here. It’s interesting and unusual to see Sub Pop releasing a record that would normally be lumped in with that amorphous category, “world music.”
The main act was Hanggai, an array of Mongolian musicians dressed in traditional garb… Well, maybe that was traditional garb. I’m not so sure about that weird bare-chested vest-like get-up the one singer wore, which made him look a bit like a member of the Mongolian Hell’s Angels. The guys played a mix of Western instruments such as electric guitar and banjo with Asian instruments, and the music was also a blend of Asian melodies with American rock ‘n’ roll. It’s surprising to read that Ken Stringfellow of the Posies and latter-day Big Star produced Hanggai’s most recent record, He Who Travels Far. In concert, Hanggai’s music was accessible and fun. The crowd even applauded whenever the singers spoke between songs in their native language, even if few people in the pavilion understand what they were saying. The songs often had a galloping beat, and people got up to dance in front of their seats. (Millennium Park’s security staff strictly enforced a “no dancing in the aisles” rule Thursday night. It sure would be nice if the park set aside a little more space for dancing.)
The weather was beautiful in Chicago on Memorial Day (May 30) — perfect for the free concert at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion starring headliner Justin Townes Earle and opening act Andre Williams. They made for a somewhat unusual pair — a 29-year-old country-folk singer and a 74-year-old blues and soul singer — but they’re both on Chicago’s Bloodshot Records. And they’re both entertainers with strong, distinctive personalities.
Backed by the Goldstars and a horn section, Williams strutted the stage, wearing some snazzy threads, only slightly cleaning up his somewhat lascivious lyrics for the all-ages audience. (Yes, he did sing “Jailbait,” and he also dedicated a song about “trying to score some blow” to his daughter.)
Justin Townes Earle was accompanied by just violin and upright bass, along with his own acoustic guitar. As he showed last fall at Lincoln Hall, he’s one of those singer-songwriters who can hold his own on the stage, even without a full band. His old-style country-music banter in between songs was peppered with polite references to the audiences as “ladies and gentlemen,” and his set was dominated by songs from his excellent 2010 record, Harlem River Blues — but why didn’t he play the song about his days as a teen in Chicago, “Rogers Park”? A highlight was his intense version of the Lightnin’ Hopkins blues tune, “I Been Burning Bad Gasoline.” It was good to see Earle playing to a large and appreciative audience.
I never saw any of the old Blackout Festivals in Chicago, which now seem to have grown legendary. After a hiatus of several years, the festival returned this weekend, sponsored by the same folks who run the HoZac record label — more or less the headquarters of Chicago’s burgeoning and fertile garage-rock scene. HoZac’s responsible for putting out a lot of roughly hewn, rambunctious and sometimes surprisingly catchy rock music. (The new LP by Chicago band Mickey is a great example of all that.) The two-day festival, held in a makeshift warehouse-like space dubbed the Velvet Perineum, was a showcase for HoZac’s bands as well as other likeminded groups. I caught almost all of it (other than the opening-night art show, and a couple of bands on Saturday, when I had to duck out of the Velvet Perineum to get some foods).
It was quite a fun time overall, with a lot of lively performances. The audience ebbed and flowed through the weekend, coming and going in between sets and acting somewhat manic-lethargic (moshing with reckless abandon for some bands, not even bothering to clap for other bands). The groups that inspired the most moshing on Friday (May 28) were the aforementioned Mickey, the Brides (who had the funniest stage banter) and the Spits (who started out their set wearing Ronald Reagan masks). Saturday’s biggest mosh moment came during the set by Nobunny, who (as expected) removed his pants halfway through the set, while continuing to wear his mangy, leporine headgear. Hearing Nobunny’s fans sing along to his songs, however, it was clear that his music connects on a melodic level, not simply as an excuse to slam bodies against one another.
Other highlights for me: Another Chicago band, Outer Minds, continue to impress me with their ’60s-flavored nuggets. Radar Eyes showed some impressive energy at the end of their set. Reading Rainbow played catchy songs with female-male harmonies and a good dose of buzz, too. Puffy Areolas played out on the floor, a bit like the Monotonix do, revving up the crowd with the relentless attack of their punk-rock feedback and saxophone. Closing out the fest on Saturday night, the legendary early ’70s band Nervous Eaters sounded best at the very end of their set, as they played the protopunkiest of their songs, including a fine version of “Loretta.” I was feeling pretty tired by that point, and I got the feeling that others were, too. The garage-rock marathon finally came to an end. But the music plays on, as I spin that new Mickey LP and write up my wish list for other HoZac records.
Squish Mickey Mickey The Happy Thoughts TV Ghost TV Ghost K-Holes K-Holes K-Holes The Brides Audience during the Brides The Spits The Spits Audience during the Spits Nones Nones Nones Outer Minds Outer Minds Outer Minds Outer Minds Radar Eyes Radar Eyes Radar Eyes Radar Eyes People's Temple People's Temple People's Temple Reading Rainbow Reading Rainbow Reading Rainbow Reading Rainbow Idle Times Puffy Areolas Puffy Areolas Puffy Areolas Puffy Areolas Timmy's Organism Timmy's Organism Nobunny Nobunny Nobunny Nobunny Nervous Eaters Nervous Eaters Nervous Eaters
Yes, it is hard to believe sometimes how unusual and wonderful the concerts promoted by the city of Chicago in the beautiful Millennium Park are. The summer season of free concerts got started Monday night (May 23) with … Bonnie “Prince” Billy? And Eleventh Dream Day as the opening act?
I love both of these acts, but they’re not exactly superstars or even what most people would think of as mainstream crowd pleasers. But over the past few years, the programmers in the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs have proven that they’ve got good taste and they’re willing to take risks. There’s been a shakeup since last fall, and I’m still trying to make sense of what it means that the city has moved around jobs and transferred some of these responsibilities to the tourism office. So far, so good — interesting and cool music is still being booked at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it stays this way in the months and years to come. (Check out this summer’s concert schedule at Millennium Park here.)
The first act of the night Monday was Chicago’s venerable but still very lively indie-rock band Eleventh Dream Day, although it was questionable for a while whether they would actually play. Drummer and harmony vocalist Janet Beveridge Bean broke an ankle Sunday, and initially the band was planning to cancel the gig as a result. But Jim Elkington (who was in the Zincs and collaborated with Bean in the Horse’s Ha) was recruited to fill in on drums. Bean came out onto the stage in crutches and stood at her own mini drum set, singing throughout the set and offering some backup percussion. Elkington sounded pretty good, considering he’d just had one chance to rehearse the songs. It wasn’t quite the full Eleventh Dream Day experience, but the songs still sounded pretty great … and it made for an unusual and unique show. Bean joked that she was worried about keeping her job with the band. I don’t think there’s any need for her to worry about that, as her vocals came through as strong as ever Monday night.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy, aka Will Oldham, performed Monday with the same band he’s had with him last year, the Cairo Gang, which is led by guitarist Emmett Kelly of Chicago, and also includes Chicago singer Angel Olsen. Oldham was a bit more mellow than he’s been the past few times I’ve seen him, but he was just as expressive with his oddball yoga/dance moves, lifting his bare foot at skewed angles while he sang, cradling his guitar in his hands when he wasn’t playing it.
Unless I failed to recognize some of the songs (which is certainly possible, given how many records Oldham has put out), I believe that the bulk of songs he played Monday were brand-new ones, not yet released. He opened with “Troublesome Houses,” off of 2010’s Wonder Show of the World, and played another song from that same terrific album, “Go Folks, Go” just before the encore. But everything in between seemed to be new, with Oldham using lyrics sheets. The songs tended toward the quiet, with lyrics about spiritual seeking as well as the casual references to sex we’ve come to expect. At one point, he warned the audience to clap hands over the ears of anyone children in attendance, then proceeded to sing, “As boys, we fucked each other.” Another song mentioned sweaty thighs locked together. The first of the new songs he performed was almost a solo a cappella performance, with just a few eerie accents from the Steinway piano and the upright bass. The audience in the section of the pavilion near the stage fell almost completely silent as Oldham delivered this melody from the peculiar depths of his throat.
In its loveliest moments, the new material built to gospel-like choruses and impressive three-part harmonies featuring Oldham, Olsen and Kelly. More listens will be needed to decide how the new songs stack up — Oldham’s work usually needs repeat listens before it clicks with me — but it was a daring and beautiful performance. I was wondering what the people in the audience less familiar with Oldham’s work made of it all. It was steady, low-key folk-rock with tinges of jazz and gospel, the sort of music that requires close listening. Did it win over the audience or were people scratching their heads? It’s impossible for anyone to tell what everyone else is thinking in a crowd, but I got the sense that people were at least respectful and intrigued by what they were hearing.
During the encore, Bonnie “Prince” Billy played “There Is No God,” a single he’s releasing June 12 on Drag City, with profits going to Save Our Gulf and Turtle Hospital to support efforts to clean up and maintain waterways — a good cause, in the wake of the recent flooding along the Mississippi River basin. (Watch the video here.) After sounding spiritual in other songs earlier in the evening, Oldham now declared bluntly, “There is no god.” But the declaration wasn’t quite that simple. “There is no god,” he sang, “But that which surround the tongue/That which sees love in the chest/That which puts mouth on cock and vagina/That that is the best.” In his own odd way, Oldham reminds me of poets like Walt Whitman.
His occasionally vulgar lyrics made the spectacle of the concert in the park seem all the more subversive… or surreal, anyway. So the city of Chicago is paying this guy to stand in his bare feet on that fancy stage designed by Frank Gehry and blurt out lyrics about cocks and vaginas and sweaty thighs and how god doesn’t exist? Yep. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
Never having been to Neil Young’s house, I can only imagine what it’s like inside.
And I imagine that, somewhere, he has a room that looks much like the stage did last night (May 6) at the Chicago Theatre. Maybe it’s down in the basement, a sort of musical rec room — the place where he goes to practice old riffs, write new songs, or just play. Play in the sense of playing with his toys. Neil Young’s solo concert Friday felt like a glimpse into that room, that space where he’s just playing for himself.
As he did during the first half (the solo portion) of a 2007 concert inside this same beautiful, historic theater, Young casually wandered around the stage in between some of the songs, looking at his instruments as if he were trying to decide what to do next. To some extent, this is surely an act that he’s putting on, since he was working from a set list. Was he toying with the audience, to see what sort of reaction he’d get if he walked up to the grand piano and then walked away from it, only to strap on an electric guitar? Or was he wandering around in his own little world, oblivious of the audience eagerly watching his every move? (Probably the former.) It’s not as if Young didn’t acknowledge the audience’s presence. At several points, he raised an arm above his head, like a baseball player stepping out of the dugout and tipping his hat after a home run. And Young has the odd, endearing habit of applauding himself — as he came out onto the stage at the outset of the concert and the audience broke out into cheers, Young clapped, too.
Three keyboards were arrayed around Young: an upright piano, an organ in an old, ornate cabinet, and a grand piano painted in splotches of orange and pink. He played one song on each — hauling these big instruments around the country with him like totems, as if each song must be played on the particular instrument to which it belongs. A wooden statute of an American Indian stood at the back of the stage, and Young walked over to it and touched it once, as if he were putting his hand on the shoulder of a friend. Later, when Young was playing “Cortez the Killer,” a song about the European conquest of American Indians, he walked back over to the wooden Indian. Facing away from the audience, Young played his solo to the statute, slapping the body of his guitar to make the notes reverberate.
This concert was mostly about guitar, and Young played a few of them over the course of the night. Wearing a white hat with a black band, a white sport jacket, black T-shirt and blue jeans, Young sat down with an acoustic guitar to start the concert, playing “Hey Hey My My,” “Tell Me Why” and “Helpless.” The acoustics in the big auditorium were perfect, and while Young looked pretty tiny from my seat halfway up the balcony, it sounded as if he were right next to me, plucking his guitar strings and singing those songs in a voice not all that much changed from how it sounded when he was a young musician decades ago. His harmonica solos on these acoustic numbers were one of the most remarkable things he did all evening — improvising, pushing, jumping across the melody with the same searching spirit he has demonstrated in so many terrific electric guitar solos over the years.
The harmonica also prompted one of Young’s few bits of stage banter. In between songs, he shook some water out of it. (Was that just his saliva? Or did he put the harmonica in some water? I couldn’t tell.)
“I was told it’s bad to put my harmonicas in water,” he said. “A manufacturer told me. ‘Bullshit,’ that’s what I say.”
Young played the songs from his most recent album, Le Noise, in the same solo-guitar style they use on the record, a sort of hybrid between the usual sounds of acoustic and electric guitar — one guitar echoing around the room with a sound that seems multilayered, as if each string is a separate instrument. As impressive as this was, I still think the songs on Le Noise are just good, not great. The record and this live performance of those songs mark an interesting new direction for Young, but the melodies and lyrics were no match for the classic songs that made up the rest of the set.
The other time Young spoke was when he finally sat down at one of the keyboards, the upright piano. He introduced a song apparently called “Leia” (the Sugar Mountain website reports that this is an unreleased song he played for the first time in 2010).
“A song now for all the little people,” Young said. “The tiny little people with big smiles. Those too small to be here tonight. … They wanted to come, but couldn’t come. Mom said, ‘Nope.’ And a song for Grandpa. He was able to get here.”
The sing-songy tune that followed did seem a bit like a children’s ditty. Young moved to the organ and strapped on a harmonica for “After the Gold Rush,” playing odd runs of notes with a circus calliope effect as he sang — changing one time reference in the lyrics. “Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 21st century,” he sang. And then he moved to the grand piano for “I Believe in You.”
Young also played electric guitar, using that instrument mostly for older classics. The hum of the strings was muted, muffled almost down to little more than bass notes, on the verses of “Down by the River,” but whenever he got to the chorus, the guitar came roaring to life. The riff from “Ohio” was loud and chunky from beginning to end, however, and Young’s iconic lyrics — dashed off three decades ago in reaction to a galvanizing tragedy — felt as urgent as if they were written today.
As the concert neared its end, Young returned to the electric guitar and stood a while, playing around with the hum and buzz his instrument was making, without allowing a melody to emerge from the noise too quickly. After a few minutes, it became clear that he was playing “Cortez the Killer.” Singing and playing electric guitar without a band can seem a little odd — acoustic guitar is the default instrument for a solo singer-songwriter, and hearing electric guitar makes you think, “Where’s the rest of the band?” Playing without a band had pluses and minuses for Young. It gave him freedom to stretch out his tunes, to let the notes hover a little bit longer before he sang another verse. And it focused our attention on every little nuance of the noise coming out of that guitar. But Young’s a master at playing epic guitar solos in the context of a full band, getting sparks of energy and inspiration from the other musicians playing behind him. That isn’t what this tour is about, however. The result was that much of Young’s guitar playing was more impressionistic: Instead of making symphonies that rise and fall with dramatic melodies, he was more interested in shaking his instrument and seeing what fell out. An impressive spectacle in its own way.
The last song before the encore was “Cinnamon Girl,” and when it came to that false ending — the moment when the song seems to end, just before that last little fillip of one guitar melody finishes it off — Young paused, as if he might not bother playing it. The crowd erupted into applause. Did people think the song was over? Or were they egging him on to finish that song? Young raised his hand in the air once again, acknowledging his fans, and then he finally played that little riff, repeating it several times, stretching out the song for just a minute longer.
Young (who played “Walk With Me” from Le Noise for his encore) was a marvel to see and hear Friday night. The concert wasn’t quite as epic as his 2007 show at the Chicago Theatre, but it was another excellent performance from this always-intriguing musician.
As a nice bonus, the concert also featured the great British singer-songwriter-guitarist Bert Jansch as the opening act. The understated Jansch played solo acoustic guitar, and the room filled with the sparkling, liquid sound of those bending strings. At the end of his set, he modestly remarked, “I want to thank you all for being so quiet and not throwing anything at me.” The theater was indeed pretty quiet, and Jansch seemed to impress the audience, which surely included many people unfamiliar with his music.
Tame Impala, a psychedelic rock band from Perth, Australia, headlined two sold-out shows this week at Lincoln Hall in Chicago. But as far as I was concerned (and I suspect the same is true for a lot of the people who attended these concerts), they were double-headliner gigs. I wanted to see Tame Impala, but I was even more interested in catching the first Chicago performance by Yuck, a London band getting a lot of buzz lately in indie-rock circles.
Yuck’s self-titled debut album is one of the year’s best records so far, and the songs sounded strong in concert Tuesday (May 3). Yuck’s tunes have some lovely, high-ranging vocals that remind me of power pop by the likes of Teenage Fanclub, but there’s a lot of crunchy guitar, too, with touches of Sonic Youth at its poppiest and a bit of the loopiness of Pavement. Yuck’s songs have some terrific guitar melodies — those bent notes — on top of the chords. www.myspace.com/yuckband yuckband.blogspot.com
Tame Impala’s 2010 album, InnerSpeaker, didn’t completely win me over. It’s a pleasant listen, but the songs came off better in concert, where there repetitive grooves got at least some of the crowd dancing. Or, well, swaying. Tame Impala plays psychedelic music of the hypnotic riff variety — lots of reverb and lots of those effects that make the chords sound like they’re slowly circling in and out of focus. As the band played, a screen showed live video from a camera pointed at an oscilloscope screen, and the music caused green lines to squiggle in circular shapes. But you really didn’t need that projection to visualize the music looping back on itself over and over again. Groovy stuff. www.myspace.com/tameimpala www.tameimpala.com
The evening started out with another “Y” band — Chicago’s Yawn — playing a set of upbeat indie pop that reminded me of Vampire Weekend. myspace.com/yawntheband
The Part Five is a Chicago band on the Cardboard Sangria label, which is also home to one of my favorite local acts, the psychedelic folk-rock group the Singleman Affair. And it’s led by singer-songwriter-bassist Gary Pyskacek, who’s played with the Singleman Affair. So I was foolishly expecting a similar sort of music when I popped the new CD by the Part Five, The Tightening, into my stereo.
What I heard was something quite different. There’s something vaguely… eighties about it. And in a good way. Then again, maybe what the Part Five is doing is a throwback to early emo music. That’s what Chicagoist suggested… mentioning a bit of a Police vibe.
The strength of these songs came through in a live performance Saturday night (April 30) at Quenchers. Pyskacek’s lively, jumping bass lines clicked together with Chris Brantley’s driving drumbeats and guitarist Brett Barton’s inventively melodic figures. Broken down into its individual parts, this might seem like some sort of art rock, but when it’s all added up, these are pop songs, with plenty of hooks. Looking around Quenchers, I thought: These guys could definitely be playing to a bigger audience. myspace.com/thepartv
It got as quiet as a church in Lincoln Hall Thursday night (April 21) in the moments in between songs. It wasn’t that the audience wasn’t applauding the mesmerizing, beautiful songs it was hearing from the band Low. Appreciative applause followed each song. But then, as the crowd waited for the band to begin another song, a hush fell over the room. What can you hear in such silence? I heard a deep respect. Fans who wanted to hear every note, who weren’t interested in making chit-chat. Low’s singer-guitarist, Alan Sparhawk, even joked about how quiet the crowd was, but he must be used to getting this sort of reception.
Low’s music demands it. On its early records, Low played music that was almost supernaturally quiet, with a slow, steady beat and whispered words. Over the years, Low has expanded its dynamic range, cranking up the volume and feedback on many of its songs, but there’s still a sense of quiet and a steady purpose behind the music. Low’s new record, C’mon, its first in five years, is outstanding. Recorded in a Duluth church, it captures the lovely vocals of Sparhawk and his wife, drummer Mimi Parker, in all of their choir-like glory.
Thursday’s concert featured many of the songs on the new record, and Lincoln Hall’s acoustics replicated that church atmosphere perfectly. Supplemented by bass and keyboards, Sparhawk and Parker blended their placid voices with subtle, steady rhythms to dramatic effect. Parker calmly stood as she played drums, using just brushes and mallets, no hard-tipped drumsticks, on a minimal kit: just two cymbals, a snare and a tom. Even when the music is in a low-key passage, Sparhawk had an intense look about him, tilting his head this way and that, squinting his eyes and scrunching up his face.
Of course, the concert also featured some of Low’s older songs, and those sounded wonderful as well. The concert concluded with a moving, progressively louder performance of “When I Go Deaf,” from the 2005 record The Great Destroyer — a song that faces the idea of losing the ability to hear songs with an oddly resigned attitude of acceptance. “When I go deaf/I won’t even mind/Yeah, I’ll be all right/I’ll be just fine…” The concept of not being able to hear music like the songs Low played Thursday night make is almost too sad to contemplate, however.
SET LIST:
Plus the encore: Murderer / Canada / Violent Past / When I Go Deaf
The opening act, Gaberdine, performed a nice set of moody folk-rock songs accented with cello and trumpet. A good match with Low, although more reminiscent of bands such as the Low Anthem and Bowerbirds www.myspace.com/gaberdine
To get an idea of how prolific the Acid Mothers Temple musical collective is, all you had to do was take a look at the merch table Wednesday night (April 6) at the Empty Bottle. The musicians sat behind a table covered with dozens of different CDs… and even that impressive display was far from complete. In fact, the band wasn’t even selling most of the Acid Mothers Temple albums that I own, including last year’s intriguingly experimental and atmospheric release, In A to Infinity. It’s hard to keep track of all the recordings this group puts out under its various incarnations.
On this tour, the band is calling itself Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., which is the longest-running and most famous version of AMT. Its latest record — and one that dominated Wednesday’s performance — is Pink Lady Lemonade — You’re From Outer Space, which is apparently some sort of sequel or makeover of a 2008 album of the same name by a different version of the band, Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno. Huh? Confused yet?
Beyond all the confusing nomenclature and baffling discography problems, Acid Mothers Temple stands out as a bunch of musicians who love to jam out. And that’s precisely what they did at the Bottle, with the four-musician lineup bending its tunes more toward the Jimi Hendrix guitar-rock end of the spectrum than usual. There were a few moments of needless goofing around, but for the most part, AMT bore down and dug into its epic songs, including the four-part, album-length “Pink Lady Lemonade.” The concert’s climax — before the encore — ended with one of the guitars hanging from the ceiling.
As far as I could tell, the members of Acid Mothers Temple made no reference Wednesday night to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear troubles back in their homeland, it was hard not to think about it while watching these Japanese musicians. One of the concert’s most impressive and moving moments came when the band stopping playing its instruments for a few minutes and chanted a cappella. Like most of the audience, I had no idea what they were singing, but it felt like the voices were commanding: Stop what you’re doing and listen to this.
The Parting Gifts is a band that brings together Greg Cartwright — the singer-songwriter-guitarist who’s been the guiding light of the Reigning Sound and played in the Oblivians before that — with Lindsay “Coco” Hames, lead singer of the Ettes. The new band doesn’t sound all that much different from the Reigning Sound, but that’s not a bad thing. Under both names, Cartwright produces a seemingly endless string of concise, melodic tunes influenced by ’60s garage rock. The difference with the Parting Gifts is that the lead vocals switch back and forth between Cartwright and Coco, who adds a girl group vibe. (That’s not surprising, considering that Cartwright also did a record with Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las.)
Playing Friday at the Empty Bottle, the Parting Gifts made a strong case for the songs on their 2010 debut record, Strychnine Dandelions. As the set began, the band quickly buzzed through one tight, catchy rock song after another. Cartwright plays without a lot of fuss, keeping his guitar solos short and to the point. Coco’s a bit more lively, and her vocals were a key ingredient in the fun mix of sounds. The set lagged a bit at the end, as the band spent a little too much time between songs figuring out what to play, but it stayed fun whenever the music was going. It was the sort of music that made you want to shake a tambourine.
GRINDERMAN Nov. 22 at the Riviera. Nick Cave was pushing himself up against the crowd, letting the fans in front touch with him their hands as he spouted his funny, vulgar, erudite and/or raunchy lyrics. Grinderman’s albums are almost but not quite non-stop rock, and the show was similar, whipping up even more intensity. Cave let out a few more blood-curdling screams than he does in the studio, and his bandmates sang the call-and-response backup vocals like people yelling for help in an emergency. Read More / Photos
BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY Sept. 28 at Ronny’s. The new songs were transformed into sprawling, loose-limbed, full-band arrangements. … Will Oldham took the stage and removed his flip-flops, revealing his pink-painted toenails. Oldham’s fingernails had pink nail polish, too, and his eyes were underlined with black makeup. The eyeliner was smeared on the left side of his face, looking like a bruise. As usual, Oldham’s face was covered with bristly hair, including a walrus mustache. As he sang, Oldham often contorted his legs and arms as if he were improvising some yoga moves. … As Oldham writhed and the band filled out the songs with an almost jazzy sense of exploration, it reminded me sometimes of Van Morrison from the Astral Weeks era. Read More / Photos
ROBBIE FULKS RESIDENCY all year long at the Hideout. One of the most delightful things happening in live music in Chicago is the ongoing residency by Robbie Fulks on most Monday nights at the Hideout. As a series, this perhaps deserves a special place outside my top 10 concert list, but let’s give Fulks the kudos he so richly deserves and just say that live music rarely gets better than this. He played 38 dates at the Hideout in 2010, and a fellow fan who’s been keeping track of the set lists tells me he’s played more than 400 different songs over the course of those shows. Fulks doesn’t just do the same sort of set every week. He plays with a revolving set of other musicians and singers and sometimes organizes the shows around themes, such as tributes to Alex Chilton or ’70s country music. I feel like something of a slacker because I made it to only five Fulks Hideout shows. (I saw Fulks perform with Nora O’Connor Feb. 8 and Dec. 27, with the Hoyle Brothers April 5, with Greg Cahill April 26, and with Robbie Gjersoe and Jenny Scheinman Aug. 23.) Fulks is a terrific guitarist, very skilled at acoustic finger picking, the sort of musician who can quickly learn new songs and improvise. He’s also an excellent songwriter, a good singer and one of the funniest, smartest raconteurs around. All of that, plus his great taste in music and musicians, adds up to an experience that’s truly enchanting to witness. The sets I saw with O’Connor were probably my favorites — she’s such a beautiful singer — but the other sets included many highlights, too. At the show with Gjersoe and Scheinman, it was exciting to see the three musicians skillfully finding their way through some songs they clearly hadn’t rehearsed, playing with a sense of improvisatory exploration — and doing it with a light sense of humor about it all. Photos from Feb. 8 / / Photos from April 5
THE NATIONAL Sept. 26 at the Riviera. Lead singer Matt Berninger began the concert closely hugging his microphone, but as the show went on, he became more animated, bouncing his microphone stand like a toy. During instrumental passages, he paced the stage, raising his clenched fists, like someone fighting off voices in his head. Berninger’s dance is awkward, lacking the typical rock-star moves, but it feels authentic. He seems to be expressing the emotion and energy he’s feeling from these songs in the only way he can. … It was thrilling how the National’s songs built to dramatic climaxes … During the final song, “Terrible Love,” Berninger walked out into the audience, singing out in the midst of the crowd’s voices for several minutes. Read More(Note: The photo above is actually from a different National show, their set this summer at Lollapalooza.)
THE ARCADE FIRE Aug. 8 at Lollapalooza in Grant Park. The seven musicians in the Arcade Fire are still swapping instruments and working up a sweat as they pound away with their violins, guitars, keyboards and even a hurdy-gurdy. The songs from the new album The Suburbs, sounded strong, but older songs provided the cathartic climax of the concert, as the audience sang along with “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Wake Up.” It was as if the crowd was defying the lyrics Win Butler had sung earlier in the new song, “Month of May” — “Now, some things are pure and some things are right/But the kids are still standing with their arms folded tight.” These kids were not just standing there with their arms folded tight. Read More / Photos
TITUS ANDRONICUS July 17 at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park. From my review for Signal to Noise magazine: The Bruce Springsteen influence was obvious from the opening seconds of the first song, “A More Perfect Union,” when singer Patrick Stickles yelled out the lyrics: “I never wanted to change the world, but I’m looking for a new New Jersey, because tramps like us, baby, we were born to die!” Guest players on horns and strings gave the songs a sense of grandeur resembling Neutral Milk Hotel, as Stickles and his bandmates flailed around with their guitars every chance they got. An American flag was draped over the front of the keyboard, and the Stars and Stripes dangled from Stickles’ guitar, too. Titus Andronicus is hardly your typical bunch of patriotic flag-wavers, but the band’s lyrics show a deep appreciation of American history and the long struggle to secure our freedoms. Amid the loud, rollicking chords and Stickles’ keening, emotion-drenched vocals, the crowd chanted, “U.S.A.! U.S.A! U.S.A.!” Read More / Photos
JÓNSI April 28 at the Vic. The concert built from a hushed quiet in the early songs to a cathartic burst in the encore, with Jónsi singing in a falsetto that was often angelic and occasionally demonic. The set itself was a masterpiece, with a shifting series of projected images making the stage feel like a cabinet of wonders. Photos
JANELLE MONÁE March 29 at Schubas. She wowed me with her strong voice and her sense of drama. I also noticed some interesting almost orchestral flourishes in the song arrangements. She and her backing musicians came out onto the stage in druid robes for a Spinal Tap-esque entrance, with a fog machine going, and the whole show had an air of spectacle about it, despite being at little ol’ Schubas. Photos
RICCARDO MUTI CONDUCTS THE CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Sept. 19 at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. It was a great spectacle to see so many thousands of people cramming into the park to see (or at least hear) the debut of the great maestro as the CSO’s new musical director. The fans waved Muti flags as he nimbly led the orchestra through a lovely outdoor concert, making even the most familiar pieces of music (such as the Fantasy-Overture from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet) sound fresh. Photos
TUNNG Nov. 17 at Schubas. The spirited, sing-along and dance-around-like-a-fool side of Tunng was on full display when the group came to Chicago for the first time in three years. Given Tunng’s reputation as something of a folk-rock group, who would’ve expected Mike Lindsay to don a pair of goofy glasses that would’ve been appropriate for Bootsy Collins? … This was quite a joyful musical affair. Read More + Photos
RUNNERS-UP
SYL JOHNSON Nov. 27 at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
PHOSPHORESCENT Aug. 5 at the Empty Bottle
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM July 17 at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park
LIGHTNING BOLT July 18 at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park
JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE Sept. 18 at Lincoln Hall
SUPERCHUNK June 20 at the Taste of Randolph Street
FANFARLO April 7 at Lincoln Hall
THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH May 28 at Lincoln Hall
THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA May 27 at Schubas
CARIBOU July 12 at Millennium Park
IGGY & THE STOOGES Aug. 29 at the Riviera Theatre
CONDO FUCKS and ELEVENTH DREAM DAY May 16 at the Hideout
JENS LEKMAN Jan. 3 at the Viaduct Theater
ANDREW BIRD Dec. 16 at the 4th Presbyterian Church
THE FLAT FIVE Dec. 10 at the Hideout
GUIDED BY VOICES Oct. 13 at the Riviera
THEE OH SEES Sept. 16 at Lincoln Hall
LIGHTNING BOLT — JULY 18 AT THE PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVALSLEIGH BELLS — JULY 18 AT THE PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVALJOHNNY & THE LIMELITES — JULY 22 AT LAURIE’S PLANET OF SOUNDCAP’N JAZZ — JULY 31 AT WICKER PARK FESTIVALMAVIS STAPLES — AUG. 6 AT LOLLAPALOOZATHE BIG PINK — AUG. 6 AT LOLLAPALOOZAJIMMY CLIFF — AUG. 6 AT LOLLAPALOOZATHE BLACK KEYS — AUG. 6 AT LOLLAPALOOZALADY GAGA — AUG. 6 AT LOLLAPALOOZASTARS — AUG. 7 AT LOLLAPALOOZAMETRIC — AUG. 7 AT LOLLAPALOOZASOCIAL DISTORTION — AUG. 7 AT LOLLAPALOOZAEDWARD SHARPE & THE MAGNETIC ZEROS — AUG. 7 AT LOLLAPALOOZAFRIGHTENED RABBIT — AUG. 8 AT LOLLAPALOOZATHE ARCADE FIRE — AUG. 8 AT LOLLAPALOOZATHE ARCADE FIRE — AUG. 8 AT LOLLAPALOOZAWANDA JACKSON — AUG. 27 AT FITZGERALD’SIGGY & THE STOOGES — AUG. 29 AT THE RIVIERATHEE OH SEES — SEPT. 16 AT LINCOLN HALLJUSTIN TOWNES EARLE — SEPT. 18 AT LINCOLN HALLBONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY — SEPT. 28 AT RONNY’SBONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY — SEPT. 29 AT LINCOLN HALLGUIDED BY VOICES — OCT. 13 AT THE RIVIERATHE VASELINES — OCT. 28 AT LINCOLN HALLMONARCH — OCT. 31 AT THE HIDEOUTMIYA MASAOKA’S “LED KIMONO,” NOV. 20 AT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHCIAGOGRINDERMAN — NOV. 22 AT THE RIVIERA THEATREGRINDERMAN — NOV. 22 AT THE RIVIERA THEATREGRACE POTTER & THE NOCTURNALS — DEC. 4 IN THE CHICAGO BLUEGRASS & BLUES FESTIVAL AT THE CONGRESS THEATEREDWARD SHARPE & THE MAGNETIC ZEROS — DEC. 4 IN THE CHICAGO BLUEGRASS & BLUES FESTIVAL AT THE CONGRESS THEATERTHE FLAT FIVE — DEC. 10 AT THE HIDEOUT
EBONY BONES — FEB. 6 AT GREEN DOLPHIN STREETROBBIE FULKS — FEB. 8 AT THE HIDEOUTTINARIWEN — FEB. 28 AT THE OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSICTHE IKE REILLY ASSASSINATION — MARCH 1 AT SCHUBAS A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW — MARCH 3 AT SCHUBASMUCCA PAZZA — MARCH 6 AT ST. PAUL’S CULTURAL CENTEREFTERKLANG — MARCH 8 AT LINCOLN HALLWOODS — MARCH 15 AT LINCOLN HALLPERE UBU — MARCH 14 AT LINCOLN HALLJANELLE MONÁE — MARCH 29 AT SCHUBASSERENA-MANEESH — MARCH 31 AT THE BOTTOM LOUNGEFANFARLO — APRIL 7 AT LINCOLN HALLWHITE MYSTERY — APRIL 17 AT PERMANENT RECORDSJÓNSI — APRIL 28 AT THE VICDELTA SPIRIT — APRIL 30 AT THE KALYX CENTER, MONTICELLO, ILLINOISELEVENTH DREAM DAY — MAY 2 AT THE HIDEOUTCONDO FUCKS — MAY 16 AT THE HIDEOUTMONO — MAY 22 AT THE EMPTY BOTTLEBESNARD LAKES — MAY 24 AT THE PRITZKER PAVILIONTHE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH — MAY 28 AT LINCOLN HALLANDRE WILLIAMS — MAY 29 AT SCHUBASCOCOCOMA — JUNE 5 AT DO-DIVISION STREET FESTWARPAINT — JUNE 6 AT DO-DIVISION STREET FESTYAKUZA — JUNE 5 AT THE BEAT KITCHENYAKUZA — JUNE 5 AT THE BEAT KITCHENSHE & HIM — JUNE 7 AT THE PRITZKER PAVILIONMATMOS & SO PERCUSSION — JUNE 12 AT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGOSUPERCHUNK — JUNE 20 AT THE TASTE OF RANDOLPH STREETCARIBOU — JULY 12 AT THE PRITZKER PAVILIONROBYN — JULY 16 AT THE PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVALTITUS ANDRONICUS — JULY 17 AT THE PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVALLCD SOUNDSYSTEM — JULY 17 AT THE PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVAL
Earlier this year, I contributed a short article to the Chicago Reader’s “Best of Chicago” issue about The Flat Five, naming this local group the “Best Cover Band That Plays One Gig a Year.” At least, that has been this group’s performance pattern since mid-2007. Each December, this super group of singers and players convene for one night of performances at the Hideout. This year, that blessed night arrived on Friday (Dec. 10), with two sets at the Hideout. But as it happens, the Flat Five are going to play at least one more show this winter, Jan. 7 at Evanston Space. As I wrote in the Reader, it sure would be nice if that Flat Five played more often.
Who are the Flat Five? Even if you don’t know the band name, you may recognize the names of some of the members: Kelly Hogan, Nora O’Connor, Scott Ligon, K.C. McDonough and Gerald Dowd. For these gigs, Alex Hall ably filled in for Dowd on drums, adding some accordion, too. (Dowd is on tour, so he wasn’t available.) While they all have ties to the alt-country scene, what they do in the Flat Five is more like a combination of supper-club cabaret with rock cover band. Beautiful harmonies and a quirky, smart selection of songs originally written by people such as Harry Nilsson, the Beach Boys, the Free Design, Spanky and Our Gang, XTC alter-ego the Dukes of Stratosphear, the Zombies and Bobby Hebb. (Plus a few songs by Scott Ligon’s brother, Chris Ligon.) The Flat Five practiced a repertoire of about 45 songs this time, and they spread out quite a few of those over the two sets Friday night, with just a few repeats.
As in past years, it was a true delight to hear these voices joining together on songs such as “Sundays Will Never Be the Same,” “Kites Are Fun” and “This Will Be Our Year.” And how many other “cover bands” do a “four-fer” of songs by Nilsson? There was rock, jazz, ballads, country, even a little bit of gospel. And it sounded glorious.
On first listen, the new album by the 1900s, Return of the Century, sounds not quite as lush as the Chicago group’s earlier orchestral pop. But it doesn’t take long for these 11 songs to reveal their catchy little intricacies. This is a beautiful pop record — pop in the old-fashioned style, with well-crafted melodies and arrangements packed into songs lasting just a few minutes each, with the sort of love-song lyrics that seem like poetic glimpses into someone’s diary. The 1900s have gone through some lineup changes since putting out their debut, Cold & Kind, in 2007, but the band still has three great vocalists — Edward Anderson,Caroline Donovan and Jeanine O’Toole — and the blend of those voices continues to define the sound of the 1900s. Violinist Andra Kulans and bassist Charlie Ransford are still with the band, too, doing the crucial work of filling out the bright sound.
The new songs sounded strong when the 1900s played Friday (Dec. 3) at the Empty Bottle. In fact, while Return of the Century is a bit on the mellow side, these songs had more rock in them live — partly because Anderson added a touch more fuzz to his guitar lines. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen the 1900s over the last several years, and they haven’t failed yet to put on a good performance. It was fabulous to see them in action again. www.myspace.com/1900s
Longtime Chicago soul singer Syl Johnson’s been getting a lot of attention the past month, thanks to the Numero Group’s release of the wonderful six-LP and four-CD box set Complete Mythology. If you haven’t read or heard any of the press coverage, it’s all well worth your time. Johnson also put on a terrific show last Saturday (Nov. 27) at the Old Town School of Folk Music. More on that in a minute.
One impression you get from reading about Johnson is how challenging of an interview he can be, given his tendency to quickly jump from one subject to another. Peter Margasak described this particularly well in his Chicago Reader cover story, “The Real Syl”. And the Chicago Sun-Times’ Dave Hoekstra captures this bizarre quote from Johnson as he ostensibly answers a question about his classic (or should-be-classic) tune, “Is It Because I’m Black”:
“I was saying a woman doesn’t make as much as a man if they’re on the same job. The man don’t mean no harm. In fact, the holy Quran says man is a step above the woman. That’s true — in some spots. To make a long story short, I had squirrels in my eaves. I had to go out to Addison to get a squirrel trap. I glued the nuts in there. They’re very smart animals. But I got ’em. And every last one was a male. Isn’t that incredible?”
Um… OK.
Yesterday, The New York Times jumped onto the Syl Johnson bandwagon with another story. Echoing the other journalists, Ben Sisario noted: “In conversation, Mr. Johnson is as tricky to follow as the twists in his career. Alternately shouting and cooing into the phone, he made bold declarations like “I am a multifaceted genius” and told long stories about the old record business that ended with his victimization at the hands of ineffective promo men. He sang snippets from his songs and blew bluesy harmonica melodies.”
The Numero Group posted a transcript Sisario sent the record label of the first part of his phone conversation with Johnson:
Syl (picking up the phone, semi-shouting): “….now what’s the problem?”
Me: Uh, hi, is this Syl Johnson?
“Yeah, this is he.”
This is Ben Sisario from the New York Times.
(shouting) “Who is this?”
My name is Ben Sisario. I’m calling from the New York Times.
“Oh yeah! I’ve been looking for your call. How do you spell it?”
S-I-S-A-R-I-O.
“What’s the first name?”
Ben.
“Ben?”
Yes, sir.
“Like Ben….?” [I think he was starting to sing the Michael Jackson song, but at the time I didn’t catch that.]
Like Benjamin Franklin.
(laughs) Oh wow—that’s on the what, dollar bill and shit? Who on the dollar? George Washington. Benjamin Franklin on the what? Ten?
He’s on the hundred.
Oh! That’s the shit I like, the hundred! (laughs)
How are you?
“I’m cool and the gang, man.”
Now, getting back to the concert Johnson performed last week at the Old Town School. The evening had a celebratory feeling, as Johnson was finally getting more widespread recognition for the great music he’d recorded years ago after spending a long time in relative obscurity. The set included some of the tracks that the Numero Group dug up for the box set — songs that Johnson barely remembered recording and had apparently never performed live. “I’ve never heard this before in my life, I swear,” he said before one song.
Otis Clay sang a bit with the 14-piece band, and Gene Chandler of “Duke of Earl” fame made a surprise appearance, but Johnson was the center of attention almost all night, dressed in a sharp red suit and showing few signs of age in his vocals as he sang great numbers like “Is It Because I’m Black?” and “Take Me to the River.” The band, especially the horn section, did not seem completely rehearsed, having some trouble early on knowing exactly when to end a song, but that just added to the loose, jam-session vibe of the music. It was a little odd, however, when the horn section packed up before the encore, prompting Johnson to exclaim, “Shit, I ain’t got no band with me!”
Based on what I’d read about Johnson, I expected he would probably deliver a speech of some sort during the show — and he more than fulfilled that expectation with a long statement before the final song. He complained about not getting royalties from the old records he’d made for the Twilight and Twinight labels and going to court to get money for the samples of his music that turned up in numerous hip-hop tracks.
“It took me 40 years to get my shit back,” he said. His advice to other musicians? “Cut a deal with a record company, but not your knees, because you will get fucked.” But when it came to the Numero Group, he had nothing but praise. “They’re and they’re straight,” he said. “I never got a penny until this Numero Group. … They’re the first people after 40 years to give me a royalty check for fucking Twilight-Twinight Records.”
The band finally had to nudge Johnson to play one more song, and he closed the night with “Sock It to Me.” What a memorable night it was.
The Nov. 29 issue of The New Yorker has a wonderful essay on Keith Moon’s drumming by literary critic James Wood. Reading this appreciation of Moon’s insanely great drumming made me think of the following article, which I wrote in 2007 for Pioneer Press Newspapers, looking back on two concerts the Who performed in the northwest suburbs in the late ’60s. There are many musicians I’d love to travel back in time to see — to see them when they were their prime or when they played to small crowds before they became huge stars. Near the top of my fantasy list: The Who in the 1960s or early ’70s.
The Who at the First Monterey International Pop Festival, just a few days after their concert at the Cellar in Arlington Heights.
ONCE UPON A TIME, a brash young rock band from England descended on Chicago’s northwest suburbs, smashing guitars and making a loud and rebellious racket. Forty years later, fans vividly remember when the Who came to town. The Who’s earliest U.S. concerts included a June 15, 1967, stop at the Cellar in Arlington Heights on and a July 31, 1968, show at the New Place between Cary and Crystal Lake.
Paul Sampson, now a Crystal Lake resident, owned the Cellar, a teen club at the corner of Salem and Davis streets that hosted concerts by Chicago bands such as the Shadows of Knight as well as touring acts like Cream. The building is now an auto repair shop, not far from the Arlington Heights post office.
“The most distinct thing that I remember about the Who was Peter Townshend coming to my office,” Sampson says. “He says, ‘I can’t go on. I’ve got guitar-string problems.’” Sampson recalls thinking that Townshend was “a little spoiled,” a quality common in that era’s rock stars. “I thought, ‘Give me a break,’” Sampson says. “Needless to say, I let him know that he wouldn’t be paid if he didn’t go on. It just doesn’t work that way. I guess he found it within himself to go out and take care of whatever the issues were.”
John Sennett, who now lives in Schaumburg, was a 13-year-old Arlington Heights kid when he went to see the Who that night. “I had all their albums, including their monumental first, My Generation,” Sennett says. “My brother Michael was in a band called the Reejuns. They played some of the Who songs, so I was quite in touch with the Who. They were very ‘tough’ at the time. A street band, singing songs of the street, of the youth.”
A critic for the Chicago Tribune noted that the Thursday night concert got started late, after 20 minutes of “electronic troubles.” The Who ended up playing for only 15 minutes, the newspaper reported, “but it was sweet and loud.”
Sampson doubts the concert was that short. “No, no, I do not recall that,” he says. “I’m pretty sure if they had gone on for 15 minutes, there would have been reservations at the end. … Generally, when a group came in, they were contracted for 45 minutes. The total onstage routine … had to be close to that.”
Kirby Bivans, an Evanston musician in a band called the Other Half, was in the audience. Answering questions by e-mail from his current home in Switzerland, he recalled: “Pete Townshend was having problems with his amplifier and they had a little roadie who was scurrying back and forth behind the amplifiers to try to fix the problem. Pete’s solution was to ram his guitar neck into the amplifiers and sometimes he would knock them over, causing the roadie to cover his head and tried to get away; it was both shocking and comical. We would see the roadie run back to the front of the building and get another amplifier top and bring it back and connect it, only to have it malfunction again causing Pete to ram his guitar neck one more time into it. And sometimes Pete would just throw his guitar neck as high as he could and it would get caught in the chicken wire, which was only about three feet above his head. That would cause him to get really angry and he started pulling it down.”
Sennett says the Cellar’s acoustics basically consisted of noise echoing off concrete walls. “That’s the way we liked it,” he says. “Hard guitar chords and tough vocals along the tracks, in a warehouse.” He saw Sampson looking through the glass window of the Cellar’s control booth, which was above the crowd. Sennett remembers Sampson looking “elated.”
“They were really loud,” Sampson says. “It was ‘bang, crash, bang, crash.’ It was a bit of smasheroo-type thing. I don’t know how much musical value one got out of that, but it became one heck of an act. That’s what they were famous for.” Sennett remembers “bass and drums pounding till the walls shook.”
As the Who finished their set, Townshend smashed his guitar. “Their last song was ‘My Generation’ of course, and during the song the little roadie lit some smoke bombs and we all started choking,” Bivans said. “Someone opened the fire doors and we all tried to get out as fast as we could, along with the Who. The band jumped into a waiting black Cadillac limousine and drove away as fast as they could.
“After the show, the guitar player in my band came up to me, and I said to him, ‘I just ran into Keith Moon.’ He said, ‘Far out! Did he say anything to you?’ I said, ‘No I really ran into him; he almost knocked me over trying to get out!’”
After the concert, a fan asked Townshend what he would use for his guitar the following night. “Glue it back together,” he responded, according to the Tribune.
The next day, the Who played the first of two nights at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, followed by the First Monterey International Pop Festival that Sunday, which D.A. Pennebaker filmed for the documentary Monterey Pop.
Sennett says the experience of seeing the Who at the Cellar had a lasting impact on him. “Their pounding chords and disruptive nature drove my personality throughout my youth,” he says. “Playing in a small venue like the Cellar made the Who one of us — no different, except they knew how to play excellent, earth-shattering music.”
Paul Wertico, an acclaimed jazz drummer who lives in Skokie, was a student at Cary-Grove High School when the Who came back to the area for another concert in July 1968. Wertico was already a fan, especially of Moon’s drumming. The Who played in the courtyard of a small club called the New Place, which was in an unincorporated area between Cary and Crystal Lake, on Route 31 less than a mile south of Northwest Highway. After the opening bands finished playing, the audience waited, anxiously wondering where the Who were. Their equipment was onstage, but there was no sign of the band.
“I was standing maybe three feet from the stage, and all of a sudden, a helicopter lands in back of the fence, and they hop over the fence,” Wertico says. “There was a mad crush to the front of the stage.”
Recalling the Who’s famous personas, Wertico says, “I remember (John) Entwistle being really staid and just looking out. He was watching Keith and he was really playing. The other three guys were going completely ape. Roger Daltrey’s twirling the microphone. He’s got tape on the microphone so it doesn’t fall off. And Townshend’s doing all those windmills. Keith broke so many drumsticks. We were wondering if they were broke to begin with, because it was so ridiculous the number of sticks he broke during that performance. Is he using sticks that were cracked already?”
The Who were so loud that they knocked out the power seven times that night, and each time, Keith Moon continued drumming as the electricity went out. Then came the smashing finale.
“All of a sudden, Townshend put his guitar through one of the high-watt amplifiers,” Wertico says. “And Daltrey’s doing the same thing, taking his mike stand and destroying stuff. And Keith’s knocking over everything. Part of Pete Townshend’s guitar landed right in front of me, and this big guy who worked for the Who just jumped and grabbed it. It was so exciting, it was just unbelievable.”
The show left a big impression on Wertico. “The thing that blew my mind was they went through that whole thing of trashing their equipment in a place like that,” he says. “That’s amazing to me. You’d think they’d just save that for the big shows. They did not go on autopilot. They could have been playing for a million people that night. It was stunning, the amount of energy and the amount of joy. That’s what made me want to be a musician, that spirit.”
The concert by Grinderman Monday (Nov. 22) at the Riviera was one of the best I’ve seen this year. Not that this was surprising. Nick Cave hasn’t disappointed me yet in the five times I’ve seen him in concert. Is it possible Cave’s actually become more of a live wire as he’s gotten older? He certainly seems completely uninhibited as he commands the stage.
Monday’s concert was an improvement over the exciting but too short 2007 set by Grinderman at Metro. Now that Cave and his Grinderman mates have two strong albums’ worth of material to draw from, they were able to put on a true full-length concert. Warren Ellis, he of the long and shaggy beard, often went wild on his guitars and violin, making searing hot noises, the sort of solos that are more about one big, scratchy sound than the individual notes. Cave often played guitar, too (something he doesn’t usually do when he’s touring with the full Bad Seeds lineup), as well as grinding out some grimy-sounding notes on the keyboard. But more than anything else, Cave was pushing himself up against the crowd, letting the fans in front touch with him their hands as he spouted his funny, vulgar, erudite and/or raunchy lyrics.
Grinderman’s albums are almost but not quite non-stop rock, and the show was similar, whipping up even more intensity. Cave let out a few more blood-curdling screams than he does in the studio, and his bandmates sang the call-and-response backup vocals like people yelling for help in an emergency. Like a lot of Cave’s music, the Grinderman songs are rooted in the blues, but Cave and his cohort make a twisted, punk sort of blues.
Released this fall on Thrill Jockey, Barn Owl’s album Ancestral Star is a strong collection of instrumental rock — well, it’s instrumental if you don’t count the wordless vocals that blend in with the guitars on some tracks. The San Francisco duo played Sunday night (Nov. 21) at the Hideout in Chicago, making an awesome roar that was a few notches louder than most Hideout shows. One difference between Barn Owl as a studio band and a live act: The record is notable for how short the tracks are, despite their often epic qualities, but in concert Barn Owl played the full set with barely a pause — making its music sound more like one long piece. And while the album features occasional touches of instruments other than guitars, Sunday night was all about the guitars, with Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras playing off each other’s progressions to create a dark, brooding symphony of noise. www.myspace.com/barnowlband
PHOTOS OF BARN OWL
The opening acts — three of them! — were well matched with Barn Owl. David Daniell and High Aura’d played similar instrumental guitar music, while Scott Tuma and his band (including Emmett Kelly and Jim White) stretched out Americana folk rock into lingering, atmospheric jams.
The Creative Music Summit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago certainly lived up to its name — at least on the one night I was able to attend, Saturday (Nov. 20), a concert that doubled as the 15th anniversary of the Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival. Despite the “jazz” label, this concert was far-ranging and inventive, combining several different strains of music and performance.
The first half of the concert featured Miya Masaoka’s “LED Kimono.” Masaoka played the koto, a traditional Japanese instrument with plucked strings that sounds somewhat like a harp, as well as making sounds with a laptop and electronics. Meanwhile, Arnold Davidson recited text from Luigi Russolo’s “The Art of Noise” in the original Italian. But the focus of attention was Mariko Masaoka-Drew, who stood center-stage with her head covered by a horse’s-head mask. She wore a kimono with LED lights in one sleeve, striking poses throughout the performance. The music was tinkly and abstract — not often offering the listener anything solid to grasp onto. But considered as a piece of performance art — an audio and visual spectacle — “LED Kimono” was pretty interesting. That horse mask and kimono created an unsettling image.
PHOTOS OF MIYA MASOAKA’S “LED KIMONO”
The second half of the concert featured Francis Wong and an ensemble he put together called Legends and Legacies. As the name suggests, the music drew on Asian traditions even as it explored new musical territory. The first piece was “FLUX,” created by percussionist-singer-dancer Dohee Lee. It unfolded like some mysterious, ancient ritual, beginning with dancer Sherwood Chen sitting cross-legged and playing with a bunch of small, thin wooden sticks. Building over the course of what seemed to be several movements, “FLUX” climaxed with Lee dancing and clapping cymbals together.
The ensemble also played Wong’s piece “Shanghai Stories,” which he said was inspired by the stories of his father and grandfather about their days living in Shanghai, including the work they did as jockeys. And then the concert concluded with Wong’s arrangement of “Beyond the Bridge” by the late Chicago jazz legend Fred Anderson.
Throughout all of these pieces, Wong’s Legends and Legacies played a mix of jazz elements (including singing by Dee Alexander and woodwinds by Wong, Ed Wilkerson and Mwata Bowde, violin by Jonathan Chen and bass by Tatsu Aoki) with Asian instruments (taiko drumming by Amy Homma, drumming by Dohee Lee and shamisen by Aoki), as well as avant-garde classical and drone music. The way these various forms of music melded together was impressive and sometimes dramatic.
The Vaselines don’t sound like a band that skipped 21 years in between albums. Until last year’s reunion tour, which included a wonderful show at Metro in Chicago, the Scottish group hadn’t played in two decades. Led by Frances McKee and Eugene Kelly, the Vaselines played old songs that still sounded fresh, including the classic “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,” while displaying a great sense of humor.
Since last year’s reunion concert, the Vaselines have released an album of new songs — actually, only the second full-length album the band has ever put out. Sex With an X, recently issued by Sub Pop, is a rare example of a reunited band writing and recording great songs that stand up well to the group’s original output. The new record sounds more polished than the old ones, but they’re in the same spirit and style.
The Vaselines were back in Chicago this week, playing Thursday (Oct. 28) at Lincoln Hall. It was another fine concert, and this time, the band had some new material to play. The Vaselines played six songs from the new album, including a couple of the catchiest songs anyone has put out this year: “I Hate the 80’s” and “Mouth to Mouth.” It would have been nice to hear “My God’s Bigger Than Your God,” too, but the half-dozen new tunes sounded strong next to the 16 Vaselines oldies in the set list.
The stage banter was hilarious and charming, just as it was last year, with McKee smiling as she made sarcastic remarks about “shagging,” while Kelly mostly played the hapless straight man.
The originally scheduled opening act, Dum Dum Girls, cancelled their appearance, which was disappointing, but the replacement, New York guitar-and-drums duo Schwervon, turned out to be a good surprise, with a lively set of songs. And then, as if making up for the lack of Dum Dum Girls, the Vaselines finished off their encore with an energetic rendition of their old song, “Dum Dum.”
SET LIST: Oliver Twisted / Monsterpussy / I Hate the 80’s / The Day I Was a Horse / Sex With an X / Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam / The Devil’s Inside Me / Molly’s Lips / Slushly / Poison Pen / Bitch / Such a Fool / No Hope / Rory Rides Me Raw / Ruined / Son of a Gun / Let’s Get Ugly / Mouth to Mouth / Dying For It (The Blues) / ENCORE: Sex Sux (Amen) / You Think You’re a Man / Dum Dum
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan have recorded three albums together, but they’ve never toured the United States as a duo until now. They finally made their Chicago debut Friday night (Oct. 22) at Lincoln Hall. Campbell used to sing and play cello in Belle and Sebastian; Lanegan has sung with numerous rock bands over the years, including the Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age, the Gutter Twins and the Twilight Singers (not to overlook his solo music, including the excellent 2004 album Bubblegum). Together, they sing chilled-out duets, with Campbell soft, wispy vocals whispering alongside the gruff half-spoken word that seem to be emerging from deep inside Lanegan’s chest. Their sound owes a lot to the 1960s records by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and other musical acts over the years that have featured contrasting male-female vocal mixes. It’s enticing and beautiful, if somewhat sleepy, music.
That was exemplified with the stunning performance that opened Friday’s concert, the song “We Die and See Beauty Reign” (which also opens the third and latest record by Campbell and Lanegan, Hawk). Backed by a band of four musicians, the two singers performed the song in super-hushed tones, and the audience watched in utter silence. It was almost spooky how quiet it was. On their records, Campbell and Lanegan sound like lovers or friends whispering secrets to each other. That’s how they sounded in concert, too, although they didn’t look like that. The two spent most of the show, standing at their microphones, not moving around a great deal. They sometimes glanced across the stage at each other — Lanegan squinting or cocking his eyebrow — but didn’t interact a whole lot beyond that. But most of these songs are so low-key that the laid-back performance style seemed appropriate.
Midway through the concert, some audience members suddenly grew rowdy. A few guys yelled out comments about how sexy Campbell is — which she did her best to ignore. The rude shouting was an unwelcome disruption of the concert’s enchanting mood.
PHOTOS OF ISOBEL CAMPBELL AND MARK LANEGAN
The opening act was Willy Mason, an impressive singer-songwriter, who played solo-acoustic. He also made an appearance during the Campbell-Lanegan set, singing three songs with Campbell. (He also appears on a couple of tracks on Hawk.) The dynamic between Mason and Campbell was quite different from that between Lanegan and Campbell — he has more vocal range than Lanegan, and more of a country-folk sound. His mini-set brought some nice variety to the concert. www.myspace.com/isobelcampbell /www.isobelcampbell.com www.myspace.com/marklanegan / www.marklanegan.com www.myspace.com/willymason / http://willymason.com
Avi Buffalo started out as the musical stage name of singer-songwriter-guitarist Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg, which played Wednesday (Oct. 20) at Schubas. Still, Zahner-Isenberg was clearly the focus of attention and the key creative force on the stage. Avi Buffalo played a cool set of songs from its self-titled debut album, which came out in April on Sub Pop. In both his singing and his guitar playing, Zahner-Isenberg displays tremendous creativity. His melodies sometimes jump and twist like a Shins or XTC tune, and his falsetto singing is also in the same realm as the Shins’ James Mercer. Drummer Sheridan Riley’s percussion artfully filled in the spaces in Zahner-Isenberg’s songs. As crafty as those songs are, the live performance by Avi Buffalo was refreshingly simple and straightforward, without a lot of sonic effects to dress up the intriguing music. www.myspace.com/avibuffalo avibuffalomusic.com
PHOTOS OF AVI BUFFALO
The opening acts were Whisker Music and New Ruins, both of whom play roots rock. I especially liked the set by Whisker Music, a Chicago band that released a self-titled debut EP last year, reminding me of alt-country by groups such as the Blacks.
By his own admission, Sufjan Stevens has been uncertain about what musical directions to pursue since his 2005 popular and critical breakthrough, Illinois. It’s not as if he’s been silent; his orchestral suite The BQE was an impressive demonstration of his sophisticated composition techniques. His new album, Age of Adz, is a bold attempt to make a dramatic break from the folk-rock that made Stevens music. Or is it a desperate, overwrought attempt to do something different? The new songs aren’t without merit, but too many of them are weighted down by too many layers of electronic bleeps and textures. The problem isn’t that Stevens has gone electronic. It’s just that his new songs are built up with such labored arrangements that the various instruments often seem to be clashing against one another. Perhaps that’s the intended effect, but it makes for some rather weary listening. (Stevens also released an “EP,” All Delighted People, which is actually longer than most albums.)
Backed by 10 musicians and singers, Stevens focused on these new songs for most of his concert Friday night (Oct. 15) at the Chicago Theatre. At a few points, he all but apologized to the audience for playing the new stuff. It was impressive to see the musicians pulling off these complicated songs live, but the songs still didn’t really click. The drawn-out “Impossible Soul” culminated (as it does on the record) with Stevens singing Auto-Tuned vocals, which just felt like a bad joke. (Stevens sarcastically introduced the song as “the adult-contemporary mini-series song,” which wasn’t too far off the mark.)
The highlights of the show were those moments when Stevens played acoustic guitar, banjo or piano. After a long wait for some songs from Illinois, the audience finally heard the band play “Chicago.” And then came an all-Illinois encore, with Stevens playing four songs with minimal accompaniment. It was a great reminder of what made Stevens’ music so compelling in the first place — and a stark contrast with the bulk of the music he’d just played. Before closing the show with his haunting song about serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Stevens thanked the audience for being “very patient.”
The opening act — and also a member of Stevens’ band — was singer-songwriter DM Stith. It was odd to see Stith playing in such a huge room, not too many months after seeing him play at a little Chicago art gallery. He sat by himself now on the dark Chicago Theatre stage, playing an acoustic guitar and using looping pedals to create a spooky atmosphere. His set was captivating, but too short — only four songs.
SET LIST: Seven Swans / Too Much / Age of Adz / Heirloom / I Walked / Now That I’m Older / Vesuvius / Futile Devices / Get Real Get Right / The Owl and the Tanager / Impossible Soul / Chicago / ENCORE: Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois / Decatur, or Round of Applause for Your Stepmother / Casimir Pulaski Day / John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
Some people say it isn’t cool to wear a T-shirt for a band when you’re at a concert by that band. Showing too much team spirit, perhaps? Well, it might have been a bit nerdy, but I wore a Guided By Voices T-shirt Wednesday night (Oct. 13) when the reunited band played at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre. It was a T-shirt I bought on the night of the final Guided By Voices concert — well, it was supposed to be the final concert, anyway. That was on New Year’s Eve 2004, a long, sprawling affair that saw Robert Pollard bidding a boozy farewell to his longtime bandmates. A very memorable night (which I blogged about here — please pardon a few of the broken links on that page).
The mega-prolific Pollard has continued cranking out solo albums and recordings with an almost bewilderingly long list of bands since then, and I have to admit that I’ve lost track of Pollard’s prodigious output. But when Pollard announced he was getting the boys back together for a short reunion tour, I was eager to relive the GBV experience. And this was the “classic” lineup from the early 1990s period when I first discovered and fell in love with the band, playing just songs from those years.
As the group played Wednesday at the Riv, it reminded me of the first time I saw GBV, in 1995 at Lounge Ax. There was Pollard in the center of stage, jumping around, kicking up his legs and twirling his mike like, well, Roger Daltry. Meanwhile, guitarist Mitch Mitchell and bassist Greg Demos were jumping around a fair amount themselves. In the small confines of the Lounge Ax, I remember feeling the sensation that the band was rushing toward the audience the entire time it was playing. The guys were playing on a bigger stage this time, without that feeling of small-club claustrophobia, and they were clearly older — but the energy and spirit hadn’t changed all that much.
Like many of the GBV concerts in the days of old, this one wasn’t perfect. At some moments, the band sounded sloppy. And there were a few lulls. But when things clicked, it sounded great, quickly pouncing on one great song after another. Pollard named almost every song before the band launched into it — a habit he said he was once berated for, by another musician he didn’t name. The crowd, clearly packed with some fervid GBV followers, responded with enthusiastic hand-waving and singing when the group played its most beloved songs, such as “Echos Myron” and “Game of Pricks.”
It was really nice to see a GBV concert with Tobin Sprout in the lineup, since Sprout used to be the band’s second voice, always singing a few songs on each album. More laid back than his fellow band members, Sprout nevertheless seemed to be enjoying himself, smiling as he played rhythm guitar and occasionally stepping up to the mike for songs such as “14 Cheerleader Cold Front” and “Awful Bliss.”
Filling out the reunited lineup was drummer Kevin Fennell. Pollard joked about how much trouble he had finding some of these guys to reunite the band. Where did he find Sprout? “He was swimming in the Great Lakes,” Pollard claimed. “We got them all back,” he said. “We’re the Blues Brothers.”
While Wednesday’s show wasn’t nearly as much as a marathon as that 2004 farewell show, the band did deliver 39 songs, including three encores. The songs came from some of GBV’s best albums: Propeller, Vampire on Titus, Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes Under the Stars — plus a sampling from various EPs and lesser-known records. I was especially excited to hear a couple of my favorite songs, both from an EP called The Grand Hour: “Break Even” and “Shocker in Gloomtown.” Both of those tunes have riffs built around distinctive, odd rhythmic gestures, unfolding like epic classic-rock suites even though they’re only a few minutes long. They’re prime examples of what made GBV so great.
SET LIST: Weed King / Exit Flagger / Cut-Out Witch / Gold Star for Robot Boy / Striped White Jets / Shocker in Gloomtown / Tractor Rape Chain / My Son Cool / Bright Paper Werewolves / My Impression Now / A Good Flying Bird / Watch me Jumpstart / Closer You Are / Awful Bliss / 14 Cheerleader Cold Front / Pimple Zoo / Buzzards and Dreadful Crows / My Valuable Hunting Knife / Echos Myron / Break Even / Gleemer (The Deeds of Fertile Jim) / Lethargy / Hot Freaks / Game of Pricks / The Queen of Cans and Jars / Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory / Motor Away / Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy / I Am a Scientist / ENCORE 1: Postal Blowfish / Jar of Cardinals / Matter Eater Lad / Don’t Stop Now / ENCORE 2: Dodging Invisible Rays / Quality of Armor / Smothered in Hugs / ENCORE 3: Johnny Appleseed / Some Drilling Implied / A Salty Salute
PHOTOS OF GUIDED BY VOICES
The opening act was another Ohio band, Times New Viking — a good fit with Guided By Voices. The group’s songs aren’t as catchy as Pollard and Sprout’s, but they share some of the same to-the-point scrappiness. Times New Viking crammed a lot of songs into its opening set.
I’ve been a member of the Teenage Fanclub fanclub for 19 years now — ever since hearing the Scottish band’s wonderful 1991 album Bandwagonesque — but somehow I’d never seen the group until now. Bandwagonesque was the band’s biggest moment as far as popularity, but Teenage Fanclub has never stopped making highly appealing power-pop with strong melodies and harmonies. All of that came through loud and clear on Tuesday (Oct. 5), when Teenage Fanclub played the first of two concerts at Lincoln Hall in Chicago.
Teenage Fanclub has a fine new record out this year called Shadows, and Tuesday night’s show featured several songs from it, including the catchy “Baby Lee.” The set also drew on records from throughout the band’s two-decade career, though just one from Bandwagonesque, “The Concept” — which sounded positively epic. It was also great to hear “It’s All In My Mind,” from the 2005 record Man-Made, a song that really sticks in your mind.
The affable Norman Blake stood center-stage and handled most of the stage banter, but he’s not the only singer-songwriter in Teenage Fanclub. He was flanked by Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley, and both of them took turns singing lead vocals. Teenage Fanclub finished the show with the very first single the band ever recorded, “Everything Flows,” from the 1990 record A Catholic Education.
SET LIST: Start Again / Sometimes I Don’t Need / The Past / It’s All In My Mind / Don’t Look Back / Baby Lee / Verisimilitude / Shock and Awe / I Don’t Want Control / About You / Sweet Days / Your Love Is the Place / The Concept / Ain’t That Enough / When I Still Have Thee / Sparky’s Dream / ENCORE: Can’t Feel My Soul / I Need Direction / Today Never Ends / Everything Flows
PHOTOS OF TEENAGE FANCLUB
The opening act was Radar Bros., a band on Merge Records with a pleasant-enough if not terribly exciting indie-pop sound.
Eels may be the only band I’ve ever seen with a fake set list. As opening act Jesca Hoop performed before the Eels show Friday (Oct. 1) at Metro, I took pictures of a set list taped to the show, which was labeled “Eels” and appeared to be a list of the songs the singer-songwriter E (a.k.a. Mark Everett) would be performing later with his band, Eels. Well, I was fooled.
While I do admire the music of Eels, I must confess that I’m not all that familiar with the song titles. But as I consulted my pictures of the set list on the back of my camera during the show, I quickly realized something was fishy about those titles. Fellow music photographer and writer Kirstie Shanley (a.k.a. Kirstiecat) then informed me that the fake set list had been replaced with an actual set list as Eels took the stage. I’d missed that moment since I was standing over on the other side of the photo pit. She was kind enough to share her photo of the actual set list with me (in which a few titles were partially obscured).
All of this is yet another example of E’s peculiar sense of humor. I don’t know what all of the fake song titles mean. One includes the stage name of the new Eels guitarist, “P-Boo.” And while Eels actually played a cover of Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” the fake set list included a different Lovin’ Spoonful hit, “Do You Believe in Magic?” And at the point where Eels played George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” the set list indicated, “If on a Winter’s Night.” Also, what’s with all of the songs about summer? During “Summertime,” E opened a cooler and tossed some ice-cream cones and other frozen desserts into the audience.
E played the first few songs either solo or accompanied by just pedal-steel guitar. Then for the rest of the set, Eels were in their rock-show mode. E’s face was barely visible, hidden behind dark shades, a bandana and a mass of facial hair. And the other four musicians, all of them bearded, wore sunglasses as well.
Opening act Hoop’s music still hasn’t clicked with me, and her set didn’t quite win me over. Still, it was tons better than the first act of the night, a ventriloquist comedian whose jokes fell flat with uncomfortable silence. Was that E’s idea, too?
ACTUAL EELS SET LIST: Grace Kelly Blues / What I Have to Offer / End Times / She Said Yeah / Gone Man / Summer in the City / Tremendous Dynamite / In My Younger Days / Paradise Blues / Jungle Telegraph / My Beloved Monster / Spectacular Girl / Fresh Feeling / Dog Faced Boy / That Look You Gave That Guy / Souljacker Part 1 / Talking’ ‘Bout Knuckles / Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues / I Like Birds / Summertime / Looking Up / ENCORE 1: That’s Not Her Way / ENCORE 2: I Like the Way This Is Going
FAKE EELS SET LIST: New Pollution / She Said What? / Gone Baby Gone / Tender Dreams of Love / Beethoven’s Cunt / Not Now / The Name Game / Butter Blues / Gimme a Jingle / Blowing Sunshine (Part 1) / Spectacular Giraffe / Peace Frog / The Book You Gave That Girl / Soul Cake (Part 1) / P-Boo, Baby / Karate Monkey / Roxanne / If on a Winter’s Night / Blowing Sunshine (Part 2) / ENCORE 1: Do You Believe in Magic? / ENCORE 2: Hot Blooded
UPDATE: Thanks to Chris Fairfield for e-mailing me and filling in the gaps on the set list.
The Clean came to Chicago for the first time in some years on Thursday (Sept. 30), playing at the Bottom Lounge. The New Zealand post-punk trio has been making music since 1978 (with some time off now and then along the way). This was the first time I’d ever seen them, and it was a pretty cool experience. When the band switched from guitar to keyboards, the artsier side of its music came out. But the final stretch was more poppy and melodic.
Guitarist David Kilgour left the stage rather abruptly at the end of the main set and then again at the end of the first encore, almost seeming to surprising his band mates, drummer Hamish Kilgour and bassist Robert Scott. It seemed that the band was calling it a night at that point and the Bottom Lounge turned on the house music. But the audience wasn’t ready to leave, giving the Clean a loud and sustained round of applause, and finally the guys came back and played one of their best-known tunes, “Tally Ho!” www.myspace.com/theclean
PHOTOS OF THE CLEAN
THE CLEAN’S SET LIST
The show started out with an energetic set by Chicago’s Mannequin Men, including a whole bunch of new songs. A new album must be in the works — or should be, in any case. www.myspace.com/mannequinmen
The National’s latest record, High Violet, is shaping up as one of my 2010 favorites. Like the band’s previous album, Boxer, it’s an almost perfect distillation of what makes the National so great: moody music with tension boiling just below the surface. The melodies may seem minimalist at first, as Matt Berninger’s conversational baritone spells out the lyrics in small gestures, the tune moving up and down by only a few notes. That first impression is deceiving, and the National’s melodies start burrowing their way into your memory.
The National played a sold-out concert Sunday (Sept. 26) at the Riviera Theatre, which was a fine opportunity for me to catch a full-length show, in contrast to my truncated experience watching the National at Lollapalooza. (Thanks to music blogger www.babystew.com for letting me use his ticket to the Riviera show, which I’d failed to plan for.) The concert drew heavily from High Violet and Boxer, with just a few older songs, including “Abel” and “Daughter of the SoHo Riots” from 2005’s Alligator.
In concert, the National raised the tension level of its most subdued songs. The harmony vocals were especially strong, as several members of the band joined their voices together with Berninger on those unforgettable choruses. The crowd sang along at key moments, too. But Berninger was the focus of attention for most of the night. Berninger began the concert closely hugging his microphone, but as the show went on, he became more animated, bouncing his microphone stand like a toy. During instrumental passages, he paced the stage, raising his clenched fists, like someone fighting off voices in his head. Berninger’s dance is awkward, lacking the typical rock-star moves, but it feels authentic. He seems to be expressing the emotion and energy he’s feeling from these songs in the only way he can. A singular rock-band frontman, he’s fascinating to watch.
It was thrilling how the National’s songs built to dramatic climaxes, and the show ended with an encore featuring three of the best: Another track from Alligator, “Mr. November,” in between two of my favorites from High Violet: “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” and “Terrible Love.” During that final song, Berninger walked out into the audience, singing out in the midst of the crowd’s voices for several minutes. www.myspace.com/thenational / www.americanmary.com (The National website)
The Riviera concert began with a nice opening set by Owen Pallett (the artist formerly known as Final Fantasy). After the National, I ran down to Metro, arriving in time to catch 45 minutes of the concert by Caribou. The psychedelic electronic rock was a cool way to cap off an evening of great music.
More than a year after the death of Jay Bennett, those of us who knew him and his music still feel the loss. Some of his friends, fans and musical collaborators came together Saturday (Sept. 25) at Subterranean for a tribute show. The concert raised funds for the Jay Bennett Foundation, a group started by his brother, Jeff. The foundation aims to support music education. It’s a fitting mission for a foundation named after a brilliant musician who also studied education.
Edward Burch, the other half of the duo Bennett and Burch, was the musical ringleader on Saturday night, backed by an ad hoc ensemble of Bennett buddies calling themselves the Third Verse Quiets. Other performers included David Vandervelde, Ben Clarke, Dorian Taj, Steve Frisbie, members of Dolly Varden, Robbie Hamilton and the Resurrection Hens.
The wide-ranging concert demonstrated the breadth of Bennett’s songwriting, from folk and country to power pop and rock. Highlights included Vandervelde performing “Beer,” the final track on Bennett’s posthumously released album, Kicking at the Perfumed Air. It’s a touching, bittersweet song — seeming at first like something of a novelty or throw-off. On the original recording, Bennett sings in his deep, husky voice: “That first beer, that second beer, the third beer is the best. I love beer, more than the rest.” Yes, it’s a bit of a joke, but Bennett turns into a poignant commentary on drinking and human yearning. Vandervelde played it as more of a rocker, but it was just as wistful.
Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen of Dolly Varden performed a lovely vocal duet on “I Want You Back,” from Bennett’s 2004 album The Beloved Enemy. And the final set by Burch and company included a cool medley of Big Star’s “Try Again” segueing into Bennett and Burch’s “My Darlin’.” It was touching to see Jay Bennett’s niece — the girl for whom he wrote that song — taking part in the festivities as raffle prizes were handed out.
Kicking at the Perfumed Air is available for free download at the Jay Bennett Foundation’s website, but the foundation encourages listeners to make a contribution.
Deerhunter, whose new album Halcyon Digest, is out today, played a “secret” show Saturday (Sept. 25) in Chicago — at least, that’s how it was billed. The promoters leaked out a few clues about the location last week, then revealed the location 48 hours before the show, so it wasn’t exactly top secret. It turned out to be an odd location: the parking lot of the Chicago Tribune printing plant, underneath the Kennedy Expressway overpass. The weather was chilly for the 4 p.m. concert. The ambience was industrial. The sound was echo-heavy, but not all that bad considering the concrete acoustics. Deerhunter played a bunch of songs from the new record, with guitar chords swirling. The band sounded even more fierce during the encore. http://www.myspace.com/deerhunter
Sonny and the Sunsets were the headliners Friday (Sept. 24) at the Empty Bottle, but the main draw for me was opening act Kelley Stoltz — a terrific San Francisco singer-songwriter who also happens to be touring now as the drummer for the Sunsets. The Sunsets played as Stoltz’s backup band for the first time at this gig, and it seemed like they already knew his songs well.
Sonny and the Sunsets are also firmly rooted in the ’60s, and they played an enjoyable set after Stoltz, reprising the summery sound of their show in July at the Pitchfork Music Festival. The set did get a little loose and sloppy at the end, but it had the feeling of a sing-along party. www.myspace.com/sonnythesunsets
Fennesz (a.k.a. Austrian musician Christian Fennesz) doesn’t tour in the U.S. all that often, so his concert last Thursday (Sept. 23) at the Empty Bottle was something of an event for his local fans. Performing solo for most of the set, Fennesz used guitar and laptop to sculpt intricate waves of sound. For the encore he was joined by Chicago guitarist David Daniell and drummer Frank Rosaly, who added more textures to the sonic art. It was almost but not quite a reunion of the concert I saw at the 2009 Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., featuring improvised music by Fennesz, Daniell and drummer Tony Buck of the Necks. Thrill Jockey recently released an excellent recording of that concert under the title Knoxville.
Keeping with the theme of instrumental drone and ambient music, the Sept. 23 show also featured opening sets by Daniell and Rosaly (who were in great form) and the Chicago group Male. (Rosaly played with them, too, making him the constant element in all three sets.)
On Sept. 11, it was possible to see two concerts of daring, challenging music in one evening in downtown Chicago — and I managed to attend both. (I did not take photos at either, however.) First up was the closing day of Sonar Chicago, with Australian-Icelandic musician Ben Frost playing at the Chicago Cultural Center. A short time after Frost finished, the International Contemporary Ensemble (or ICE) performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Sadly, I missed most of the Sonar festival, which seemed like a cool addition to Chicago’s September music lineup. Frost stood alone on the stage inside the Claudia Cassidy Theater, switching between his electric guitar and an array of electronics, including a laptop, as he made unsettling and droning noise. Frost created dissonant, almost overwhelming mountains of sound, including some looping repetitions that seemed to sample an animal’s growl and human breathing — familiar sounds that became strange and menacing in this new context. www.myspace.com/theghostofbenfrost
ICE called its concert “Roots and Return,” since it traced “the web of connections between recent works and the classic pieces that inspired them.” For instance, the first half of the concert featured Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 from 1906, while the second half featured the Chicago premiere of John Adams’ 2007 piece inspired by Schoenberg, Son of Chamber Symphony.
As always, it’s cool to see the flexibility of this ensemble. ICE is an interesting hybrid, sort of like a symphony with a big roster of musicians and sort of like a chamber group, such as a quartet. For each piece that ICE performs, the group pulls a shifting lineup of musicians from that big roster, putting together whatever musicians are required for each composition. An ICE performance might be just a piano solo — or it could be a symphony with a miniature orchestra.
The first composition ICE performed Saturday is a perfect example of the sort of music it’s well-positioned to play: Pierre Boulez’s Memoriale (…explosante-fixe…originel), a 1985 piece for flute and eight instruments. Flutist Claire Chase is ICE’s offstage leader, and she often takes the lead onstage, too. She dominated the Boulez piece, but conductor Jayce Ogren kept the flute and strings in fragile, delicate balance.
Composer Dai Fujikura was present at the concert, and ICE played two new pieces by him, including one that he wrote specifically for the ensemble — called, appropriately enough, ice. Although it was performed without any pauses, it felt like a suite, progressing from one movement and mood to another with some unexpected directions. The opening’s pizzicato strings were eerie, and the climax — or was it a denouement? — was a low, trembling duet between flute and percussion. After intermission, Fujikura answered questions from Chase in an onstage interview, saying that he’s never collaborated so closely with an ensemble on one of his compositions. ICE pianist Cory Smythe also performed Fujikura’s new composition, returning, a sequence of notes that wandered across the keys without much reference, following what seemed to be a strange logic.
The Schoenberg Chamber Symphony and its counterpart by John Adams were high points of the program — although it would take close study to reveal exactly what Adams pulled out of Schoenberg. The strings were nimble during the Schoenberg, with a strong presence of woodwinds, including oboe, bassoon and contrabassoon. The symphony ended with a dramatic punch. Adams’ piece had the cycling, intricate sequences typical of minimalist music. But surprisingly, some woozy, almost romantic melodies emerged at times on top of those music-box patterns.
On Monday night (Sept. 14), Chicago was lucky to receive a visit from the Dø, a French/Finnish indie-pop duo. Schubas was a little bit empty as the opening bands played earlier that night — hey, it was a Monday, and Pavement was playing down at Millennium Park — but the room was about half-full by the time this delightful European act took the stage.
The duo — singer and sometimes guitarist Olivia Merilahti and bassist/multi-instrumentalist Dan Levy — had a guitarist, drummer and roadie for this tour, and the songs sounded fresh and lively. They played some new songs, as well as an appropriately bouncy cover of Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope.”
The Dø, by the way, pronounces its name like “dough,” with a long “o.” The group takes its name from the first note on the “do re mi…” musical scale. The Dø’s debut album, A Mouthful, came out in Europe in 2008, but it did not get an official U.S. release until this year. (An aside: The whole idea of import records seems so obsolete today. Who wants to wait months or even years for a record to get an official release in the U.S. if it’s worth hearing now? File sharing, myspace and amazon.co.uk have practically erased international boundaries, at least as far as release dates go.)
The opening acts were the Wooden Sky, a Toronto band playing likable roots rock, and Dirty Diamond, a Chicago band with three female singers who seem to be aiming for a sort of girl-group party-pop sound.
“Forgive me for going on a bit,” Billy Bragg said, near the end of his concert Friday (Sept. 10) at Dominican University in west suburban River Forest. He had, in fact, gone on a bit. Bragg talked to his audience considerably more than most musicians do. And, yeah, it would’ve been nice to hear maybe another song or two in place of some of those spoken words. But then, it wouldn’t have been a real Billy Bragg performance. Bragg likes to talk. And for the most part, I think Bragg’s fans wanted to hear what he had to say.
Not surprisingly, Bragg — who makes no secret of the fact that he’s a socialist — had some cutting things to say about the current state of American politics. Sipping from a mug of hot tea in between songs, Bragg quipped, “I am simply drinking tea. It is a beverage issue and not a political issue.”
During a monologue about the economic downturn and the government’s response, Bragg said, “A country where the markets make policy is not a democracy.” But he emphasized optimism and working for change over being cynical. “Cynicism is our greatest enemy,” he remarked, later adding: “Woody Guthrie never wrote a cynical song in his life.” Bragg urged his fans to work at persuading other people to take a more progressive, enlightened political outlook. “Only the audience can change the world,” he said.
Oh, and what about the music? Bragg played alone, using an electric guitar for much of the show and an acoustic guitar for several songs — sounding relaxed as he sang many of his most popular tunes in a strong, confident voice. He injected humorous touches in some of the songs, like a White Stripes riff. The Woody Guthrie songs (including two from “Mermaid Avenue”) were wonderful, and “Everywhere” was somber and moving. The encore felt festive, ending with the crowd singing the chorus of “New England.” And then Bragg spent a good amount of time talking with fans and posing for pictures at the merch table.
SET LIST: “To Have and To Not Have” / “The Price I Pay” / “Greetings to the New Brunette (Shirley)” / “Tomorrow” (new song from “Pressure Drop” play) / “I Ain’t Got No Home” (Woody Guthrie cover) / “Sexuality” / “Everywhere” / “The Unwelcome Guest” / “Ingrid Bergman” / “Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key” / “The Fourteenth of February” / “There Will Be a Reckoning” (new song from “Pressure Drop” play) / “No Power Without Accountability” / “The Milkman of Human Kindness” / “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” / “I Keep Faith” / ENCORE: “Tank Park Salute” / “The Saturday Boy” / “New England”
The opening act was Australian singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon, whose music was new to me until I checked out his myspace page last week. I’m quickly becoming a big fan — his folk-rock songs were melodic and often quite humorous, and he was a perfect match with Bragg. www.darrenhanlon.com http://www.myspace.com/darrenhanlon
The Photo Pit page in this week’s Chicago Reader features my pictures from the concert last Sunday (Aug. 29) by Iggy & the Stooges at the Riviera. Click on the image below to see the online version.
After guitarist Ron Asheton died last year, I figured that would be the end of the Stooges reunion. But the band found a suitable way of carrying on, recruiting James Williamson, the guitarist who played with the Stooges on their final album, 1973’s Raw Power — and who co-wrote all of the great songs on that record with Iggy Pop. Williamson dropped out of music after that and spent 30 years in the computer business. If you Google him, one of the top photos that comes up is this one showing him in his business attire:
For the current tour with Iggy & the Stooges, Williamson strapped on his electric guitar once again, and that businessman returned to his roots as a protopunk rocker. Sounded great, too. Williamson was fairly staid as he cranked out that cool guitar riffs. The one “new” guy in the band — venerable ex-Minutmen bassist Mike Watts — was more animated, puffing out his cheeks and occasionally jabbing his bass into his amp.
Iggy Pop showed no signs of slowing down. It’s hard to believe the guy is 63. What energy! He’s still one of the greatest live performers in rock music, and on Sunday night he barely let up for an hour and a half. The Riviera Theatre (where the concert was moved after apparently slow tickets sales for the larger Aragon Ballroom) was crowded, hot and sweaty — slightly uncomfortable, but really, isn’t that the perfect environment for a jolt of raw power?
… Looking back on what I wrote about seeing a SXSW interview with Iggy Pop and Ron and Scott Asheton in 2007, here’s a nugget: Iggy said his stage antics were inspired by the dancing he saw in Chicago clubs when he was gigging as a blues drummer. “I had never seen such raw sexuality than I saw in the blues dancing,” he said, adding that he was also inspired by Big Bird.
April is shaping up as a busy month for concert going, with lots of cool indie-rock shows crowding onto the calendar. Here are a few of the promising concerts coming up in the next week that I recommend seeing.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7
FANFARLO with LAWRENCE ARABIA and ROBERT FRANCIS at Lincoln Hall. The British band Fanfarlo put out one of my favorite records last year, Reservoir, and the group’s live performance in 2009 at Schubas was a joyous, celebratory show. They should be great at Lincoln Hall — especially if they stretch out and play a bit longer. The New Zealand act Lawrence Arabia is also intriguing, with some sunny psychedelic folk-rock, and I believe this is the first chance to see him (a.k.a. James Milne) in Chicago. There’s good word of mouth about opener Robert Francis. Also tonight, TITUS ANDRONICUS is at the Bottom Lounge. I saw Titus Andronicus put on a riveting in-store show last month at Reckless Records, and it’ll be even better in a room where people can actually dance and move around. An intense band that plays songs with a deep sense of history.
THURSDAY, APRIL 8
THE XX are doing two shows at Lincoln Hall. Both are sold out. Good luck getting in if you don’t already have a ticket. WIll this cool, minimalist Brit band live up to the hype? Also on Thursday, THE SINGLEMAN AFFAIR plays at the Hideout. Great psychedelic folk-rock artist from Chicago, always worth seeing.
FRIDAY, APRIL 9
Lots of possibilities on this night: THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS and LANGHORNE SLIM at the Vic. FRED EAGLESMITH at FitzGerald’s. THE SOFT PACK at the Empty Bottle. MI AMI at the Hideout. JAPANDROIDS at Lincoln Hall. Take your pick. Any one of these could be a great show.
SATURDAY, APRIL 10
Another jam-packed night: BILL CALLAHAN (the guy formerly known as Smog) does two shows at the Hideout. MISSION OF BURMA is at the Double Door. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke’s solo project ATOMS FOR PEACE plays the first of two nights at the Aragon. And OWEN PALLETT, the multi-track-looping violinist and singer formerly known as Final Fantasy, plays at Lincoln Hall. His new record, Heartland, is a rich collection of beautiful songs which should sound terrific in concert. And oh, yeah, one of Chicago’s most excellent young garage bands, THE SMITH WESTERNS, are playing at Schubas. And THE BLANK DOGS are playing the Empty Bottle. I’ve never followed that band too closely, but they have a good reputation — and 17 records! So much to do and so little time!
SUNDAY, APRIL 11
If you were busy with one of the other shows on Saturday, this might be the night to catch ATOMS FOR PEACE. I hope Yorke’s music survives the notorious acoustics at the Aragon.
MONDAY, APRIL 12
Maybe a night to rest? Nah. How about catching Robbie Fulks at the Hideout. (I said yesterday that he isn’t playing next Monday, but Fulks himself left a comment on my blog reporting that he is indeed going to perform. Check the Hideout calendar for confirmation.
TUESDAY, APRIL 13
Instead of seeing a concert, how about some poetry? (Or catch some live poetry before you head out to a late show. Poetry slam champion Roger Bonair-Agard, a native of Trinidad who now lives in Chicago, will perform during a poetry reading sponsored by the Society of Midland Authors at the Cliff Dwellers Club, 200 S. Michigan Ave. Admission is free. A social hour with free appetizers and a cash bar begins at 6 p.m., followed by the poetry at 7. (I am president of the Society of Midland Authors’ board.)
1. BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY, March 14 at the Vic. … Beginning in a hush, one song built to a dramatic crescendo, and Oldham looked as if he was being transported by the magic. … it become clear that this was one show where the performer was pouring everything he had into his songs. He did not let up, either. A little while later, as he let the band play an instrumental break in “Even If Love,” Oldham raised his eyes toward the ceiling. He seemed to be shaking all over. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
2. THE FEELIES, June 29 at the Pritzker Pavilion. … a young man danced his way into the empty area between the front row and the stage, twitching with the sort of spastic moves that looked perfect for the jerky sounds of songs from the first Feelies album, Crazy Rhythms. A park security guard led this fellow away, but he came back a minute later and continued dancing. That seemed to open the flood gates, as people jumped to the front area of the pavilion and started twitching along. Feelies lead singer and guitarist Glenn Mercer seemed to revel in the moment, coming out to the edge of the stage for guitar solos inches away from the upraised hands of fans. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
3. VIC CHESNUTT, Nov. 5 at Lincoln Hall. … At moments, Chesnutt was singing and playing all by himself as the audience quietly listened to each and every creak of the guitar strings and bend in his voice, almost like sitting in Chesnutt’s living room and attending an unplugged performance. And then the songs would erupt as the guitars, keyboards and bowed bass came in, making mountainous, majestic chords. And Chesnutt would rear back his head from the microphone and shout his words up to the mountaintop. (And now alas, Chesnutt is no longer with us. The emotional impact of his Dec. 25 death makes the two concerts I saw by Chesnutt in 2009 feel all the more special.) READ THE FULL REVIEW.
4. PJ HARVEY & JOHN PARISH, June 12 at the Riviera. … Even in minimal moments, she seemed like a lively presence on the stage. And then, the contemplative music gave way to outbursts of ferocity — as on the new record’s lacerating title track. Harvey dropped her voice to dramatic depths or let it soar to lovely highs, as the characters from her lyrics seemed to possess her.READ THE FULL REVIEW.
5. ECCENTRIC SOUL REVUE, Nov. 7 at Lincoln Hall. … The evening was a real blast. A younger soul group, JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound, served as the house band, keeping the music going almost nonstop for more than two hours as various singers stepped up to the mike. There was barely a pause as the horns kept blowing and the funky guitar chords kept twitching. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
6. ANDREW BIRD, Dec. 14 at Fourth Presbyterian Church. … The most extraordinary moments of this show were the very quiet ones — Bird making a little clicking noise with his music to build a rhythm track, or plucking at his violin strings. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
7. FANFARLO, Nov. 9 at Schubas. … They play with a sense of communal spirit, switching instruments frequently, adding extra drum beats, raising all their voices high in chorus. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
8. FAIZ ALI FAIZ, June 18 at Pritzker Pavilion. … More often than not, Faiz Ali Faiz sang with such full-on force that his face contorted and turned red with exertion. As he sang, his hands were in constant motion, making gestures that seemed almost like a game of pantomime. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
9. MÚM with Sin Fang Bous and Hildur Gudnadottir, Oct. 28 at Logan Square Auditorium. … Múm’s records have sublime hymn-like harmonies, when it sounds like this is a bunch of Icelanders getting together in a little room somewhere and singing to their heart’s content… And so it was at the concert. There was a lot of joyous singing. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
10. DEAD MAN’S BONES, Oct. 21 at Schubas. … The celebratory show had some of the zany sense of humor and the “let’s try something weird” attitude that animated the Flaming Lips at their best. It was certainly a very memorable night. READ THE FULL REVIEW.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Jesus Lizard, July 17 at the Pitchfork Music Festival Sonic Youth, June 27 at the Riviera The Vaselines and the 1900s, May 16 at Metro The Flat Five, Dec. 11 at the Hideout The Poster Children, Lonely Trailer, the Outnumbered and Cowboy X, May 24 at the Highdive, Champaign St. Vincent, April 9 at the Hideout and June 8 at Pritzker Pavilion Jeff Tweedy, Feb. 14 at the Vic The Dirty Projectors, June 22 at Pritzker Pavilion Os Mutantes, Sept. 27 at Subterranean The Sadies, Nov. 28 at the Hideout Mount Eerie, Nov. 8 at Lakeshore Theater The Vertebrats, Oct. 3 at the Highdive, Champaign Choir of Young Believers, Oct. 26 at Schubas Rural Alberta Advantage and The Love Language, Sept. 26 at Schubas The Fiery Furnaces, July 11 at Millennium Park Oumou Sangaré, July 2 at the Pritzker Pavilion Jonathan Richman and Vic Chesnutt, June 11 at the Empty Bottle
It’s been a quiet month for concerts so far in Chicago. At least, it seems that way. I know I probably could have found a good dozen or more shows worth seeing, but maybe that bone-chilling cold has discouraged me from venturing out too often. That’s my only excuse for missing most of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival at Schubas, which is becoming the official start of the concert year in Chicago.
I did sneak in at the very end of the five-day fest, catching the Jan. 18 show. Headliners Bishop Allen put on a spirited set of their indie pop music. I thoroughly enjoyed one of the opening bands, Tulsa, which has prompted me to get their recordings via emusic. I like what I’ve heard so far – melodic rock, with some the jangly guitar of ’80s indie music, maybe a little bit of power pop. The other acts on the Jan. 18 bill were Vacations, who rattled around a lot of percussion, and the Donkeys, who have a decent sound but seem somewhat lacking as far as the songs themselves. At least, that’s my opinion.
The next night (Jan. 19) I went to see Adele at Park West. My expectations were not all that high, since her CD, 19, strikes me as merely pretty good. But Adele won me over with her impressive voice and her unpretentious personality. Click here to read my review for the Southtown Star newspaper.
On Thursday (Jan. 23) I saw Annuals at the Empty Bottle. Boy, I’m not sure what happened to this band since the last time I saw them. Or maybe my memory of their show from a couple of years ago is clouded with the fog of passing time. I recall enjoying the energy of the Annuals, even if not too many of their songs stuck in my mind after hearing them. Back then, they seemed like one of countless indie-rock bands trying to channel some of that anarchic spirit that animated the Arcade Fire, even if Annuals never really sounded all that much like the Arcade Fire. On Thursday night, however, Annuals suddenly seemed to me like a jam band. Maybe it was the spastic bass lines or just the general vibe of how the band was playing, but it seemed like Annuals had gone through a subtle but profound shift… into a genre of music that generally turns my stomach. It’s one of those musical mysteries I puzzle over: how two songs that are similar on many superficial levels can provoke such different reactions. Beyond the musical theory of how a song is put together and played, attitude seems to play a big role. And the prejudices of the listener. Whatever it was, I was just not into what Annuals were doing on Thursday night, other than a few points when they played some of their older songs with so much jam-band-i-ness. I did enjoy the opening acts. What Laura Says played retro classic rock, harking back to the Allman Brothers. (Hey, aren’t they a jam band, too? Yeah, but it’s not the same thing…) And Jessica Lea Mayfield played some plaintive roots rock.
1. Tom Waits, June 26 at the Fox Theatre, St. Louis. “Waits danced like a marionette last night, allowing some invisible strings to jerk his body to the rhythms of the band…” Review.
2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Sept. 29 at the Riviera. “Cave is a scary sort of preacher, and he prowled the stage with barely concealed sexual energy, his white shirt completely drenched with sweat….” Review.
3. Radiohead, Aug. 1 at Lollapalooza, Grant Park. “Girls in bikinis dance as Yorke sings about the next world war. People whistle and clap whenever Yorke holds a long, high falsetto note. A collective ‘Ahhh!’ goes up each time fans recognize the opening chords of a song…” Review.
4. Randy Newman, Oct. 12 at the Genessee Theatre, Waukegan. “That was just a gray-haired man with an ungainly voice playing a piano by himself up on the Genesee stage Friday night, but it felt like a cast of thousands…” Review.
5. The Ex & Getatchew Mekurya, Aug. 18 at the Pritzker Pavilion. “It was a perfect day, and the music was perfect, too. With the Chicago skyline there at my side and a terrific band right in front of me in the middle of the day on a Monday, I found myself thinking: Why isn’t life always like this?…” Review.
6. Boredoms, March 26 at the Congress Theatre. “All the drumming and sounds abruptly stopped, and all of the musicians paused, their bodies poised to bang away again. The band paused and paused. It was the sort of moment when fans at some concerts will assume that a song is over and start clapping, but everyone at the Boredoms show knew that this moment of silence was part of the music. The vast room was deadly quiet, no one making a sound, except an intake of breath. I could feel the audience recognizing something special in the moment. And then the hammer fell and the drumming resumed with more force than ever…” Review.
7. Neil Young, Dec. 9 at the Allstate Arena. “As soon as Neil Young walked out onto the stage, he launched into the sort of live-wire, feedback-drenched guitar solo you’d normally expect to hear at the climax of a concert… Stomping around the stage with his shaggy gray hair flailing around the balding crest of his head, Young squeezed out his notes as if the energy coming out of those guitar string was charging through his body….” Review.
8. Cat Power, Feb. 10 at the Vic. “Marshall showed a jazz singer’s sense of timing, letting her words drop behind the beat or run ahead of it… She seemed to feel an uninhibited freedom to roam the stage with her peculiar pantomime-like dance moves. She crouched down low as she sang, making gestures with her hands that sometimes acted out the words of the songs – or just reflected one of her fleeting whims. She held her hands in prayer, she flicked her fingers with a fish-like motion, she pretended she was clicking a remote control, and she circled a finger next to her head (the universal sign for ‘crazy’)…” Review.
9. My Bloody Valentine, Sept. 27 at the Aragon. “Fans standing near the stage could feel the floor of the Aragon shaking… It seemed like that chord might never end, but then it suddenly shifted back to the chorus of the song. A minute later, My Bloody Valentine’s musicians put down their guitars and left. There was no encore, and fans may have wondered if they’ll get a chance to see My Bloody Valentine any time in the next 17 years…” Review.
10. Sam Phillips, Sept. 6 at the Old Town School Of Folk Music. “Phillips often turned her eyes upward as she sang, sometimes darting her glance back and forth, and a smirk occasionally played across her lips. She seemed at peace with herself, and maybe a little amused…” Review.
11. Magnetic Fields, March 16 at the Old Town School Of Folk Music. Review.
12. Monotonix, Sept. 20 at the Hideout Block Party. Review.
13. Andrew Bird, Sept. 3 at the Pritzker Pavilion. Review.
14. Thurston Moore and the New Wave Bandits, March 15, at the French Legation Museum, Austin. Review.
15. Frida Hyvönen, Nov. 3 at the Lakeshore Theater. Review.
The Broken West – who used to be called the Brokedown, when I saw them in 2006 at SXSW – have a very good debut album out on the Merge label called I Can’t Go On I’ll Go On, filled with lots of catchy songs in the jangly-guitar, harmony-vocals vein. Somewhere a little outside the realms of power pop, with something of a California sound. They put on a nice set Wednesday night at Schubas, with most of the songs from the debut CD, plus a couple of tracks from their earlier Brokedown EP and one unreleased song. They’re not (yet) the sort of band that makes the songs sound a lot better or more exciting in concert, but they do put on a nice performance. I showed up halfway through an opening set by Probably Vampires, who played tuneful pop music that bounced along to keyboard chords.
Another old Daily Southtown concert review I’m belatedly posting now. I also saw the Arcade Fire concert two nights later, which was nearly as good.
ARCADE FIRE, MAY 18 AT THE CHICAGO THEATRE
The 10 musicians in the Arcade Fire made their entrance Friday night at the Chicago Theatre by strolling up the center aisle through the audience.
And then, the group frequently switched on a set of lights that illuminated the audience instead of the band. The message seemed to be that those rock stars up on the stage are just regular people like everyone else in the theater.
But what extraordinary musicians they are. Other bands may be more virtuosic, but few if any can top the Arcade Fire for playing with reckless passion and almost insane energy.
During the touring that followed the Montreal band’s 2004 debut, “Funeral,” the Arcade Fire quickly established a reputation as one of the world’s best live bands. That reputation is still intact after Friday’s riveting performance.
It was the first of three sold-out shows at the Chicago Theatre for the Arcade Fire, a band that played in front of a much tinier crowd at Chicago’s Empty Bottle just three years. Despite the exponential increase in venue size, the band still shows the same anarchic spirit that animated it when it was playing those early shows.
The Arcade Fire’s second album, “Neon Bible,” is a little more stately and subdued than the debut. It’s a very good record, but one had to wonder if the songs would translate into the same live experience as the “Funeral” songs.
The band has been playing the new songs long enough now that it seems to have figured out ways of taking them up a notch in concert. The audience reacted enthusiastically to the “Neon Bible” songs, clapping and swaying to the beat, but the crowd response got even more intense whenever the band played tracks from “Funeral.”
With violins and horns plus an ever-shifting lineup of instruments, including hurdy-gurdy, mandolin and organ, the Arcade Fire sounded at times like an orchestra or a folk string band, often playing with the spirit of a gospel revival show. Lead vocalist Win Butler sang his heart out, while several other members of the band added force to the songs with their huge chorus of harmony vocals.
During a few of the old songs, multi-instrumentalists Will Butler (Win’s brother) and Richard Reed Parry grabbed drumsticks and played percussion on whatever objects were in front of them — including each other. At one point, they threw pieces of a drum kit at each other. They never bothered to put on the helmets that they use to wear for protection during such stunts.
The Arcade Fire closed its second and final encore with Régine Chassagne, Win Butler’s wife and the other lead vocalist, singing “In the Backseat,” the closing track on “Funeral.” Even during this fairly quiet song, the band achieved an epic sound.
Chassagne sang in a tremulous voice, as if the emotions of the lyrics were still fresh in her mind. That’s one thing about the Arcade Fire — when these musicians perform their songs, they always sounds like they mean it.
SETLIST
Black Mirror
Keep the Car Running
(Antichrist Television Blues)
No Cars Go
Haiti
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Intervention
Neon Bible
The Well and the Lighthouse
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
My Body Is a Cage
Windowsill
Rebellion (Lies)
ENCORE
Ocean of Noise
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
ENCORE 2
In the backseat
Looking over my list of the year’s best concerts, I realized that a few of the shows I reviewed for The Daily Southtown are no longer online. Here then, are a few reviews from months back, which I post here in the interest of completeness…
BJÖRK, MAY 12 AT THE AUDITORIUM THEATRE
Whatever you think of Björk — whether you mock her for wearing swans or worship her oddball genius — it’s undeniable that she has a great instinct for showmanship.
The Icelandic star played her first song Saturday night completely hidden behind the Auditorium Theatre’s stage curtains. As that singular voice of hers emerged and fans anxiously waited for the curtains to part, the sense of anticipation was palpable.
And then finally, as she finished a quiet version of an old song, “Cover Me,” the stage was quickly unveiled. Bursts of flames, so bright that they almost hurt the eyes, cast a hellish red glow as Björk and her band broke into the herky-jerky rhythms of “Earth Invaders,” the opening track off her new record, “Volta.”
Wearing a crinkly gold dress, Björk stomped and swayed in front of a strange tableau — colorful banners with images of fish, flags, Icelandic women playing horns and dressed in pastel outfits. After those flames made their brief appearance, the stage seemed less ominous and more like the setting for an international peace conference.
The theatrical flourishes prompted applause but the loudest bursts of clapping came whenever Björk released the full force of her remarkable voice, holding the microphone away from her mouth as she belted out notes from deep in her throat.
Surprisingly, Björk played only four songs from her new album. Instead of focusing on “Volta,” she treated the concert more like chance to offer a sample of music from throughout her career. Though she left out a few of her most popular songs (no “Human Behavior”), it was almost a greatest-hits show.
These weren’t note-for-note simulations of the studio recordings, though. Backed by a drummer, three musicians on keyboards and computers, and 10 women doubling as brass players and backup vocalists, Björk deconstructed some of her tunes, turning them into brass chamber music or harpsichord ballads.
The brass arrangements were beautiful, taking the place of the orchestral strings on songs such as “Bachelorette” or adding grandeur to the more techno tunes. They were a perfect complement to Björk’s voice, which is something of a brass instrument itself.
On some of the more upbeat dance numbers, such as “Hyper-Ballad,” lasers flashed, Björk wheeled around in her regal outfit, and the music hewed fairly close to the spirit of the original recordings.
Comments overheard in the audience made it clear that many fans liked Björk’s selections for the night’s set list. As the crowd filed out, one young woman remarked, “Now I can die happy.”
SET LIST
Cover Me
Earth Intruders
Venus As A Boy
Aurora
Unison
All Is Full Of Love
Immature
Pleasure Is All Mine
It’s Not Up To You
Pagan Poetry
Army of Me
Innocence
Bachelorette
Wanderlust
Hyper-Ballad
Pluto
Security, the new record by Antibalas – or if you prefer, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra – is one of my favorites of 2007 so far. Those who say the studio records by Antibalas are lacking something compared to the concerts don’t know what they’re talking about. To me, the record’s a perfect distillation of all the great sounds that make up this band – the punchy horns, those cool organ and electric piano sounds, the fabulous rhythm section’s grooves, the chant-like choruses. The songs tend to be long, and they go in unusual directions. I get the feeling that the musicians in Antibalas are giving in to the logic of the music. They’re letting it lead them wherever it goes without worrying about whether it will fit within traditional musical boundaries.
That said, they are also great in concert. I just don’t see the two experiences as appreciably different. Not surprisingly, Antibalas put on an exciting live show last night at Park West. It was great fun to see Duke Amayo leaping around exuberantly during the parts of the songs where he sings, then hurrying over to the congas to play his percussion parts. And Stuart Bogie looked like he was having just as much fun conducting the orchestra in between blasts on his sax. Those horns sound so strong – there’s a strong jazz influence on this group, though I’m guessing jazz purists wouldn’t think of it as jazz. Most of it is composed, though there are some improvisational jams, and the horn arrangements are built around angular melodies you don’t usually hear in jazz. Of course, it all sounds an awful lot like the music of Afrobeat founder Fela Kuti and his drumming protege, Tony Allen, but that’s all right with me. Fela’s music has really become more like a genre than a specific artist’s style, and Antibalas does an amazing job of bringing that music into the future, putting its own distinctive stamp on it, including a bit of a Latin vibe. Long live Antibalas!
…One more thought: It was a very young crowd at the the Antibalas show last night, including a fair number of kids who looked like jam-band fans, judging from the scraggly bears and other accoutrements. That left me wondering … just how did these people discover the music of Antibalas and get into it? It’s not exactly getting played on the radio, as far as I know. I’ve never been a big fan of bands in the vein of Phish, et al, but I do like the concept of long improvisational jams when they’re done right, so if people who like jam bands are discovering Afro Beat, that’s very cool as far as I’m concerned.
Yes, I know I just saw the Last Town Chorus recently, but I couldn’t resist another chance to see and hear Megan Hickey’s beautiful singing and lap-steel playing. Another great performance — she really can make that instrument sing — though it was a little disappointing to see such a small turnout for the show. Sunday-night doldrums? Lack of publicity? In any case, it made for an intimate concert, very quiet between the songs. Hickey filled some of the silences with her charming stage banter.
It was nice to hear NPR’s “All Things Considered” give a positive plug to the Last Town Chorus recently.
DAVID DANIELL
Sadly, I missed most of the Sonar festival, which seemed like a cool addition to Chicago’s September music lineup. Frost stood alone on the stage inside the Claudia Cassidy Theater, switching between his electric guitar and an array of electronics, including a laptop, as he made unsettling and droning noise. Frost created dissonant, almost overwhelming mountains of sound, including some looping repetitions that seemed to sample an animal’s growl and human breathing — familiar sounds that became strange and menacing in this new context. 
The first composition ICE performed Saturday is a perfect example of the sort of music it’s well-positioned to play: Pierre Boulez’s Memoriale (…explosante-fixe…originel), a 1985 piece for flute and eight instruments. Flutist Claire Chase is ICE’s offstage leader, and she often takes the lead onstage, too. She dominated the Boulez piece, but conductor Jayce Ogren kept the flute and strings in fragile, delicate balance.
