The Baseball Project played last Thursday, Aug. 7, at the Abbey Pub. This is an indie-rock supergroup of sorts, comprising Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5, Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M., Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and Linda Pitmon, who also plays in Wynn’s band, the Miracle 3. All of their songs are about baseball. Many of them are quite catchy, with an 1980s jangle-rock style. Buck did not appear in the show at the Abbey Pub, but it was a fun show, ending with Mills singing the R.E.M. classic “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville,” some of which I captured on video:
Like most stage plays, All Our Tragic concludes with a final appearance by its cast. Just seeing all of those actors again — and thinking back on the multiple roles each of them had played on that stage over the previous 12 hours — was an unusually stirring experience on Sunday night. This was no ordinary curtain call. It felt more like watching runners crossing the finish line at the end of a marathon.
But it was more than that, more than just cheering for a feat of endurance (for the 23 actors and, to a lesser extent, for those of us in the audience). We had also just witnessed a devastating marathon of human folly. Adapted for the Hypocrites theatrical company by director Sean Graney from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, this was billed as “32 Surviving Greek Tragedies Performed in One Epic Narrative.”
Over the previous half-day inside the Den Theatre, we’d seen these actors playing characters who committed a seemingly endless string of atrocious deeds — fratricide, matricide, patricide, infanticide, genocide, human sacrifice, incest and betrayal, to name a few — and suffered mightily from the consequences. Seeing those actors gathered all together on the stage in the final moments of All Our Tragic was like coming across the mass grave left behind by all of this horror.
Emily Casey as Helen… or is it Helen? Photo by Evan Hanover
This had not been an unrelentingly grim affair, however. Far from it. It was often irreverent, as Graney and his cast played up the more absurd moments of these ancient Greek stories for laughs. This is a version of the classic tragedies filled with slangy modern dialogue and pop-culture references. All Our Tragic is not a perfect show — it’s hard to imagine any production this sprawling and ambitious, stretching on for nine hours of performance plus seven intermissions, coming off without a flaw. When All Our Tragic does falter, it’s usually when some of the attempts at humor fall flat. But that’s just a bit of nitpicking. Far more often, the daft comedy succeeds, which makes all of the tragedy considerably more bearable.
There’s a tinge of black humor to the most violent moments —the sawing of a foot, the stomping of a baby, the many squirts and spurts of blood. And yet, the silliness rarely undermines the tragic. If anything, it sneakily pulls us into the performance, building our fondness for these characters (and the actors playing them). As the tragedy accumulates, piling higher and higher, we are reminded anew of human existence’s cruelties, but also of its potential for peace, love and understanding — a potential that is often squandered or thwarted, but a potential nevertheless.
Erin Barlow and Geoff Button in All Our Tragic. Photo by Evan Hanover
You don’t have to sit in the theater for 12 straight hours to experience All Our Tragic. The Hypocrites are selling separate tickets for the four parts of this epic, making it possible to see this cycle of stories spread out over a few days. But seeing it all at once (with breaks for lunch and dinner, plus shorter intermissions) is a remarkable experience. Binge-watch it if you can. Like the best long-form entertainment, it’s richer and deeper because of the time we spend with it. And how often will you ever get the chance to see a 12-hour play? Just think of all the logistical challenges the Hypocrites are going through to schedule this show.
According to a press release for the Hypocrites, the idea is to “create a contemporary Festival of Dionysus, the ancient gatherings for which these tragedies were originally crafted — to bring together a daily community to bond, eat food, drink wine and discuss complicated topics of society that we have been wrestling with since the creation of civilization.”
John Taflan and Erin Barlow in All Our Tragic. Photo by Evan Hanover
All Our Tragic is an audacious concept and an astounding achievement. It feels destined to become a signature moment in the history of Chicago’s theater scene. (“Remember that time when the Hypocrites performed all 32 Greek tragedies in one day? Can you believe that really happened?”)
The show’s end is the only time when the entire cast — 17 actors with speaking parts and six others — is on the stage at the same time. Most of the actors play three or four roles, and it won’t be much a plot spoiler to reveal that most of these characters are dead by the time the drama finally draws to an end. When I clapped my hands at the climax, I wasn’t just applauding the Hypocrites’ actors. I was also saluting all of those ghosts I’d come to know.
Tien Doman and Walter Briggs in All Our Tragic. Photo by Evan Hanover
All Our Tragic continues through Oct. 5 at the Den Theatre, 1329 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. For details, see www.the-hypocrites.com.
July 30 was one of those nights when I wanted to be at concerts simultaneously. As soon as Courtney Barnett finished her bang-up show at Schubas, I hopped into my car and headed for the Empty Bottle — arriving sometime after Oneida had started playing. I caught the final hour or so of the performance, though, and what a joy it was to see these New York musicians playing in Chicago again, making their first appearance here in several years.
Since the Krautrock-influenced group finished its epic “Thank Your Parents” trilogy of albums, it has released two records: Absolute II in 2011 and A List of Burning Mountains in 2012 — instrumental recordings with long passages of quiet punctuated by jarring blasts of noise and percussion. Joined by James McNew of Yo La Tengo on bass, Oneida played some of that sort of stuff during its show last week, but it also delivered some of the Oneida pieces that more closely resemble actual songs — ending with one of its most lively, riveting numbers, the 2006 song “Up With People.” Audience members pogoed to the insistent beat.
At the merch table, Oneida was selling some limited-edition cassettes of recent music, called The Brah Tapes, but they’d run out by the time I tried to buy one.
Courtney Barnett sang her delightful lyrics in her deadpan style on Wednesday night at Schubas, which was very charming — but what really wowed me was her guitar playing. Early on in the set, she stepped away from the microphone stand and started flailing around with her guitar, her hair hanging down over her face, digging harder into her riffs, while bassist Bones Sloan and drummer Dave Mudie pounded away. As terrific as this Australian’s songs sound on her 2013 record The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, they were even more intense and alluring in live performance. This was a Lollapalooza pre-show, and Barnett seemed to be marveling at how much her fan base has grown. Expect her to play a bigger venue the next time she’s in town. And if you’re at Lolla today, make sure to catch her set at 2:15 p.m. (Check out this video of a performance she gave earlier this at the WBEZ studios.)
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.
Last year, Bob Mould celebrated the 25th anniversary of his debut solo album, Workbook. But when he played Monday night (June 23) at Millennium Park, the mostly acoustic rock of that album was nowhere to be heard. Mould launched his unrelentingly loud and energetic set of feedback-drenched power pop and punk with the first three songs from Copper Blue, the 1992 album he made with his band Sugar.
Then he said, “Let’s play some new stuff and some new real stuff.” And that’s precisely what he did, playing some tunes from his most recent records, including the excellent new album Beauty & Ruin. One of the tracks on that record, “I Don’t Know You Anymore,” is as catchy as anything Mould’s ever written, and it was a standout during Monday’s show.
Mould had two top-notch musicians backing him up: Jon Wurster of Superchunk on drums and Jason Narducy on bass. Narducy has played with several bands over the years (including a recent stint as Superchunk’s touring bassist), and he also opened Monday’s concert, singing and playing guitar with his pop-punk band Split Single — a good match with Mould’s music.
Just about the only relief in the onslaught by Mould’s trio came when he mellowed out for a few minutes during the wistful “Hardly Getting Over It,” a song he originally recorded with his first band, the legendary Hüsker Dü. By the end of his set, he’d played five Sugar songs, five Hüsker Dü songs and 12 from his solo records. Nothing from Workbook, though. He wasn’t in that mode on Monday night. This was Bob Mould in full-on, guitars-cranked-up mode.
The Act We Act (Sugar) / A Good Idea (Sugar) / Changes (Sugar) / Star Machine / The Descent / Little Glass Pill / I Don’t Know You Anymore / Kid With Crooked Face / Nemeses Are Laughing / The War / Hardly Getting Over It (Hüsker Dü) / Helpless (Sugar) / Keep Believing / Egoverride / Hey Mr. Grey / If I Can’t Change Your Mind (Sugar) / Come Around (Sugar) / Tomorrow Morning / Something I Learned Today (Hüsker Dü) / Chartered Trips (Hüsker Dü) / Fix It
ENCORE: Flip Your Wig (Hüsker Dü) / Makes No Sense At All (Hüsker Dü)
Nick Cave was wearing a remarkable shirt. Dozens of hands pawed and pulled at its shiny gold fabric, twisting and tugging at its folds, but always it snapped back into place — slightly misshapen from the adoring caresses of Cave’s fans, but never torn. It was Friday night, June 20, inside the Milwaukee Theatre. It was the first time Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds had ever played a headlining gig in Milwaukee.
As he entered, he strutted across the stage with a confident swagger. And then, he came down to the very edge of the crowd, standing down a step or two from the stage. It looked like he was floating in a sea of hands. It was a ritual he repeated throughout the concert, presenting himself to his fans as if saying: Touch me. Go ahead. Do it. You know you want to. (I noticed one moment when he gestured for the fans to withdraw their fingers, just a few inches back.)
Throughout all of this seduction, Cave delivered his sardonic, sinister and sublime lyrics in his baritone — beckoning, boasting, pleading, wooing, warning, threatening, musing, narrating, shapeshifting — as the Bad Seeds kept on playing tense, spooky chords on the stage behind him.
For some reason, Cave isn’t making a Chicago stop on this tour. On Thursday night, I decided to buy a ticket for the show in Milwaukee. The opening set by Warpaint was fairly entertaining, though it paled in comparison with the fantastic performance that followed. After sitting in the mezzanine for a couple of songs, I followed other fans to the front of the auditorium, where people were standing in the aisles close to the stage. I did not have my camera with me, but I snapped a few blurry, grainy pictures with my cellphone. The collage of those images at the top of this blog post is the best I could manage under the circumstances.
Like last year’s concert at the Chicago Theatre, this one featured several songs from Cave’s most recent album, Push the Sky Away (my favorite record of 2013). And of course, the Bad Seeds played several of the old tunes that are staples of their concerts, like “Red Right Hand” and “Tupelo.” So in many ways, this 2014 concert was similar to that 2013 show — and yet, it all felt more intense.
Push the Sky Away is a brooding record with few moments of outright catharsis. The band seems to be holding itself back throughout the haunting, riveting set of songs. That restraint is part of makes the record so compelling. But in concert, the songs take on a new life.
One of those songs, “Jubilee Street,” became more thrilling and dramatic when Cave & the Bad Seeds played it last year. And this time, the drama doubled yet again. It was only the second song of the night, but when Cave reached the climatic words — “I’m transforming, I’m vibrating, I’m glowing, I’m flying, look at me now!” — he repeated them over and over as the Bad Seeds riffed harder and harder, stretching out the song by several minutes as Cave worked the crowd, bending down to let those outstretched fingers touch him.
Later, at the end of the main set, Cave descended from the stage and sang one song out in the midst of the audience. For this intimate moment, he chose the hushed, ghostly title track of Push the Sky Away.
When Cave returned for the encore, he played four songs, and it almost seemed like he might keep going longer. At an earlier point during the concert, after an especially wild guitar solo by the multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, Cave introduced Ellis, the most prominent musician in the Bad Seeds. But Cave never introduced the rest of the band members. It didn’t feel like a slight, however. Gesturing at the musicians assembled behind him, Cave simply said, “The Bad Seeds.” What more did he need to say, really?
SET LIST
We No Who U R / Jubilee Street / Tupelo / Red Right Hand / Mermaids / The Weeping Song / From Her to Eternity / West Country Girl / Into My Arms / People Ain’t No Good / Higgs Boson Blues / The Mercy Seat / Stagger Lee / Push the Sky Away
ENCORE: We Real Cool / The Lyre of Orpheus / Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry / The Ship Song
The Loops and Variations concert series at Millennium Park usually features a contemporary classical act as well as another artist playing electronic music. Last week, on June 19, there was just one set, but it was varied enough to fit the concept. One of Chicago’s best new-music ensembles, eighth blackbird, had the whole show to itself — but with a guest musician sitting in on several pieces, composer-accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman. The evening started with his beautiful composition “Barbeich,” which blended the lyricism of Argentine accordionist Raúl Barboza with the subtly shifting patterns of Steve Reich’s minimalism.
Ward-Bergeman left the stage for a while as eighth blackbird played Bryce Dessner’s “Murder Ballades” suites followed by a set of works by Richard Parry, Claudio Monteverdi, Carlo Gesualdo and Bon Iver. Then he was back to play — and sing — the final three songs, as the eighth blackbird sextet turned itself into a New Orleans party band, performing “Mardi Gras,” “St. James Infirmary” and “Mississippi.”
It’s no revelation to me that Richard Thompson is one of the best living guitarists, if not the best. And yet, it felt like a revelation on Saturday night as Thompson played a solo that went on and on, bending and shaping itself to higher and higher peaks, during the song “Can’t Win” at the Space nightclub in Evanston — a song he repeated during his free concert Monday night at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, with a similarly epic solo.
When Thompson recorded the studio version of “Can’t Win” for his 1988 album Amnesia, it was five minutes long, with barely a minute of soloing that fades out at the end. But the live version on the 1993 collection Watching the Dark: The History of Richard Thompson stretched on for more than nine minutes, and now that’s become more typical of the way he plays it in concert. At about the seven-minute mark on Saturday night, I thought I might be watching the best guitar playing I’d ever seen. It was simply remarkable that Thompson could build and sustain so much drama as he sculpted that endless string of notes.
As impressive as Thompson’s virtuosity is, there’s very little showy about his demeanor as he delivers these incredible performances. And while there’s a lot to said for musicians who take a more minimalist approach, reducing a song to its essential elements instead of ornamenting it with endless variations, it’s thrilling to watch the notes pour out of Thompson’s fingers.
Thompson played both nights with the same rhythm section that accompanied him on his 2013 album Electric — bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Michael Jerome, both of whom are almost comically exuberant. The set lists were pretty similar, except for the fact that Thompson started off his Millennium Park show with an acoustic set, playing six songs he hadn’t performed on Saturday. “I always wanted to be my own opening act,” he joked.
Saturday’s concert included an impromptu, figured-out-on-the-fly cover of the country classic “The Wild Side of Life,” prompted by some stage banter about its singer, Hank Thompson. And the trio also started to play the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High,” apparently as a lark, but only the first few bars. On both nights, the encores included a rollicking song I didn’t recognize, which turned out to be a cover of the 1950s song “Daddy Rollin’ Stone,” originally written by Otis Blackwell, popularized by Derek Martin and covered by the Who as the B-side to “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.” And on Saturday, the group also played the Bob Dylan and the Band classic, “This Wheel’s on Fire.”
As exciting as it was to experience Richard Thompson’s electric guitars on both nights, it was a special treat to hear those acoustic songs in the early set on Monday. Thompson can make his acoustic guitar sound like two or three, soloing or riffing on top of chords and bass lines, and at moments, his complex fingering brought out exotic melodies that evoked Middle Eastern music.
Thompson showed his comedic charm with an extended explanation of his song about a trip on a cruise ship, “Johnny’s Far Away,” from the 2007 album Sweet Warrior. And then he closed his acoustic mini-show with one of his most popular songs, “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” On the end of every verse, Thompson stretched out the word “ride,” closing his eyes and turning the word into an almost prayerful drone. And then his fingers flitted across the strings like lightning.
SET LIST: JUNE 14, 2014, SPACE
Stuck on the Treadmill / Sally B / Salford Sunday / For Shame of Doing Wrong / My Enemy / Can’t Win / Saving the Good Stuff for You / The Wild Side of Life / Al Bowlly’s in Heaven / Fork in the Road / Good Things Happen to Bad People / Did She Jump or Was She Pushed? / I’ll Never Give It Up / Wall of Death / If Love Whispers Your Name
ENCORE: Dry My Tears And Move On / Eight Miles High excerpt / Tear Stained Letter
SECOND ENCORE: Wounding Myself / This Wheel’s in Fire / Daddy Rollin’ Stone
SET LIST: JUNE 16, 2014, PRITZKER PAVILION
ACOUSTIC SET: I Misunderstood / Walking on a Wire / Valerie / Genesis Hall / Johnny’s Far Away / 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
ELECTRIC SET: Stuck on the Treadmill / Sally B / Salford Sunday / For Shame of Doing Wrong / My Enemy / Can’t Win / Al Bowlly’s in Heaven / Fork in the Road / Good Things Happen to Bad People / Did She Jump or Was She Pushed? / I’ll Never Give It Up / Wall of Death / If Love Whispers Your Name
The Cincinnati rock band Wussy is fairly obscure in the grand scheme of the music business, but people who know this group tend to love it. Wussy finally began getting some overdue attention in 2012 when one of rock’s best-known critics, Robert Christgau, wrote an essay calling Wussy “the best band in America.” The group got similar praise last month in the Los Angeles Review of Books from Charles Taylor, who observed: “If Wussy announce themselves at all, it’s not as stars or oracles but simply as five people who have hit on the perfect form in which to say whatever they have to say.”
The last time Wussy released an album, 2011’s Strawberry, barely anyone seemed to notice. Maybe that’s because Wussy’s records come out on Shake It, a tiny label run by a record store in Cincinnati. Now, the group has released yet another outstanding record,Attica!, but this one actually managed to get reviews in Pitchfork and Spin.
The group made a welcome return to Chicago on Friday night, playing at the Red Line Tap in Edgewater — a somewhat obscure venue. (Other than opening for the Afghan Whigs, the last time Wussy played in Chicago was at the Bucktown Arts Fest in 2012.) But while Wussy surely deserves to be playing in bigger rooms with bigger audiences, it’s a treat for those of us in the know to watch this wonderful outfit of Ohio musicians performing in a little bar like this.
Attica! is one of the year’s best albums, and it ranks alongside Wussy’s strongest previous records. Fittingly, the band started its set on Friday night with the first three songs on Attica! and proceeded to play a bunch of songs from the new record, as well as older favorites like “Pulverized,” “Muscle Cars,” “Maglite” and “Yellow Cotton Dress.”
A long pause came right after Wussy played the first song, “Teenage Wasteland,” when the part on singer Lisa Walker’s guitar that holds on the strap broke. The band’s other singer-songwriter-guitarist, Chuck Cleaver, tried to fix it, but they eventually gave up and she switched to a different guitar. This sort of lull can kill a concert’s momentum, but with Wussy, it felt more like a charming interlude. Walker was in a talkative mood, and after a while, Cleaver cracked that Wussy should attempt something novel: playing two or three songs in a row.
Walker said someone had compared Wussy to a jazz band, explaining that the group never plays a song the same way twice, and she wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment. There is indeed something loose about the way Wussy plays its songs. It doesn’t go too far off-script from the studio versions, but the live versions still have some of the excitement of musicians discovering the joy of playing a great song they’ve just learned. And when it comes down to it, Wussy’s great because it has striking lyrics and damn good melodies. What more do you really need?
Elvis Costello played solo for close to 2 1/2 hours tonight at the Copernicus Center, an old movie palace in Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood. He opened with one of my favorites, “Jack of All Parades,” from his great 1986 album King of America, and later returned to that record for another outstanding selection, “Suit of Lights.” He played most of the hits that you’d expect as well as a lot of obscurities.
Costello talked about his musician father and grandfather, and sang tunes inspired by his family history. He seemed to be in a nostalgic mood. He also reminisced about playing in 2012 at Riot Fest in Chicago’s Humboldt Park: “There were people down in front taking bets on who we were.” That was a nonstop rock set, to match the festival’s punk vibe. But tonight, Costello was mostly in troubadour mode. Gazing out at the theater’s nocturnal decor, he said, “Tonight, I’m just going to sing songs about the sun and the moon and stars, seeing how I’m here in this particular place.”
At one point, he went over to sit down in a chair. “We’ve come to the part of the show where I’d like to introduce my special guest — and it’s me!”
Costello interjected bits of other songs into his own, putting the Beatles’ “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” in the middle of “New Amsterdam.” And at the end of his first encore, Costello stepped to the lip of the stage and sang a chorus of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” without the aid of a microphone.
Costello also had a new song, “The Last Year of My Youth,” and he played it twice — an acoustic version midway through the concert followed by a more rocking electric rendition during his first encore. But when it came time for the final song of the night, he went to an old standby, the Nick Lowe song Costello made famous, “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding.”
SET LIST
Jack of All Parades / King Horse / Either Side of the Same Town / Sneaky Feelings / Watch Your Step / Veronica / Last Boat Leaving / Ascension Day / medley: New Amsterdam + You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beatles cover) / Come the Meantimes / The End of the Rainbow (Richard Thompson cover) / 45 / The Last Year of My Youth / Walkin’ My Baby Back Home (by Roy Turk and Fred E. Ahlert) / Ghost Train / Man Out of Time / Watching the Detectives / Everyday I Write the Book
FIRST ENCORE: Shipbuilding / For More Tears / Radio Radio / Allison / Earthbound / Stranger in the House / A Slow Drag With Josephine / Suit of Lights / Jimmie Standing in the Rain + ending with a chorus of Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (by Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney)
SECOND ENCORE: Less Than Zero / The Last Year of My Youth / Couldn’t Call It Unexpected No. 4 / For the Stars / (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding
Syrian singer Omar Souleyman cast a strange spell as he performed Monday night on the Jay Pritzker Pavilion stage in Millennium Park. He did not make any especially flamboyant gestures as he strolled the stage — and yet, he has a commanding presence. A contingent of Syrian or Arab-American fans was going a bit nuts in the seats near the stage. And plenty of people who don’t know a word of Arabic or Kurdish, like me, were getting into the music, too. As usual, the Millennium Park security guards were on a buzzkill mission, insisting on getting people out of the aisles when they tried to dance. A lot of people managed to dance anyway, mostly by standing in front of their seats. The mood was festive.
The only musician accompanying Souleyman was his amazing collaborator, Rizan Sa’id, who sounded like a whole band of electronic musicians as he played synth solos and dance rhythms on two Korg keyboards. Sa’id is not a demonstrative entertainer, but the sounds he coaxes out of those instruments are very impressive. At the end of the show, the nonchalant maestro didn’t even take a bow. He just walked off the stage, barely looking at the crowd that was roaring with approval.
Millennium Park’s series of free summer concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, always one of the highlights of the year in Chicago, is in full swing now. Monday’s headliner was Omar Souleyman (click here to see my photos of Souleyman), but the show also featured a top-notch opening act, Chicago bassist Joshua Abrams and the talented ensemble of players he calls the Natural Information Society. Abrams’ second record with a version of this group, Represencing, was one of my top 10 albums for 2012 — and the current lineup sounded fabulous in the Pritzker stage on Monday, jamming to hypnotic grooves with psychedelic and exotic flair.
Abrams played the guimbri, a North African instrument, throughout the show, accompanied by the versatile guitarist Emmett Kelly (leader of the great Cairo Gang); drummers Frank Rosaly and Mikel Avery; Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and gong; and Ben Boye on autoharp and keyboards. It was glorious.
Mikel Avery
Frank RosalyJoshua AbramsFrank RosalyFrank RosalyEmmett KellyBen Boye
Mikel AveryMikel Avery, Ben Boye and Liza AlvaradoJoshua AbramsEmmett Kelly and Joshua AbramsBen Boye
The Denton, Texas, rock band Centro-matic just released its first record in three years, Take Pride by Your Long Odds, as well as a reissue of its first album, Redo the Stacks, from 1997. A dependable band for the past 17 years, Centro-matic made a welcome return to Chicago on Saturday night for a show at the Beat Kitchen, playing a slew of new songs as well as the classics fans expect. And the encore included a cover of the Cars’ “My Best Friend’s Girl.”
The Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake & William Parker Trio played Friday night at Constellation — one of the first concerts this improvisational powerhouse has played together since 2004. And it was the first time I had ever seen Brötzmann, a German free-jazz saxophonist. After the band took the stage without uttering a word, and after the welcoming applause died down, Brötzmann paused at his table of reed instruments, as if wondering which one to play. Once he’d strapped a sax around his neck, he silently stood a moment, poised to blow. It was so quiet that I expected the music to begin quietly, but Brötzmann did not ease us into things. He suddenly blurted out a cacophonous blast, pulling us into a complex string of notes in what seemed like midstream. That was just the beginning of a piece that stretched on for something like 40 minutes. Throughout the concert — which the trio performed without taking a set break — Drake’s percussion and Parker’s bass lines gracefully danced around Brötzmann’s forceful, inventive improvisations. It was bracing and dazzling.
The lineup at the Empty Bottle on Thursday, May 22, was a musical version of the Trans-Canada Highway: three Canadian artists, each from a different province — Chad VanGaalen of Calgary, Alberta; Cousins of Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Bry Webb of Guelph, Ontario.
Chad VanGaalen
The headliner was the delightfully odd Chad VanGaalen, who has been releasing somewhat lo-fi, psychedelic home recordings for the past decade. But he hasn’t toured much, remaining something of an enigmatic figure — in my imagination anyway. A recent press release from his label, Sub Pop, feeds that sense of mystique, noting:
He has never worked in a commercial recording studio. By his hands alone, one line, sound, shape or word leads organically to the next. Over the last ten to fifteen years, Chad has been producing living maps in songs, drawings, modified instruments, animations and performances–shifting forms pointing to another world, infinitely more liveable, maybe hidden just under the surface of our own ever-disintegrating reality.
InShrink Dust, Chad’s fifth full-length album under his own name, we have a new window into his world. The album is, in Chad’s view, a country record. It is also partially a score to Chad’s soon-to-be released, animated, sci-fi feature, Translated Log of Inhabitants (“It’s like Bob and Doug McKenzie in space,” says Chad).
Always a fan of esoteric instruments, Chad taught himself to play an aluminum pedal steel guitar. His experiments with this instrument unify the album, along with themes of death, transformation, fear, benign evil, and the eccentricity of love. A newfound affection for The Flying Burrito Brothers, and the sci-fi mysticism of the 1980s graphic novel The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius, also drove the album.
There is indeed a certain amount of alt-country on the new record, but it sounds more like the Shins doing country than the typical sort of Americana that falls under the label.
As far as I know, VanGaalen had never played in Chicago before Thursday’s gig. Commenting to the audience about his drive into the city, he remarked, “The city goes on forever. … But now that we’re here, it’s a very nice place.” VanGaalen also told the audience about playing Frisbee earlier in the day with a Chicago man who seemed to him to be a meth addict. And he complained about his guitar, describing it as “a bad eBay purchase.”
That guitar sounded just fine, however, and so did VanGaalen’s big array of effects pedals, which he used to transform that single guitar into a psych-rock orchestra, with help from a two-piece rhythm section. And VanGaalen’s voice, often rising to a falsetto, artfully conveyed the many memorable melodies he has fashioned on Shrink Dust and previous records.
I was surprised to see how young the audience of VanGaalen fans was — it seemed like barely anyone in the nearly full room was over the age of 23. Where did these kids discover VanGaalen’s music? And why weren’t any of the somewhat older indie-rock fans I usually see at Empty Bottle shows like this in attendance?
Chad VanGaalen, singing during the opening set by Bry WebbChad VanGaalen, singing during the opening set by Bry Webb
Bry Webb
With two outstanding opening acts, Thursday’s show was impressive from beginning to end. The evening started out with a set by Bry Webb, lead singer of the Constantines. The songs on his new record, Free Will, are mellower than the Constantines’ rock, almost qualifying as folk, but they still has something of that Constantines edge to them. His set at the Bottle included a nice cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Calvary Cross.”
Cousins
I wasn’t familiar at all with the middle band in the lineup, Cousins, but the guitar-and-drums duo quickly won me over with songs that rocked pretty hard with soaring melodies — including at least three about lead singer Aaron Mangle’s grandmother. The group’s new album, The Halls of Wickwire, is dedicated to her memory. How Canadian is that!
At 11:34 p.m. May 20, I tweeted: This Nazoranai show at @theemptybottle is so loud it might cause a rupture in the cosmic fabric. I was joking, but I was half-serious. This band’s music was so loud — and, at times, so otherworldly — that it was downright disorienting. The cosmic fabric did not, in fact, rupture Tuesday night at the Empty Bottle, but the sensory experience was jarring. At one point, when I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket (maybe it was the moment when I tweeted), I could feel the thundering vibrations from Stephen O’Malley’s bass guitar pulsing in my phone — as if the phone were vibrating because of an incoming call. I’m sure glad I was wearing earplugs.
Beyond the intense decibel levels, the music itself was powerful, shifting from pulverizing metal riffs into strange sonic shapes, far removed from the standard structure of rock songs. The names of the tracks on Nazoranai’s self-titled 2012 album give you a pretty good idea of the sort of effect this trio creates with its noise. One song is called, “Feel the Ultimate Joy Towards the Resolve of Pillar Being Shattered Within You Again and Again and Again,” and another is titled, “Not a Joy to Come Closer but So-called a Sacred Insanity Has Finally Appeared.”
Nazoranai is something of a supergroup in the realm of experimental rock. The trio comprises Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino, Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O)) and Australian drummer Oren Ambarchi. New York Times critic Ben Ratliff put Nazoranai’s 2012 record (its only album thus far) at No. 2 on his list of the year’s best releases, writing that Haino
plays gesturally, with no traditional technique, turning ritual motion into sound and engaging the room’s echo with falsetto chants or mangled screams. In Japanese the band’s name means “I do not trace,” in the sense of a student of drawing or music tracing a master’s lines. Though some tracks on its new self-titled live album (Ideologic Organ/Mego) introduce slow, steady, Band of Gypsys-like drum grooves, the rest is open, meditative, sometimes miraculous and mostly terrifying.
Speaking of playing gesturally, Haino set down his guitar during one passage on Tuesday night and used a metal ribbon as a sort of whip to generate noise.
It’s pure improvisation. I’m going to try and avoid as many clichés as I can here, in talking about improvisation. That’s the whole thing, though. It’s not a cliché — the idea is that I don’t know what the idea is. The idea is in the present, so everything that happens is happening right then, and will probably never be repeated. Even stylistic tendencies, I’ve noticed, have been completely different every time we play together. I really appreciate Mr. Haino for that. I mean, he is the conductor of the group, you know? That’s why we are the rhythm section. In my fantasy world, and Oren’s, it is a rock ’n’ roll power trio. Maybe Mr. Haino thinks that too, and maybe it is, but it’s just coming from a different angle. That’s why I play bass and Oren plays drums, we want to be rhythm section. We love Mr. Haino’s guitar playing, especially. We want to be the rhythm section so he can play guitar leads, you know? We’re right there, we get to hear it and see it very closely, and we get to participate in that way. We are not a backing band at all; the whole character of that music is not that way of course. I can just say what is happening from my perspective. It’s an interesting exercise in patience, in trance, in timbre and in alertness as a player.
Blackout Fest was back this past weekend at the Empty Bottle, and once again, Chicago’s HoZac Records delivered a fun package of garage rock, punk and power pop. I missed the first night on May 15 (an art show and opening party), but I was there the following two nights.
The Boys
The headliners on May 16 were a pretty big deal: The Boys, a legendary British punk band from the 1970s, played a Chicago gig for the first time — and amazingly, it was only the fourth time the Boys had ever played in the U.S. As these older blokes ripped through their old tunes (including a bunch of memorable shout-along songs, such as “Brickfield Nights”), a bunch of young garage-rock lovers packed the dance floor in front of the stage, moshing and bopping up and down with reckless joy.
Friday’s lineup also included the Man (I showed up too late for their set), the fuzzy guitar riffs of 999999999 (apparently pronounced “all nines”) and First Base, a Toronto band with a slew of sweet and catchy songs. They even did a cover of the ABBA song “Mamma Mia.”
999999999First BaseFirst Base
The Dictators
The headliners on Saturday, May 17, were another band that started back in the mid-’70s punk explosion: The Dictators, from New York City. Maybe the Dictators are actually a kind of proto-punk, since they formed all the way back in 1974. And on Saturday, as the current lineup played old Dictators songs as well as covers of songs by bands like the Flamin’ Groovies, they jammed more than you’d expect from punks. The frontman, Handsome Dick Manitoba, insisted on telling stories to the audience in his gruff New York accent, which slowed down the pace of the gig a bit, but still proved pretty entertaining. He’s quite a character. For the most part, the crowd ate it up.
The rest of the lineup on Saturday was solid, with three bands playing the kind of straight-ahead, no-frills rock that HoZac is known for: Rainbow Gun Club, A Giant Dog and — my favorite of the bunch — Shocked Minds.
Although the venue doesn’t officially open until Wednesday, I got a look inside last night, May 16, when Thalia Hall invited some folks to a concert by two local bands, Bare Mutants and Disappears. My first impression: This is a real beauty of a room, with some lovely ornate architectural details and — at least for now — a few touches of decay that seem appropriate for a rock venue. (That peeling paint on the walls up in the balcony may eventually get spruced up, however.)
The sight lines are excellent, whether you’re standing on the main floor looking at the stage — which is fairly high, maybe 4 1/2 feet up from the floor — or if you’re watching from the balcony. The upstairs is cleverly designed, with short, stepped tiers that should make it possible for you to see over whoever is standing in front of you. The stage is pretty large — around the size of the stages at Metro and the Riviera, with lots of space behind the band. And the ceiling is quite high. The room looks like it could hold 1,000 people. There’s a cool bar area upstairs, in a separate room from the main balcony.
On Friday night, the sound of Bare Mutants and Disappears’ rock was pretty good wherever I was standing in the room, though the real test will come over time as musical acts with widely varying styles and dynamics play in the room. Real concerts will also test what sort of venue this turns out to be. What it’ll feel like when it’s filled with people for a sold-out show? How will crowds tend to move around in this space? And how will audience members behave — a factor that the venue owners only have so much influence on?
All of this is hard to predict at this point, but the signs are good that this is going to be an outstanding venue. The schedule so far includes a mix of the sorts of artists both the Empty Bottle and SPACE are knowing for booking: Panda Bear, a double bill of Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle, the Mavericks, Goat, Teb Benoit, Gillian Welch, Camera Obscura — and even an -odd-sounding show called “Green Porno” starring Isabella Rosselini.
I realize now that I failed to take any pictures yesterday of the building’s fabulous exterior, so here’s one from the Thalia Hall website:
And here are some photos I took at last night’s preview concert:
A view from Thalia Hall’s balcony before the concert.Bare MutantsBare MutantsA view of the Thalia Hall stage from behind the sound board, which is in the balcony.The back part of Thalia Hall’s auditorium.The balcony.Two levels of opera boxes are located on either side of the stage.A view from the balcony of Disappears performing at Thalia Hall.A view from the balcony of Disappears performing at Thalia Hall.DisappearsDisappearsDisappearsDisappearsDisappears
I’ve wanted to see the Flamin’ Groovies for years, and last night (May 9), a reunited version of the terrific ’70s band — which was responsible for the all-time classic power pop song “Shake Some Action” and many other excellent recordings — finally made it to Chicago. It was great to hear these guys (1970s Groovies members Cyril Jordan, Chris Wilson andGeorge Alexander, plus a new drummer, Victor Penalosa) playing some of those old songs I thought I’d never hear in concert… And yet, somehow the show ended on a sour note with a bad vibe in the room. I don’t think the band was largely to blame.
I suspect the problems started with the choice of venue, the House of Blues, which was simply too big of a room for the Flamin’ Groovies to fill with their undeservedly small cult following. By the day of the concert, tickets were practically being given away. The opening acts were a couple of fun Chicago bands, the Peekaboos and the Lemons, who drew a bunch of their young fans to the dance floor. This all had the makings of a delightful young-meets-old sort of evening, even though some of the older folks probably didn’t know what to make of the Lemons’ goofy sing-song bubblegum pop ditties, which are rarely more than a minute long. (I thought they were great fun and pretty darn funny, too.)
And the show attracted at least a few people who seemed bent on making trouble. One guy somehow got backstage and dived off the stage into the crowd during the middle of the Flamin’ Groovies’ set. That wouldn’t be an unusual occurrence at a punk show, but at this concert, it was a surprise that seemed to annoy and throw off the Groovies. Then, a fight of some sort broke out in the crowd right in front of the stage, with security guards descending and eventually pulling out two guys. All of this proved very distracting — to me as an audience member and also, I suspect, to the band itself.
After playing “Shake Some Action” about 45 minutes into its set, the band rather abruptly left the stage. It seemed as if half the audience didn’t even notice the band was gone. There was no applause to speak of, other than a few scattered claps. A couple of minutes later, despite the absence of cheering, the Flamin’ Groovies returned to the stage, clearly following the standard concert script that calls for an encore. And at that moment, they played one of the best songs of the night, a hard-charging “Teenage Head.” And then they were gone, having played a mere 50 minutes.
A couple of friends tell me they’ve seen great shows by the Groovies recently at other places around the country. This clearly wasn’t one of their better nights, but it had some good moments. Those old Flamin’ Groovies songs from the 1970s — the band’s originals as well as its distinctive covers of tunes by Chuck Berry, Freddy Cannon and others — have stood the test of time. But what a strange show this turned out to be.
The Chicago International Movies & Music Festival, or CIMM Fest, ran April 30-May 1 at several venues around the city, featuring movies about music as well as concerts and other events.
I saw three documentaries, all of them worth seeing:
Joe Angio’s long-awaited Revenge of the Mekons — a compelling, funny and inspiring telling of this great band’s unusual and seemingly never-ending story. Mekons Jon Langford and Sally Timms answered questions with Angio after the sold-out screening at Lincoln Hall, and they even did one Mekons song (“Tina”) a cappella. (See the trailer for the film here.)
Boyce & Hart: The Guys Who Wrote ‘Em — a portrait of the ’60s songwriting duo who wrote many of the Monkees’ songs. The film has a lot of great archival film clips and photos. Bobby Hart (who appeared after the screening) narrates much of the film, which makes the interesting choice of showing no talking-head interviews. Before the screening, a group of local musicians calling themselves the Candy Store Prophets (including Phil Angotti) performed a lively set of Boyce & Hart tunes in the Logan Theatre’s lounge, with dancing by several ladies wearing 1960s-style outfits.
The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music — a history of country music’s founding family. It’s a good film on an important topic — including an interview with the late Johnny Cash — but the attempts at turning historic photos into animation are awkward and distracting. Before the screening, Lawrence Peters played a cool set of mostly Johnny Cash songs in the Logan Theatre’s lounge.
Lawrence Peters
Yo La Tengo & Phil Cohran
The CIMM Fest concerts I caught included a strong set by Yo La Tengo at Concord Hall on May 1. In typical fashion, the trio ran the gamut from very quiet folk music to loud droning punk rock. The evening’s opening act, onetime Sun Ra collaborator Phil Cohran, returned to the stage to join in with Yo La Tengo for a Sun Ra tune. YLT’s main set climaxed with some of the wildest guitar-tossing I’ve ever seen Ira Kaplan do. Following that rave-up, the encore finished with one of my favorite quiet Yo La Tengo songs, a lovely, low-key version of “My Little Corner of the World.” Kaplan said it was a request the band had received by email, noting that it seems like Yo La Tengo has played the song often during its Chicago concerts. Well, that’s just fine with me.
Mary Shelley scores ‘Potemkin’
Mary Shelley — a trio consisting of Local H’s Scott Lucas, former Smashing Pumpkin drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and bassist Mark Ulery (of Matt Ulery’s Loom) — performed a live score to the silent Soviet film classic Battleship Potemkin at 1st Ward on May 2. The thunderous riffs were truly epic, and the band followed up the film with one bonus song, a cover of Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane.”
Willis Earl Beal
At the Hideout on May 2, Willis Earl Beal — wearing a Green Hornet mask — showed a short film he’d made, and then he played a recording of some new songs. He asked for the venue to turn off all the lights in the room, urging people not to walk out as his music played in almost total darkness. A few people did walk out, abandoning what turned out to be more of a listening party than an actual concert.
Tim Kinsella sings Marvin Tate songs
Earlier that night, the Hideout hosted a wonderful set of Marvin Tate and Leroy Bach’s songs performed by Tim Kinsella, Bach, Melina Ausikaitis and Ben Boye. Tate himself stood near the stage, watching and listening as his songs were performed — with all of their charmingly oddball poetry and humor, and their almost nursery-rhyme like melodies — but he stepped up to the microphone at the end of the set to offer his thanks. Don’t miss the album of these quirky songs — with the rather unwieldy title Tim Kinsella Sings the Songs of Marvin Tate by LeRoy Bach Featuring Angel Olsen — which was released late last year with very little fanfare.
These New Puritans
On May 3, the English band These New Puritans headlined a CIMM Fest concert at the Empty Bottle, performing impressive set of its arty rock, blending chamber music with post-punk. This band keeps changing up its modus operandi from one record to the next, but it always remains interesting.
