When Laura Cantrell opened on Friday (July 25) for Camera Obscura at Thalia Hall, it was her first Chicago performance in nine years. Cantrell’s latest record, No Way There From Here, is one of 2014’s finest, and her plaintive voice was stirringly beautiful on Friday night — despite the annoying buzz of chatter from the back of the room.
The Scottish band Camera Obscura also sounded achingly lovely as it played its lilting, melancholy pop tunes during the evening’s main set. Lead singer Tracyanne Campbell said she had a cold, and there were a few moments when she seemed to be wincing as she sang, but her sore throat didn’t seem to affect her vocals very much. Like Cantrell, Campbell has a vocal style that isn’t all that fancy or complicated. And neither of these singers is especially demonstrative. They don’t build up the drama in their songs by pushing or stretching their voices. But there’s something so appealing about the straightforward simplicity of the way they sing.
Robbie Fulks’ Monday-night shows at the Hideout are never the same, covering a huge variety of music and guest-starring all sorts of folks. This week, the theme was a tribute to the late Lou Reed, with a beginning-to-end performance of Reed’s 1982 album Blue Mask. And the special guest — the guy who sang Reed’s songs — was Michael Shannon, the Oscar-nominated actor and cast member of the Boardwalk Empire series on HBO.
Shannon has acted in many Chicago stage plays over the years, and he’s no stranger to live music, either, playing guitar and singing in the band Corporal. And he did an outstanding job “as” Lou Reed — not exactly impersonating the legendary singer but putting across his words and minimal melodies in a style that wasn’t too far removed from Reed’s trademark manner.
Fulks stayed in the background, playing guitar and incongruously wearing overalls. (Explaining his decision to recruit Shannon for lead vocals, Fulks said, “Who’s going to take a guy in overalls singing Lou Reed songs seriously?”) Fulks assembled a crack band to play Blue Mask, including Alex Hall on drums, Jason Narducy on bass, Grant Tye on guitar and Scott Stevenson on keyboards.
The Hideout doesn’t usually sell tickets in advance for Fulks’ Monday-night shows, but it did this time, and it sold out ahead of time. Shannon remarked that he hadn’t heard Blue Mask until Fulks asked him to perform him. As he was listening to the record, his wife — fellow actress Kate Arrington — pointed out that the final song on the album, “Heavenly Arms,” is sung to someone named Sylvia. That just happens to be the name of Shannon and Arrington’s young daughter. She was in the Hideout audience on Monday night with her mom, and Shannon dedicated “Heavenly Arms” to her, filling the song with what was clearly some deep fatherly love.
Addendum: Shannon will perform in “The Hal Russell Story,” a concert at 6: 30 p.m. July 31 at Millennium Park, performing the texts that the late Russell spoke on the 1992 album of the same name. See the park’s website for more details on the show. Thanks to the Chicago Reader’s Peter Margasak for the tip.
This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival — which took place July 18-20 in the usual spot, Union Park — had its share of thrilling musical moments, as well as a lot of stuff that didn’t connect with me at all. And the weather was just about perfect.
When I participated in Newcity’s roundtable discussion previewing the festival, I confessed my bias, calling myself a rockist. I do like tons of music that goes way beyond the standard rock-band format, but it takes a lot for me to get excited about electronic music, hip-hop or anything resembling mainstream pop and R&B music. And for my own personal tastes, Pitchfork had too many sets starring guys standing behind laptops and acts lacking any actual live musicians.
Over the course of the weekend, I took photos of nearly every artist that played — I missed five of the 43 acts — and those pictures in various posts here on my blog. Here’s where you can find everything:
I also filed several reviews of performances from the weekend for Newcity, which I’ve compiled below. In addition to the sets that I reviewed, other highlights for me included St. Vincent’s amazing, blazing set on Saturday and Neneh Cherry’s sultry, haunting performance on Friday — only her second U.S. concert ever, and the first one she’s done since 1992! Moments like those made the weekend more than worthwhile.
Out of the artists I was less familiar with, I was impressed by Ka’s passionate hip-hop and the strange sounds of Factory Floor. And that set by Diiv was sounding great, but I left after a couple of songs so I could photograph and witness the punk spectacle known as Perfect Pussy. (Dang schedule conflicts!)
As she sang her songs of yearning, Sharon Van Etten paused to mention the fact that she’d played once before at Pitchfork. That was four years ago, and she was barely known at the time, playing an acoustic set all by herself early in the day. She sounded a little tentative and fragile back then. This time, as she introduced one of her old songs, “Save Yourself,” she reminisced: “I tried to play this song solo and it was hard to do. And now I can’t imagine doing it without these guys.” Indeed, her dynamic band seemed essential to her sound this time, turning what might have been pensive folk songs into sprawling, multicolored rock—and she sounded all the more confident in this musical setting. Van Etten sounded fierce in “Serpents,” driven by the song’s hypnotic bass and drum lines. She closed with “Every Time the Sun Comes Up,” the song that also ends her new record “Are We There,” and the passion of the tune’s mantra-like chorus felt palpable on this sunny summer afternoon. See more photos of Sharon Van Etten.
Beck seemed to take a message from the words flashing on the Pitchfork Fest’s video screens as the previous act, Giorgio Moroder, finished his set: “HOT STUFF.” Beck and his backing musicians practically bounded onto the stage, immediately allaying any fears that this was going to be a morose and mellow set. Even though Beck’s latest album “Morning Phase” is filled with the sad bastard variety of Beck music, he apparently decided not to start off his show by moaning about isolation. Instead, he delivered something more like a greatest-hits set, starting off with “Devil’s Haircut” and gleefully tossing in “Loser” halfway through the show. By the time he finally got around to playing some of those new downbeat numbers, he’d earned the right to moan a little bit—and he sounded almost majestic doing it. And then it was back to more of the hot stuff. See more photos of Beck.
Cadien Lake James, singer-guitarist with the young Chicago garage rock band Twin Peaks, wasn’t joking last week when he tweeted: “Does anyone have a wheelchair I can adopt for pitchfork? Holla atcha boy.” Playing the first set of Pitchfork’s second day under glaring sunlight on the Green Stage, James rolled out onto the stage in a wheelchair, with one of his legs in a cast. But his apparent injury didn’t hamper Twin Peaks from rocking with its usual rambunctious energy. James’ bandmates hopped around, layering riffs on top of riffs as they played a couple of songs from their debut EP, “Sunken,” and a bunch from their forthcoming LP, “Wild Onion.” The fans gathered in front of the barricade, shook their arms in the air, ready to mosh despite the early hour. See more photos of Twin Peaks.
The delicate, meditative songs Mark Kozelek records with his band Sun Kil Moon are the sort of music that can get lost in the air at an outdoor festival. Up close to the Green Stage, it felt like an intimate show, with Kozelek’s silky nylon-string guitar notes accenting his unusually personal lyrical musings about things like watching Steve McQueen movies with his dad. The rest of the band tinkered around the edges of Kozelek’s quiet plucking, creating an effect something like a chamber quartet playing jazzy folk-rock. As exquisite as that sounded, the crowd was chatty just a short distance farther away from the stage. It was the sort of festival set that seemed either beautiful or boring, depending on where you happened to be in the park. See more photos of Sun Kil Moon.
The Blue Stage’s first set of the day, a shambling psychedelic show by Circulatory System, seemed like a warm-up for the headlining performance by Neutral Milk Hotel that would come later. Both bands are connected with the Elephant 6 scene, though Circulatory System is considerably more obscure. Will Cullen Hart, who has also played with the Elephant 6 band Olivia Tremor Control, stood behind a pair of drums, occasionally pounding with mallets or banging a tambourine as he sang in the sort of high, wispy voice that’s a regular feature in this sort of Day-Glo music. The other musicians played instruments including cello, violin, clarinet and xylophone, giving it all the feel of a junk-shop orchestra, but the clattering of all the percussion had a tendency to drown out the nuances. Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum sings on Circulatory System’s latest record, but anyone who thought he might make a guest appearance during this early-afternoon set was suffering under a delusion of wishful thinking.
Before Neutral Milk Hotel took the stage for the final concert of Saturday night at Pitchfork, an announcement came over the speakers: at the request of the artist, no taking of photographs and video would be allowed. And the video screens that normally show the performers on Pitchfork’s stages went dark. Jeff Mangum, the famously reclusive and mysterious leader of this band, was visible on the stage, but even at close quarters, he seemed to be in disguise, hiding his face with a hat and a bushy beard. Mangum managed to maintain his enigmatic aura even as he was standing in front of twenty-thousand people. In the first minutes of the show, hundreds of people rushed forward for spots closer to the stage, shouting the words of songs from “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” an album whose devoted admirers multiplied many times over in the fifteen years Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel went silent. People even moshed, not something you see every day at a folk-rock concert. Mangum has a strong, braying voice, which almost seems to command others to sing along. Unfortunately, the mix accented the harsh tones of his vocals and made his acoustic guitar sound like it was cranked up way past eleven. Coming and going from the stage, Mangum’s bandmates added all the horns, accordions and drums that made Neutral Milk Hotel’s records sound like surreal Salvation Army recitals. And when audience members lifted their voices in chorus with Mangum’s, Union Park became a giant hipster revival tent.
Speedy Ortiz kicked off Sunday’s Blue Stage schedule with a burst of scrappy garage rock chords. As Sadie Dupuis sang the verses in an almost understated manner, the songs occasionally loped into off-kilter rhythms, bringing to mind the early music of Liz Phair. The three guys in this band kept the music charging forward, but the focus was all on Dupuis, whose voice rose to pleading peaks in the refrains of her songs. Whenever the time came for an instrumental break, she seemed to revel in stepping back from the mic and whipping her hand across her guitar strings. See more photos of Speedy Ortiz.
Perfect Pussy’s songs were barely discernible amid the nonstop noise and crashing as the band quickly blasted through its set on the Blue Stage, but that hardly seemed to matter. This punk band is all about bashing your head in, sonically speaking, and it accomplished that. Lead singer Meredith Graves, wearing a striped dress, rarely stopped moving as she screeched and twirled, occasionally lifting her skirt for peeks at her undergarments, while her bandmates attacked their instruments as if they wanted to break them. Not surprisingly, a few people in the audience were inspired to crowd-surf. See more photos of Perfect Pussy.
Real Estate’s breezy music, full of shimmering surfaces with chiming guitars and soft, breathy vocals, isn’t the sort of stuff that gets audience fists pumping in the air, but the New Jersey band’s pleasant set late Sunday afternoon offered a welcome interlude of relaxation. The light, airy songs drifted out across the park, and every once in a while, Real Estate picked up the tempo, sounding a bit like a venerable band from the same state, The Feelies. But mostly, the group put us in a mellow mood. See more photos of Real Estate.
For fans of the hazy 1990s British rock that came to be known as shoegaze, Slowdive was one of Pitchfork’s true must-see acts this year. Back together after a nineteen-year hiatus, the group sculpted pretty melodies out of its guitar notes during its set early Sunday evening, with Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell switching off on lead vocals, both sounding like they were lost in dreams. But then, as the chords churned around and around, the songs began to roar with an often fierce intensity—contrasting with the musicians’ calm, relaxed demeanor onstage. It’s hard to say whether any of them actually gazed at their shoes as they made that beautiful, blurry and buzzing noise, but it was beguiling. See more photos of Slowdive.
My photos of Real Estate’s performance on Sunday, July 20, in Union Park during the third day of the Pitchfork Music Festival. (My review of the set is on Newcity’s website.)
My photos of Speedy Ortiz’s performance on Sunday, July 20, in Union Park during the third day of the Pitchfork Music Festival. (My review of the set is on Newcity’s website.)
My photos of the Chicago band Twin Peaks’ performance on Saturday, July 19, in Union Park during the second day of the 2014 Pitchfork Music Festival. (My review of the set is on the Newcity website — it was one of my favorites from the fest.)
My photos of Slowdive’s great performance on Sunday, July 20, in Union Park during the third day of the 2014 Pitchfork Music Festival. (My review is on the Newcity website.)
My photos of Perfect Pussy’s performance on Sunday, July 20, in Union Park, during the third day of the 2014 Pitchfork Music Festival. (My review is on the Newcity website.)
It’s hard to believe I’d never seen Beck in concert until last night, when he headlined the first night of the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park. I’ve been a fan of his music, in all of its perplexingly diverse forms, for many years but somehow never managed to catch his live act. Last night was a great time to see him. I was thinking it might be a downbeat, morose show, matching the mood on his new album Morning Phase, but it was quite lively and energetic, with Beck and his bandmates bouncing around the stage right from the beginning. I wrote a short review of the show for Newcity. And here are some photos I took — from the crowd instead of my usual spot in the photo pit. To enter the photo pit, photographers were required to sign a form that gives Beck the right to use our photos for free. No thanks to that.
My photos of Neneh Cherry performing her second U.S. concert (and her first in this country since 1992) — on Friday (July 18), the first day of the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park. She was accompanied by RocketNumberNine. Her show was one of the highlights of the day for me. The Newcity website has more of my photos from the first day of Pitchfork, along with a few reviews by me plus more by Keidra Chaney and Kenneth Preski. More to come…
Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy is releasing his first solo album — or rather, an album called Sukierae under the moniker “Tweedy” — on Sept. 23, and he was scheduled to play a headlining concert on July 12 at Taste of Chicago. The city canceled that show after heavy rainstorms earlier in the day, but Tweedy did play a free concert last night (July 17) during a taping of the public radio show “Sound Opinions” at Lincoln Hall.
The evening began with an entertaining interview: “Sound Opinions” co-hosts Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis talking with Jeff Tweedy and his 18-year-old son, Spencer, who plays drums on the new record and on this tour with the Tweedy band. Jeff Tweedy said every Wilco album is created by committee, but this one was different, as he kept things simple in the studio, recording 20 songs with Spencer on drums. “There’s a DNA connection that I’ve never experienced with other musicians,” he said.
But Tweedy plans to convene Wilco soon to begin work on a new album by the whole band — or at least to start the process by “messing around” in the studio. “Six people finding a part on a song — that’s kind of the idea of Wilco,” he said. As far as when to expect that album, he said “probably” next year.
Like his father, Spencer has a great sense of humor, and it was fun to see the two of them joking around during the interview. When the subject of Jeff Tweedy’s acting in recent episodes of “Parks and Recreation” and “Portlandia” came out, Spencer said, “Don’t be surprised if you see him in a major motion picture next year.” Acting surprised, his father asked, “Do you know something I don’t?”
After the interview, Tweedy and his band — Spencer on drums, Darin Gray on bass, Jim Elkington on guitar and Liam Cunningham on keyboards — played a set of songs from the new album. The music wasn’t a radical departure from Tweedy’s songs with Wilco: mostly mellow and midtempo, often with a pensive quality. It will take more listens to become familiar with these songs; I expect that they’ll grow on me, as most of Tweedy’s past music has.
He closed the show with three more recognizable songs: “You Are Not Alone,” which he wrote for Mavis Staples; Doug Sahm’s “Give Back the Key to My Heart,” which Tweedy covered with Uncle Tupelo on the 1993 album Anodyne; and the Wilco-Woody Guthrie anthem “California Stars.”
Portions of last night’s interview and concert will show up on a future episode of “Sound Opinions.” Thanks to the show’s producers for letting me take a few photos.
Two of the Mekons — Jon Langford and Sally Timms — are preparing to tour Scotland in August, along with another member of Chicago’s alt-country scene, Robbie Fulks. And to help raise money for this trip, the three played together Sunday (July 13) at the Hideout. (Mark Guarino wrote a Sun-Times article about the whole Mekons-Fulks Scottish adventure.)
Most of the songs at Sunday’s show came from the Mekons’ vast discography, including a few deep cuts. It was cool to hear Fulks adding his acoustic guitar leads and solos to these songs, and he even sang lead vocals on the classic tune “Sometimes I Feel Like Fletcher Christian,” usually sung by Tom Greenhalgh. (That’s one of the songs you can hear in the appearance Langford, Timms and Fulks made on WBEZ.) And it was really lovely to hear Timms sing one of Fulks’ songs, “In Bristol Town One Bright Day.”
The trip to Scotland will include a recording session — so we can expect to hear some new music by the Mekons, or some version of the band anyway, someday soon.
Death returned Friday (June 12) to the Empty Bottle, sounding stronger and more confident than the group was back in 2009 at the same venue. This new version of Death — including two of the original members who made some fantastic protopunk recordings in Detroit in the mid-1970s — even played a couple of new songs, for an album that’s in the works. The incredible story of this band is chronicled in the documentary A Band Called Death.
The Flat Five are always one of my favorite local groups to see, and so I couldn’t resist the chance to hear their delightful harmonies twice in one week. I caught their free concert on July 8 at Leahy Park in Evanston, as well as their set July 11 at Square Roots Fest in Lincoln Square — where I took these photos.
Noura Mint Seymali, one of Mauritania’s musical stars, came to Chicago for two concerts over the past week: June 11 at the Square Roots Fest in Lincoln Square and June 14 at Millennium Park. I caught her set at Square Roots; her voice was beautiful to behold, and so was the sound of her instrument, the ardine, which is a sort of harp. (Read Aaron Cohen’s article about Noura Mint Seymali for the Chicago Tribune.)
New Zealand musician Liam Finn played Friday (July 11) at the Square Roots Fest in Lincoln Square, a few hours after playing at Laurie’s Planet of Sound. At the record store, Finn remarked that he was having so much fun that he should play there every week.
The New York-based ensemble Alarm Will Sound plays acoustic arrangements and orchestral scores of music that was originally created by electronic artists such as Aphex Twin. And what a strange and impressive sound it made on July 3. The group made its Chicago debut as the final concert of Millennium Park’s Loops and Variations series. The highlights included the Chicago premiere of Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite, which reworks themes from the music of Radiohead.
The program included:
Aphex Twin (arr. Freund), Cock ver 10
Aphex Twin (arr. MacDonald and Johnson), 4
Aphex Twin (arr. Orfe and Thompson), Mt. St. Michel
Aphex Twin (arr. Burhans), Blue Calx
Tyondai Braxton, Fly By Wire
Steve Reich, Radio Rewrite
John Orfe, Dowland Remix
Aphex Twin (arr. Orfe), Jynweythek Ylow
Boards of Canada (arr. Price), roygbiv
Aphex Twin (arr. Hause), Omgyjya Switch
Back in the 1990s, when the Chicago rock music scene started to attract some attention, Veruca Salt was one of the local bands that seemed destined to make it big, thanks to the dynamite combination of vocals and guitar riffs from its two front women, Nina Gordon and Louise Post. But then, Gordon quit in 1998 — for reasons that the group still refuses to talk about (as you can see in this recent Chicago Tribune story by Mark Caro).
Whatever the reason was, the Gordon and Post are back together all these years later, along with Veruca Salt’s original rhythm section, bassist Steve Lack and drummer Jim Shapiro. They’re recording new music — including a single that came out on Record Store Day, “The Museum of Broken Relationships” and “It’s Holy” — and they returned to Chicago for their first local gig in ages, playing two sold-out shows at Lincoln Hall.
I was there for the concert on Monday (July 14), which made it clear that Veruca Salt still has what made it great in the first place. All of those old songs sounded terrific, and so did the new ones. And were there any signs of lingering tension between Gordon and Post? Not in the least. At a few points, the two ladies faced each other, shaking their hair as they played their guitars. And then, as the group finished its main set before the encore, Lack and Shapiro left the stage, leaving Gordon and Post playing by themselves. As Post made her way off the stage, she put down her guitar and kissed Gordon on the top of her head as Gordon played the final notes.
Returning for their encore, Gordon and Post handed out roses to the crowd. And then when it was all over, they hugged. They seemed ready to make up for the lost years.
