Underground Bee

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

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

See my photos of the Kills and Telepathe.

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

See my photos of Dead Meadow.

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

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

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

See my photos of Oakley Hall and the Constantines.

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

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

See my photos of Kelley Stoltz.

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

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

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

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

See my photos of Laurie Anderson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parc Avenue, the new CD by the Montreal trio Plants and Animals stands out in the pile of new music I’ve been listening to lately. I knew the songs were good when I was listening to the CD over the last couple of weeks, and hearing them played live last night (April 3) at Schubas just reaffirmed my opinion. Somehow, I pictured this band having more than three guys (maybe it was that cover photo showing the musicians surrounded by various other people).

There’s a cool sense of shagginess to the songs. Plants and Animals has a tendency to repeat one catchy line a bunch of times, but the band also takes its songs in some unexpected directions just when you think they’re about to end. When I first heard the closing track on the CD, “Guru,” I wondered what was up with the long instrumental jam that sounded almost, um, Pat Metheny-ish. OK, I was off with the Metheny comparison, but there is something jazzy about it. Hearing Plants and Animals do the song live last night, it struck me more like the modal guitar improvisation of “Eight Miles High” stretched out over several minutes, and it made sense alongside the other Plants and Animals songs.

It was a strong showing by yet another Montreal band. What’s in the water up there? Keep the bands coming, Quebec.

I haven’t replaced my stolen camera yet, so for now I’m stuck with my old point-and-shoot camera (an Olympus Camedia D-40 Zoom), and it took me a few minutes to remember how to use it. The lights at Schubas were pretty red last night, so I went with black and white for most of the shots. Photos of Plants and Animals.

Two of the bands I wanted to see at SXSW but missed, Cryptacize and Citay, were in Chicago last night (March 29) for a show at the Hideout. The night started with a local act, Rock Falls, which is one of those “bands” that is basically one singer-songwriter, in this case is Annie Reese. She has a new single out (yes, an actual vinyl single) on the Cardboard Sangria, and one of her labelmates, Dan Schneider of the wonderful Singleman Affair sat in with her last night on guitar and banjo. Rock Falls play some awfully nice folk music, leaning toward the old-fashioned style that blends a bit of country with the minor chords and swooning melodies of the Great American Songbook, and Reese crooned it all in a lovely voice.

Cryptacize, an Oakland band on the Asthmatic Kitty label and includes former Deerhoof member Chris Cohen, plays an oddball sort of naive folk rock. Think of Mo Tucker singing “I’m Sticking With You” for the Velvet Underground and mix in an early Pixies guitar riff and some, well, how about the Tinklers? OK, few people are going to get that reference. Think campfire songs deconstructed. Cryptacize plays its songs in pieces. First a little drumming. Then the drumming stops and there’s a little bit of autoharp and singing. Then there’s a loud burst of guitar. Then there’s some drumming. And sometimes, it all comes together. But for the most part, it feels fragmented. It’s disconcerting and will probably drive some listeners crazy, but I loved it. When Cohen and Nedelle Torisi brought their voices together in the whimsical “Cosmic Sing-Along” for the final song, it was highly charming.

Citay, hailing from San Francisco, played music that sounded downright prog, with extended instrumental sections (not really solos, though) that included more than a little bit of Yes or King Crimson. The band’s attitude and vocals, however, sound much less pretentious and much more natural than you’d expect. I’m not sure if the epics were quite epic enough, but Citay was pretty interesting.

Photos of Citay, Cryptacize and Citay.

A couple of months ago, I was excited to hear that the Ruby Suns and Throw Me the Statue were playing on the same night at Schubas – and they weren’t even the headliners. They were two of the three bands on a bill headlined by Le Loup. And then Schubas expanded the lineup even more, adding a fourth band, Bodies of Water, and putting them at the top of the bill. It almost seemed like a mini-festival when the show finally came on Friday (March 28).

I had seen Throw Me the Statue and the Ruby Suns recently at SXSW, but was glad to see both bands again. If I’m not mistaken, Throw Me the Statue played several songs different from the ones I saw them play in Austin, with a little more emphasis on the quieter tunes featuring keyboards, Melodica and xylophone prominently. As I mentioned before on my blog, the Ruby Suns set I saw in Austin was marred by extraneous noise and time delays, so it was great to actually hear a real set by them at Schubas. Ryan McPhun and his two bandmates are really too small of a crew to pull off the layered arrangements on their new album Sea Lion. This band could really include some five or six musicians doing all of the various parts, but instead the Ruby Suns use looping pedals to create a fun but occasionally ramshackle pop music with Beach Boys harmonies, some lovely flute solos and even singing in the Maori language. I like the way McPhun drums standing up at the front of the stage, injecting the drumming parts in some portions of the songs and then switching to guitar. For a guy who grew up in California before moving to New Zealand, he certainly seems to have picked up a Kiwi accent.

I was less familiar with Le Loup and Bodies of Water, but I listened to the most recent records by both bands before seeing Friday’s show and liked what I heard. With seven members, Le Loup plays music that is surprisingly lean and stripped down in some ways, but with lots of percussion in the big climax. Bodies of Water is a simpler four-person band, but that’s not to say their music is simple. At many points, all four members (two men and two women) were singing together, and the harmonies were out-of-the-ordinary and compelling. As with some of the bands I saw recently at SXSW (including Megafaun and Noah and the Whale), Bodies of Water shows influences from folk music that go beyond the typical Bob Dylan influence to older sources.

My trusty old camera was stolen last week (while sitting in the trunk of my car during the Boredoms concert, which I was unable to bring it into), so at the moment, I’m without a camera of my own. However, my friend and fellow photographer Kirstie, aka Kirstiecat, loaned me her camera for a while. Thanks to Kirstie for that generous favor. I was a little out of sorts when it came to photographing, however, so I can’t say I’m all that pleased with my shots from this show or the one on Saturday at the Hideout, but here you go anyway… Photos of Le Loup and Bodies of Water.

Boredoms, the revered Japanese rock ensemble, played one of the shows of the year last night (March 26) at the Congress Theatre in Chicago. The thrust of the music was primitive and tribal, but it was sophisticated in the details. You could let the powerful drumming, the beautiful but incomprehensible war cries and the throbbing electronics wash over you. The band might seem to be playing with wild abandon, like animals let loose on their instruments. But listen more closely and it was as smart as a symphony, with the three percussionists playing complex, overlapping patterns.

The stage was out on the venue’s floor, with Boredoms playing “in the round,” fans on all sides. The setup was a little awkward, but it worked, and the centerpiece of the stage was an assembly of seven guitars into a sort of tower (four guitars pointing left, three pointing right), which Boredoms’ main singer, Eye, periodically hammered at with a pole.

As dominated as the show was by noise, one of the most remarkable moments came early in the night, when all the drumming and sounds abruptly stopped, and all of the musicians paused, their bodies poised to bang away again. The band paused and paused. It was the sort of moment when fans at some concerts will assume that a song is over and start clapping, but everyone at the Boredoms show knew that this moment of silence was part of the music. The vast room was deadly quiet, no one making a sound, except an intake of breath. I could feel the audience recognizing something special in the moment. And then the hammer fell and the drumming resumed with more force than ever.

The first of the opening acts was the Human Bell, another act on the Thrill Jockey label, who played a nice set of their instrumental rock, which is built around short, repeating motifs played with intensity. The second act was Soft Circle (aka drummer Hisham Bharoocha), whose music I was not familiar with. From my vantage point back in the middle of the auditorium, the mix was muddy and the music, mostly electronic loops with live drumming, seemed nondescript.

After all those SXSW photos and reviews, I haven’t had much energy to write lately, but I did manage to make it out to some concerts. In fact, against my better judgment, I had a ticket to see the Magnetic Fields March 16 at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, just a few hours after my plane from Austin landed. I say it was against my better judgment just because I feared I would feel like a zombie after five straight days of non-stop music. As it turned out, I didn’t feel all that drained, and this turned out to be a fabulous show I would have hated to miss.

The Magnetic Fields were playing six shows over three days at the Old Town School, and I saw the first show on the final night of their visit. Unlike the feedback-drenched Jesus and Mary Chain sound of their new album, the aptly titled Distortion, the concert featured Stephen Merritt and his group performing in a sort of string quartet meets folk-rock band format. That’s actually how I prefer my Magnetic Fields music, though I wouldn’t mind hearing them do a few louder songs in concert sometime. They played an excellent selection of songs from Distortion plus of course some oldies from 69 Love Songs and other records, with lots of dryly witty banter between Claudia Gonson and Merritt (Gonson does most of the talking, leaving Merritt to respond with grumpy one-liners). Shirley Simms on vocals (and Sally Timms, who guested on one song) added to the beauty of the songs. I did not take photos at this show, but kirstiecat has photos from one of the March 14 shows.

On March 17, rather than doing anything Irish for St. Patrick’s Day, I saw Norwegian singer Hanne Hukkelberg perform a lovely set of her quirky songs at Schubas. I’ve only listened to her music a little bit, but I’m definitely going to spend more time with it now. See my photos of Hanne Hukkelberg. I also enjoyed the opening sets by Boat, who played a sort of folk chamber music, and Haley Bonar, whose music is more traditional singer-songwriter alt-country. See my photos of Haley Bonar and Boat.

On March 19, I went to see the reunited British punk band the Slits at Subterranean. When I walked in, the second of four bands that night was about to start. The guitar-and-drums duo Shellshag played a chaotic set. It was fun at moments, and I sensed some good melodies in the songs, but the loose, shambling quality of the performance distracted me too much. I felt like a sober person watching drunk or stoned people having fun. Sometimes, watching people having fun is fun in and of itself. Other times… well, you just feel like you’re not in on the joke. The next band up was Old Time Relijun, who have enough of a following that they might normally be the headliners. After seeing them live (but not really knowing their records), I have to say: Meh, I guess that just ain’t for me. But hey, the fans liked it. They loudly urged the band to do an encore, but it was time for the Slits. Now, the Slits are a band I know mostly by reputation. I have heard and enjoyed their 1979 record Cut, but I can’t say I’ve paid much attention to the Slits. Singer Ari Up and bassist Tessa Pollitt are back together now as the Slits, playing with three much younger musicians as their backup band. Up has a goofy stage personality that matches her gold pants and long dreadlocks, and for most of this show, the fun was fairly infectious. After a while, though, the concert devolved into too much between-song goofing around. The guitarist complained, “I’m bored,” at one point – a joke, no doubt, but she had a point. And the second half of the concert focused too much on the Slits’ newer reggae music than its old punk rock for my tastes. Still, I have to give these ladies credit for bringing back the Slits. See my photos of the Slits, Old Time Relijun and Shellshag.

After a concert-free weekend, I was at the Empty Bottle on Monday (March 24) for a late show by British Sea Power. I missed BSP a few times when I was in Austin, and I definitely did not want to miss them again. They really tore down the place with strong versions of tracks off their new record, Do You Like Rock Music? (I take it that’s a rhetorical question) and some older songs. The concert captured what I like best about British Sea Power’s records, that tension between the ragged edges of their punkier tunes and the grandeur of their epic numbers, with transitions and segues that shouldn’t work but somehow do. At the end of the show, the members of BSP were on top of amps, on top of audience members, and on top of one another – and there was no need for an encore to follow up that dramatic climax. (Besides, it was pushing 2 a.m. on a Monday night.) See my photos of British Sea Power. One of my local favorites, the 1900s, opened for BSP. I’ve said enough about them in the past, so I’ll just say they played a strong set including one new song, and I was glad to see them again. See my photos of the 1900s.

This show Friday (March 7) at Schubas was a double bill I’d been looking forward to for a while, teaming up the latest weird outfit to emerge out of Oklahoma, Evangelicals, with Champaign’s finest pop band of the moment, Headlights. Evangelicals put on a searing performance last year at SXSW, and their new album, The Evening Descends (on the Dead Oceans label, the latest offshoot of the excellent Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar labels in Indiana), is a strong followup to their debut, So Gone. This is a band that plays its music drenched in reverb and psychedelic sounds, to the point where the songs themselves may get a little too obscured. The tunes underneath all of those echoes are worth finding, though, with tons of emotion, poetic lyrics and vocals that careen into falsetto with a daring sense of recklessness. That phrase that fellow Oklahomans the Flaming Lips used to describing themselves, “fearless freaks,” is also an apt description of these guys. Paralleling that layered, hazy sound, Evangelicals presented a similarly obscured visual spectacle last night, playing with almost no lights other than their own black light and strobes. On top of that, a fog machine kept pouring out smoke and the microphone stands were shrouded in handkerchiefs. Once the band asked the sound guy to turn down the reverb just a little bit, a passionate performance emerged out of the murk.

See my photos of Evangelicals. (I did what I could…)

Headlights was another band that impressed me last year at SXSW, with a new record out in early 2008, Some Racing, Some Stopping. Last night, it struck me that their music is reminiscent of the quieter and prettier music that Yo La Tengo does. The basic melodies on guitar or keyboard are fairly simple and usually bright in tone, and the vocal harmonies are lovely, too. When the songs do build to more of a rocking sound, it’s in the way that the Feelies used to do it, with hypnotic repetition. At several points, more than one member of Headlights kneeled on the floor, twiddling with effects pedal rather than playing notes on their instruments, creating oscillating effects – but all in the service of a good song rather than for the purpose of creating noise.

See my photos of Headlights.

(This review is also at the web site of the Southtown Star newspaper.)

By 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, the crowd at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre was getting restless, with impatient Pogues fans clapping rhythmically and wondering when the band would come out. The group was running about an hour late, and the word among the security guards was that Pogues lead singer Shane MacGowan – who has a well-deserved reputation for drinking heavily – had not even shown up. Finally, with a sense of relief, the word came: Shane was in the building.

As MacGowan and his seven original bandmates in the Pogues took the stage at last, all seemed to be forgiven. And by the end of the show, as audience members waved their fists above their heads and careened against one another with reckless abandon, the night had turned into an ecstatic celebration of the Irish folk-rock, both wild and beautiful, that made the Pogues famous in the first place.

The Pogues haven’t released any new material since the original lineup reunited last year, and like other bands relying on the appeal of their back catalogues, the Pogues face the risk of becoming a nostalgia act. But that’s a worry for another day. In the meantime, it was simply glorious to hear the Pogues’ combination of drunken pub anthems, rollicking jigs and reels and good old-fashioned sentimental ballads.

The question hovering over any Pogues concert is what sort of condition MacGowan will be in. Repeating his performance last year in a Pogues concert at the Congress Theatre, MacGowan appeared to be inebriated yet capable of remembering all the words of his songs, singing them all in his typically slurred, thick brogue. It’s easy to imagine MacGowan as a drunkard in some pub who unexpectedly wanders over to the microphone and stuns everyone with his poetic powers.

Wearing a top hat, dark suit and sunglasses, MacGowan leaned and staggered all night, pretending at a couple of points that he was boxing with his microphone stand. For whatever reason, MacGowan seems to require periodic rests or breaks. At several points, he walked offstage and relinquished lead vocals to other Pogues for a song or two. In MacGowan’s absence, Spider Stacy sang his best-known Pogues tune, “Tuesday Morning,” and Phillip Chevron sang “Thousands Are Sailing,” his memorable track from the album “If I Should Fall From Grace With God.”

One of the reasons MacGowan can get away with being a little out of it during concerts is that he has such a crack band playing behind him. The Pogues play their accordions, banjos, whistles and mandolins with a lot of finesse without ever getting fussy about it. They strayed pretty far from traditional Irish music with their closing song, the rousing Spanish-tinged party tune “Fiesta,” but few bands capture Ireland’s spirit as well as the Pogues.

See my photos of the Pogues.

The opening act was one of our local should-be-stars, Ike Reilly, who played a solid set with some of his best songs, including the apropos “When Irish Eyes Are Burning Bright.” He seemed to win over the crowd members unfamiliar with his music, getting more enthusiastic applause as the set went on.

See my photos of the Ike Reilly Assassination.

(This review will also appear at the web site of the Southtown Star newspaper.)

At one point during Friday’s concert at the Riviera Theatre, Hives lead singer Pelle Almqvist asked the audience, “Is it possible this is the best live show in the history of the world?” And then, answering his own question but hedging his bets a little, he said, “It is still possible.”

Actually, the concert would not likely rank on anyone’s list of all-time bests, but the Hives did put on a good show. And with the Donnas as opening act, the concert felt like a hard-rocking co-ed double bill.

Almqvist is the sort of singer who asks crowds for constant reassurance that he and his band are fabulous. (This is a guy who calls himself Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist.) And since the Hives are a bunch of dudes from Sweden wearing what look like black-and-white prep-school uniforms, you have to wonder at times if the whole show is some sort of comedy act that might make more sense if you were from Sweden. Still, even if the whole thing is an act, the Hives do know how to rock hard and fast. Fast was the tempo all night long, as drummer Chris Dangerous somehow managed to strike dramatic poses even as he kept up a fierce tempo. Dangerous is the sort of drummer who spends a lot of time throwing drumsticks up into the air and catching them. (At one point, he failed to catch one of his sticks. His response? Toss away the other stick and wait for a roadie to bring out a new set.) Guitarist Nicholaus Arson, with a rockabilly haircut, extended his guitar out toward the audience while Almqvist ran back and forth with manic energy.

All of this showmanship was in the service of some simple but effective garage-punk songs, with loud, crunchy guitar chords and shouted vocals. The Hives’ problem is that their songs all sound too similar, but it isn’t a bad formula, and on songs with catchy choruses like “Main Offender” and “Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones,” the power of the Hives could not be denied. Toward the end of the show, Almqvist was still reminding audience members who was onstage, as if they needed reminding. “We are the Hives,” he said, “still standing.”

See my photos of the Hives.

If the Hives are very self-aware, the Donnas seem to lack any similar sense of irony. They just play hard rock, straight up without any jokiness, cranking out loud tunes that straddle the line between pop and heavy metal. At times on Friday night, the Donnas sounded like they might slip at any second into a Bon Jovi or Mötley Crüe cover, but they stuck with their original material, including one chorus that stated the obvious conclusion anyone would arrive at from watching the Donnas: “Girls rock!” Like the Hives, the Donnas act like real rock stars. While Brett Anderson roamed the stage in her sleeveless Harley-Davidson T-shirt, Allison Robertson let her long blonde hair fly like some 1980s guitar god – make that guitar goddess.

See my photos of the Donnas.

I’ve been a fan of Dengue Fever since seeing them at SXSW a few years back, and the band seems to be getting more attention these days, even including an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” I have a pretty high tolerance for listening to music sung in languages other than English, so I don’t really tire of listening to the incomprehensible Cambodian words to Dengue Fever’s lively songs, but I could see why Dengue Fever might be too, well, unrelentingly exotic for some people. The surf-rock guitar and serpentine vocal melodies keep it fun for me, and the band was in fine form last night (Feb. 27) at the Empty Bottle. Singer Chhom Nimol was a marvel, and bassist Senon Williams was a towering maniac, hopping around the stage all night. Nimol brought a fan onto stage to sing an old Cambodian song. I have no clue what they were singing about, but I liked hearing it.

The first band of the night was a new Chicago outfit called Alla, which features someone I know – taper extraordinaire Aadam Jacobs on percussion. This was the first time I’d heard a note of their music, and it struck me as promising, with some cool psychedelic touches. Second was Cordero, the Spanish-language band on the Bloodshot label led by Brooklyn singer-songwriter Ani Cordero. She and her band played a lively set, a nice complement to the Dengue Fever music coming later in the night.

See my photos of Dengue Fever, Alla and Cordero.

The last (and only) time I saw Shannon Wright in concert was when she opened for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Chicago Theatre. I still vividly remember the odd way she stalked around on the stage with her legs in a posture resembling a crab. Wright’s put out a good number of records, but she doesn’t seem to get quite as much attention as she deserves. She played a riveting, if short, set Friday (Feb. 22) at Schubas. She played the first three or four songs on piano, showing an idiosyncratic sense of tempo and melody. I liked the slightly peculiar tinge of her piano compositions. Then she switched to guitar for the rest of the night. Her guitar songs sound quite different from the piano ones, but there’s a similar eccentricity to the chords and tempos. She really let loose by the end of her set, pouncing on the stage as she riffed (although she didn’t do that crab walk this time) and loudly singing way off-mike on the last tune.

Wright’s backing band consisted of the drummer and bassist from the opening act, King’s Daughters and Sons. Not to be confused with Sons and Daughters, this is a group from Louisville. I’d never heard of them before, but they impressed me quite a bit. Their songs start off mellow, a bit like Iron & Wine folk rock, and then build into long epics. The three-song CDR the band is selling at shows is well worth picking up if you can find it. I’m eager to hear more.

See my photos of Shannon Wright and King’s Daughters and Sons.

Seeing the Dirtbombs again confirmed my memory that this is a great band – and it also made me wonder why I don’t listen to their records more often. Maybe the live Dirtbombs experience is better than the recorded one, but the key thing is that this band has some terrific songs. I picked up their new album, the aptly titled We Have You Surrounded, at the merch table, and so far it’s sounding pretty strong.

Unlike their show a few years back at the Double Door, this Dirtbombs set did not begin with the big dramatic buildup with one musician at a time. Without any fuss, they all trotted out onto stage and launched right into some ripping Motown-y garage rock. I love the way Mick Collins acts a bit like a guitar hero, while at the same time, he’s using a little amp, dwarfed by the typical guitarist’s gear. The two-drummer setup was as cool as ever, with the two playing not exactly in synch but constantly keeping all of the songs in motion. The Dirtbombs are apparently not doing the two-bass thing anymore; one of the bass players, Ko Shih, played guitar all night this time, though I caught her doing some bassist-style fingering on the lower strings. And she’s still playing with her mouth agape and hair strewn across her face, as if she’s in a constant state of shock. The Dirtbombs sounded especially good whenever the three singers all joined together and the crowd got wild in front of the stage. Oddly, they played two INXS covers for their second and final encore. I have to say I always hated INXS, but I could appreciate the spirit of the songs when the Dirtbombs were playing them.

See my photos of the Dirtbombs.

The first band of the night, Coldcock Jones and the Shithawks, was just as vile and stupid as you would guess from the name. The singer ended up practically yelling at audience members who didn’t appreciate his band’s subpar Ted Nugent wankery. Maybe it was all a joke, but even if you looked at ironically as some sort of performance art, it was a painful experience. The second band, Lee Marvin’s Computer Arm, was considerably better, doing some lively garage-punk, but man, those silent pauses in between the songs were awkward.

One of the things I recall quite clearly about the show that the Super Furry Animals played a few year ago at the Abbey Pub (when Rings Around the World had just come out) was the lack of an encore. It was a superb show and the crowd clearly wanted to hear more, but the band seemed to have worked out just how to end the performance on the perfect note, and they weren’t coming back. It was one of a few shows I saw around that time without encores, which would have been unheard of in the years before that. A few artists, at least, finally seemed to recognize the emptiness of this ritual if it is allowed to happen at EVERY concert.

The Super Furry Animals were back on Saturday, playing this time at Metro. I’ve missed all SFA shows since that stop at the Abbey Pub, but once again, the band took a “no encore” stance. This time, in fact, lead singer Gruff Rhys, held up a sign reading “RESIST PHONY ENCORES” before leaving the stage. And sure enough, there was no encore, even though just about everyone in attendance would have been happy to hear another song or two.

It was a top-notch set, with a good selection of songs from various SFA records, ranging from oldies (well, relative oldies) like “Golden Retriever” and “Rings Around the World” to songs off the group’s fine new pop album Hey Venus!. Thanks to those Welsh-accented vocals, it all sounded pretty consistent, even when the styles of music shifted from straightforward indie pop to psychedelia. The show lacked the constant stream of films that appeared in the last SFA concert I saw, but it still had a few elements of absurd spectacle. Rhys performed the first song and one later song with his head encased in a large mask/helmet, resembling some sort of alien racecar driver. He also chomped on carrots during one song and spat the remnants onto the stage.

The first act was Jeffrey Lewis, who was pretty amusing with his comical songs (including one describing a conversation with Will Oldham) and “movies” – stories he told with illustrated books. Next up was Times New Viking, a guitar-drums-keyboard trio doing lo-fi rock with the vocals buried under all the noise. I liked some of what I could make out in all that din, though it got a little tiresome by the end. (And for what it’s worth, the comments I heard from others at the Metro about Times New Viking ranged from, “Hey, they were pretty good” to “Worst show of the year.”)

See my photos of Super Furry Animals and Times New Viking.

Two of my favorite unsung Chicago bands (well, mostly unsung) were at the Empty Bottle Saturday night (Feb. 9): Big Buildings and Palliard. The night started out with the only non-Chicago act on the bill, Dreadful Yawns from Cleveland. I’ve heard of these guys but never heard them – maybe that awful name never inspired me to seek them out – but I liked what I heard Saturday night, some real organic-sounding rock. Worth checking out for sure.

Palliard played second, and I was happy to hear songs from the group’s fine 2006 album Won’t Heal Alone. I just wish I had a new Palliard album to enjoy right now. They play a really nice brand of melancholy roots rock. Their set included a Gillian Welch song that she herself hasn’t released yet. After hearing her play it in concert, one of the Palliard members got her to write down the words on a napkin. (Speaking of records I’m desperately dreaming of… when is Welch ever going to release another one?!?)

The third band was The Thin Man. You’ll notice I didn’t mention them at the top of this blog entry when I said two of my favorite Chicago bands were playing. It’s not that I don’t like the Thin Man, but the vocals just wear a little, um, thin on me after a few songs. Saturday, though, the band was pretty lively and I ended up liking it better than previous shows I’ve seen.

Big Buildings headlined the night, a record release part for their new album, Wampum, which is an actual record in the old sense of the term – a vinyl long-player. Not available as a CD, it comes with a code for downloading a digital version. So far, I’ve just listened to it on the old turntable and it sounds excellent, even with the occasional phonograph pop and crackle. The group played a very energetic set, and their songs showed a lot of range, everything from garage rock and Wilco folk rock to Velvet Underground and ’60s pop.

See my photos of Big Buildings, the Thin Man, Palliard and Dreadful Yawns.

All three of the musical acts Friday night (Feb. 8) at the Empty Bottle were interested in exploring what they could do with guitar, stretching out notes or finding patterns that would gain in richness as they repeated on loops. First up was Scott Tuma, who has played with Souled American and Good Stuff House. His songs (or was that just one song?) were achingly slow as the notes reverberated. Notes that sounded wrong at first started to seem right as he repeated them. He occasionally stepped up to the mike and let his soft voice drift above the rumbling.

Mick Turner, best known as a member of the Dirty Three, played second, offering a surprisingly long set of his instrumental music accompanied by a “movie” including slides of his artwork (naive stuff, charming in its own way, a little like pictures from a children’s book except for the fact that there were naked ladies). Turner’s music was peaceful and pretty, building to some impressive peaks.

Six Organs of Admittance was the headliner, although I think they played a shorter set than Turner. Six Organs is essentially Ben Chasny, who also plays in the heavy psychedelic band Comets on Fire. In this guise, he tends more toward acoustic and meditative music, but it rocks in its own way. He opened the set by himself, playing an acoustic guitar with incredible speed and dexterity. (I noticed his guitar is an Alvarez, the same brand as mine, although I have a different model. This was just about the only time I’ve ever seen anyone playing one during a concert. I love mine.) The show went electric when Elisa Ambrogio, who plays on the most recent Six Organs record, Shelter from the Ash, joined him onstage, as well as drummer Ian Wadley (who’d played earlier with Turner). They sounded great together.

See my photos of Six Organs of Admittance, Mick Turner and Scott Tuma.

Catching up here on a few concerts I’ve seen over the last week. Last Thursday (Feb. 7) was one of my rare (too rare) visits to Orchestra Hall for a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert. The CSO was performing an “opera” – sort of – by one of my favorite living composers, Osvaldo Golijov, who is the CSO’s composer in residence. And one of my favorite classical singers, Dawn Upshaw, was performing. (I’ve been a big fan of hers ever since hearing that classical best-seller, Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3.) I put opera in quote marks because this piece, “Aindamar: Fountain of Tears,” felt almost more like an oratorio, or some cross between opera and symphony. As far as the story goes, it’s more impressionistic and poetic than plot-driven. The piece was notable for its use of prerecorded sounds, including gun shots, which transform into a percussion pattern. At moments, “Ainadamar” almost sounded like an opera with touches of laptronica. Upshaw and the other singers (Jessica Rivera and Kelly O’Connor, who sang the male role of Lorca with her rich voice) sounded magnificent. It was great to see Golijov walk up onto the stage from a seat in the audience during the applause at the end.

I’m never sure which concerts will sell out. Sometimes I sniff some hype in the air, and a show fills up with fans eager to hear the next big thing. Sometimes I think the music’s great, and then almost no one shows up. On Friday at Schubas, at least two of the three bands, Ra Ra Riot and the Virgins, seemed to have some buzz, but both of those bands have only an EP to their credit so far. Is that enough to draw a crowd? Apparently so. It did sell out. Both bands are on the verge of releasing full-length albums. The first band of the night, Essex Chanel, also seemed to have something of a following, judging from the enthusiastic friends/fans at the front of the place, though their somewhat techno ’80s-style pop wasn’t really my cup of tea.

I’ve only heard the Virgins’ songs a few times on myspace, so I wasn’t too familiar with their music before the show. I enjoyed their set, though I’ll have to hear the songs more to decide just how worthwhile they are. The band reminded me a little bit of the Strokes, with tightly constructed pop songs containing a bit of that post-punk vibe.

See my photos of the Virgins and Essex Chanel.

Ra Ra Riot’s self-titled EP from last year is a nice, if modest, little collection of songs. The production is a little plain, but there’s a forthright quality about the singing and the arrangements that appeals to me. It just sounds honest. It also sounds to me like the sort of self-produced small-label records that indie bands put out in the mid-1980s, back when everyone was trying to become the next R.E.M. One thing that I didn’t really pick up on with Ra Ra Riot until seeing the band live was the importance of the string players. The cello and violin are almost the lead instruments, but Ra Ra Riot doesn’t really sound that much like lush orchestral pop. It’s more like a string quartet than an orchestra. And Ra Ra Riot was quite lively in concert, with the sort of stage roaming and hair flailing that you’d expect at… (OK, here comes the clichéd rock-critic comparison that you’ve been bracing for – sorry!) … an Arcade Fire concert. Ra Ra Riot played all of the EP and some new songs that sounded promising. For the first time ever, the band did two encores, closing out the night with a cool cover of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love.”

See my photos of Ra Ra Riot.

Amid all the hubbub over Amy Winehouse – and, to a lesser extent, the critical praise being showered on Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and Bettye LaVette – another terrific old-school R&B act has been a little overshadowed. I’m talking about the Dynamites, a young Nashville band playing behind a veteran soul-music frontman, Charles Walker. Billing their collaboration with the somewhat awkward group name The Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker, they released a really fun and funky record last year called Ka-Boom! I keep on comparing it to James Brown, just because it’s the easiest point of reference.

I missed a couple of Dynamites shows in Chicago last year, but was happy to make up for it with Saturday’s concert at Schubas. The opening act was the Soul Reys, who lived up to their name with groovy, guitar-driven instrumental soul. The Dynamites opened their set with a couple of instrumental songs, too, but then Walker, wearing a dapper suit, came up, and the stage belonged to him for the rest of the night. Walker can squeeze out those hoarse funky notes through his vocal cords like James Brown, but he also wowed everyone with a few of the night’s more delicate moments. Singing “Deeper, deeper, deeper,” his voice went higher into a beautiful falsetto, and as tight as the Dynamites sounded, Walker could have pulled off that moment a cappella. The Dynamites know how to groove, and a lot of the people in the crowd spent a good portion of the night dancing.

See my photos of the Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker and the Soul Reys.

My concert tally for the year comes to 138 shows (I counted each day of a festival as one show), with 427 performances including all the various opening acts and festival performers. Maybe 50 of those are partial performances.

These were my favorites:

1. Neil Young, Nov. 12 at the Chicago Theatre. Review.

2. The Mekons, Oct. 12 at the Hideout and the Mutiny. Review. Photos.

3. Grinderman, July 25 at Metro. Review. Photos.

4. Iggy Pop & the Stooges, Aug. 5 at Lollapalooza, Grant Park. Review. Photos.

5. The Wrens, June 24 at the Belmont Arts and Music Festival. Review. Photos.

6. Björk, May 12 at the Auditorium Theatre. Review.

7. The Arcade Fire, May 18 at the Chicago Theatre. Review.

8. Mavis Staples, Aug. 12 at Millennium Park. Review. Photos.

9. M. Ward, Jan. 29 at Park West. Review.

10. Neko Case, March 29 at Park West. Review. Photos.

Runners-up:
The Decemberists with the Grant Park Orchestra, July 19 at Millennium Park
Bettye LaVette, Dec. 7 at FitzGerald’s
Marissa Nadler, Sept. 5 at Ronny’s
Sonic Youth, July 13 at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Union Park
Cat Power, July 14 at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Union Park
Mothercoat, March 15 at SXSW
Okkervil River and Damien Jurado, Sept. 19 at Logan Square Auditorium
Great Lake Swimmers, Oct. 28 at Schubas
Andrew Bird, April 20 at the Riviera
Dappled Cities and Figurines, Oct. 24 at Schubas
Oakley Hall, Oct. 2 at Schubas
…and many, many other good shows.

Another year comes to an end, and as far as live music (my primary topic here on this blog), it’s been another exciting year filled with many, many memorable performances. I’ll have a list of favorite concerts soon, as well as my favorite photos. (Still working on that…) Unless I unexpectedly see some live music in the next two days, my final concert of the year was the Waco Brothers and the Deccas Friday (Dec. 28) at Schubas. The Wacos are making it a tradition to play shows just before New Year’s at Shubas every year, and they’re just about the perfect bar band for some year-end revelry. Bloodshot will soon be releasing a live album recorded at last year’s Wacos shows. On Friday, the band played the entirety of its 1997 record Cowboy in Flames, one of its best albums. That was fun, and then came a couple of encores including the Wacos’ country-punk take on “Baba O’Riley” and a terrific version of the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” with Tracy Dear on lead vox. There were leg kicks galore.

The opening act was the Deccas, a Chicago girl group doing ’60s-style pop tunes with three-part harmonies. I liked what I heard, and look forward to seeing and hearing more from the Deccas. Check out their myspace page.

See my photos of the Waco Brothers and the Deccas.

1. THE SADIES: NEW SEASONS (Yep Roc) – This record is filled with the sort of the songs that the Sadies themselves sing about in the track “Simple Aspiration”: “That simple little song/We used to listen all night long.” The Sadies’ music is far from simple, but it does have a modest, unassuming quality about it. The Good brothers are just about the most amazing guitar players on the planet right now, and those fancy licks come to them so easily that it never sounds like they’re showing off. And I love the way Dallas and Travis sing, too, with those croaky, understated voices of theirs. The songs on New Seasons sound slightly haunted. “Anna Leigh,” a song about a girl’s “eerie dream,” even contains the line, “It haunted me through all the shows, just what she saw.” The precise nature of all the dangers and dark fates alluded to in the lyrics is left a mystery. The album reaches an emotional peak for me on “My Heart of Wood,” in which the protagonist says he can barely breathe when he thinks about whatever it is that’s coming. “And if I’m still alive when the autumn kills the leaves, I guess I’ll be what they consider free.” The Sadies’ music might be categorized as roots rock or Americana, but it’s much richer than those labels might indicate, reminding me of everything from Johnny Cash and the Byrds to early R.E.M., but always sounding like nothing other than the Sadies. Sadies web site.

2. ARCADE FIRE: NEON BIBLE (Merge) – No, Neon Bible is not quite the album that Funeral was, but it’s still damn good. These are songs that burrowed into my brain over the course of the year, intensely personal and dramatically epic at the same time. The real church organ on “Intervention” is a great touch that really makes the song. The peculiar instrumental break in “No Cars Go” is one of those wonderful musical moments that makes you say, “What the heck was that?” The back-to-back songs with “don’t” lyrics (“I don’t wanna work in a building downtown…” in “Antichrist Television Blues” and “Don’t wanna live in my father’s house no more…” in “Windowsill”) are an eloquent expression of our age’s anxiety and frustration over the way things are. And the low-key, moody “My Body is a Cage” is a perfect ending. Arcade Fire web site. Neon Bible web site (with lots of videos and weird stuff).

3. FEIST: THE REMINDER (Cherrytree/Interscope) – This album has survived one of the true tests of musical quality for me: It made it through many spins on my stereo, plus overkill at the local Starbucks, and exposure on TV commercials. And after all that, when I put on the album again, it still sounded great from start to finish and I hadn’t grown the least bit sick of it. I have to admit to being a latecomer to the Leslie Feist fan club. While I like her previous album, Let It Die, this one’s better. I love her voice, and the arrangements are almost perfect in their elegance. I love mellow pop music when it’s done right, and this record is a good an example as I can think of how to do it right. Feist web site.

4. HANDSOME FURS: PLAGUE PARK (Sub Pop) – I hadn’t heard a note by the Handsome Furs when I saw them open this year for the Besnard Lakes at Schubas, but I found their guitar-meets-Casio-electronics sound pretty captivating. I bought the CD from their merch table, and it quickly become one of the albums I was listening to the most this year. I never got tired of it, maybe because it’s just nine songs long and all nine tracks have such strong melodies. I think I would have been skeptical if I’d read a description of the Handsome Furs’ sound. In a way, these songs sound like demos for a full band without the drums and bass and everything else that will be added later, but I don’t think these recordings could really be improved on with more bells and whistles. The guitar playing of Dan Boeckner (also a member of Wolf Parade) sounds perfect against Alexei Perry’s very basic keyboard chords and electronic drum beats, giving these anthems an unusual tension. Handsome Furs on myspace. Handsome Furs mp3s and videos on Sub Pop web site.

5. ANDREW BIRD: ARMCHAIR APOCRYPHA (Fat Possum) – Bird continues to amaze with his many talents. But it wouldn’t matter that he’s a fantastic whistler, violinist, singer, guitarist, etc., if he weren’t also writing wonderful songs to put all of that talent to use. This is another strong collection, almost on a par with his previous record, The Mysterious Production of Eggs. (Don’t overlook a delightful track Bird left off the album, “Self Torture,” which available on emusic.) Andrew Bird web site.

6. GRINDERMAN: GRINDERMAN (Anti) – Nick Cave and a smaller sub-unit of his usual backing band, the Bad Seeds, called themselves Grinderman and put out the year’s best loud rock music. Cave switched from his usual piano to guitar, and the pounding, twisted blues punk songs include his usual dose of wit, smarts and passion, and lots of frustrated libido. (See “No Pussy Blues.”) And on the rare occasion when Grinderman dialed down the intensity for a ballad, it also came up with a fabulously spooky song, “Man in the Moon.” Grinderman web site.

7. RADIOHEAD: IN RAINBOWS (self-released) – A superb album that will stand on its own merits regardless of the news story surrounding its unconventional release. I’ve liked every Radiohead album since OK Computer, so I’m not one of those people who felt like the band needed to “return to form.” To me, this is simply another great album in Radiohead’s impressive streak of great albums. It’s a subtle record that took a while to sink in for me. The band sounds at ease with its mix of sounds right now, not complacent but maybe a little comfortable. Yorke & Co. no longer need to prove that it’s OK to mix electronica with guitars. They know what they’re doing, and Thom Yorke even sounds a little soulful at times. Radiohead web site.

8. THE 1900s: COLD & KIND (Parasol) – The orchestral arrangements and vocal harmonies are sublime throughout this gem of an album. With all of the violins, guitars, keyboards, guy-and-girl vocals and what have you, the record ran the risk of sounding overstuffed, but somehow the 1900s managed to balance it all just right. There’s a strong 1960s flavor to the songs, with a little bit of the Mamas & Papas, and the sprawling orch-pop ensemble sound of later groups like Belle & Sebastian. The song “Acutiplantar Dude” (about a friend of the band who died) builds to a goose-bumps-raising line about being born again. “The Medium Way” has a similar climax, when the voices take the melody to an unexpected high (“I don’t know if I can sleep, it’s 3 in the morning“). These are illustrative examples of what I call the delayed-gratification principle in songwriting. As much as songwriters love to repeat the melodic hooks they come up with, sometimes it pays off to use it just once, dropping it in at the high point of a song. The 1900s web site.

9. SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS: 100 DAYS, 100 NIGHTS (Dap Tone) – Man, it’s been a really good year for soul music – old-school soul like James Brown and Motown and Stax artists used to sing. Despite all of the tabloid hullabaloo surrounding Amy Winehouse, I still think her record’s pretty fab, and so were the albums by Bettye LaVette and the Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker. Best of all, though, was Sharon Jones, who repeats the success of her last record, Naturally, with another platter of horn-driven grooves that sound exactly like lost soul sessions recorded four decades ago. I appreciate the answer that producer/songwriter/bandleader Bosco Mann gave on NPR’s “Fresh Air” when Terry Gross asked him how he achieved that sound. It’s not the equipment, he said, it’s the arrangements and the musicianship. Daptone Records web site.

10. ANTIBALAS: SECURITY (Anti) – These Brooklyn acolytes of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat genre really let the logic of their songs dictate where they go. And they go to some strange places. The songs are long and mostly instrumental, but it never feels like the guys in Antibalas are jamming for just for the sake of jamming. The songs are compositions where every piece counts. There’s a little bit of singing (including a memorable rant/chant about the G.O.P.) and lots of brass. The horns sound so powerful. Antibalas web site.

THE REST OF MY TOP 25 in more of less descending order:

Dappled Cities: Granddance
The Shins: Wincing the Night Away
Loney, Dear: Loney, Noir
Magnolia Electric Co.: Sojourner
Björk: Volta
The Papercuts: Can’t Go Back
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
Bettye LaVette: The Scene of the Crime
Johnny Irion: Ex Tempore
The National: Boxer
MV & EE with the Golden Road: Gettin’ Gone
Josh Ritter: The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
The Budos Band: The Budos Band II
LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver
Great Lake Swimmers: Ongiara

THE REST OF MY TOP 100 in alphabetical order (of course, all of this is subject to change after I listen to more records, and listen to these records more…):

The Aliens: Astronomy For Dogs
Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake: From the River to the Ocean
Besnard Lakes: Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
Black Lips: Good Bad Not Evil
Black Moth Super Rainbow: Dandelion Gum
Blonde Redhead: 23
Boris with Michio Kurihara: Rainbow
Box of Baby Birds: Box of Baby Birds
Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew: Spirit If…
The Broken West: I Can’t Go On I’ll Go On
The Capstan Shafts: Environ Maiden
Caribou: Andorra
Dinosaur Jr.: Beyond
Dolly Varden: The Panic Bell
Dolorean: You Can’t Win
Dr. Dog: We All Belong
The Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker: Kaboom!
The Earlies: The Enemy Chorus
Exploding Star Orchestra: We Are All From Somewhere Else
Field Music: Tones of Town
The Fiery Furnaces: Widow City
Figurines: When the Deer Wore Blue
The Go: Howl on the Haunted Beat You Ride
The Go! Team: Proof of Youth
Jose Gonzalez: In Our Nature
Patty Griffin: Children Running Through
P.J. Harvey: White Chalk
Richard Hawley: Lady’s Bridge
Iron & Wine: The Shepherd’s Dog
Sondre Lerche: Phantom Punch
Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer
Lil’ Cap’n Travis: Twilight on Sometimes Island
Linda Thompson: Versatile Heart
Charlie Louvin: Charlie Louvin
Eleni Mandell: Miracle Of Five
Mannequin Men: Fresh Rot
Cass McCombs: Dropping the Writ
The Mekons: Natural
The Mendoza Line: 30 Year Low
Menomena: Friend And Foe
Midnight Movies: Lion the Girl
Thurston Moore: Trees Outside the Academy
Marissa Nadler: Songs III: Bird on the Water
Nina Nastasia & Jim White: You Follow Me
The New Pornographers: Challengers
Oakley Hall: I’ll Follow You
Okkervil River: The Stage Names
Patrick Park: Everyone’s in Everyone
Parts & Labor: Mapmaker
Phosphorescent: Pride
Robert Pollard: Coast to Coast Carpet of Love
Robert Pollard: Standard Gargoyle Decisions
Porter Wagoner: Wagonmaster
Jon Rauhouse: Steel Guitar Heart Attack
The Ike Reilly Assassination: We Belong to the Staggering Evening
Richmond Fontaine: Thirteen Cities
Robbers on High Street: Grand Animals
Rufus Wainwright: Release the Stars
Savath & Savalas: Golden Pollen
Scotland Yard Gospel Choir: Scotland Yard Gospel Choir
Elliott Smith: New Moon
Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Bruce Springsteen: Magic
Mavis Staples: We’ll Never Turn Back
Stars: In Our Bedroom After the War
Taken By Trees: Open Field
David Vandervelde: The Moonstation House Band
The Weakerthans: Reunion Tour
Tinariwen: Aman Iman: Water Is Life
Uglybeats: Take a Stand
Various Artists: The Inspiring New Sounds of Rio de Janeiro
Wilco: Blue Sky Blue
Robert Wyatt: Comicopera
Neil Young: Chrome Dreams II
Youth Group: Casino Twilight Dogs

The January issue of Chicago magazine includes my feature story about Lucy Page Gaston, who was the country’s most famous crusader against cigarette smoking in the early 1900s.

Also just out, the winter issue of Signal to Noise: The Journal of Improvised & Experimental Music includes my review of the Clark Street Bridge Percussion Orchestra’s concert and the new album by Black Mountain.

Sorry, the stories aren’t online. You’ll have to get them on the newsstand, at least for now.

It was hard to believe that Charlie Louvin, a living legend of country music, was playing to a small audience Sunday evening at Schubas, without a whole lot of publicity or hoopla. The guy just turned 80, he’s up for a Grammy, and his songs have been covered by the likes of the Byrds and Uncle Tupelo. Seems like he deserved a bigger concert, but the intimate venue made for a fabulous little show. Schubas had chairs set out for the 6 p.m. show, which started maybe even a minute or two early.

There’s something about the gravelly qualities of older singers’ voices that works really well for me in a country-music setting. Louvin still sings quite well, with that sandpaper roughness. It was pretty inspiring to see him putting on a show at his age, and winging so many songs. He kept telling his band to ignore the set list and play other songs they hadn’t even practiced. As he called out the musical keys for each song, it prompted one of his many corny jokes (delightfully corny, I mean). “Music’s just like crossing the street,” he said. “You’ve got to C sharp or you could B flat before you get to the other side.”

Yes, indeed, Louvin is on old-fashioned performer and he told plenty of jokes like that and commented directly at some audience members and the waitress. Highlights of the set included “Atomic Power,” “The Christian Life,” “Long Journey Home” (with the chorus of losing all your money but a two-dollar bill) and “Ira,” his touching tribute to the brother (the other half of the Louvin Brothers) who died so many years ago. I got a little choked up watching this octogenarian singing about how he will soon be up with Ira among the angels. (I sure do hope he sticks around for a while, though.)

See my photos of Charlie Louvin.

Thrill Jockey Records celebrated its 15th anniversary with two nights of great music over the weekend (Dec. 14 and 15) at Logan Square Auditorium. My review will be in a forthcoming issue of Signal to Noise magazine. In the meantime, I’ve posted some of my photos.

See my photos from night 1, including: Brokeback, Thalia Zedek, Archer Prewitt, Arbouretum, the Lonesone Organist, the Sea and Cake, School of Language, Fred Anderson, the Fiery Furnaces and Bobby Conn.

See my photos from night 2, including Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day, Sue Garner, Frequency, Adult., Zincs, Califone, Pit er Pat and Trans Am.

The Most Serene Republic is yet another one of those rock bands, er, “collectives,” from Canada on the Arts & Crafts label with a sprawling, eclectic sound, at least one unusual instrument (trombone), and a certain anarchic spirit. Unlike some of the other bands from north of the border, the Most Serene Republic hasn’t made a really big impression on me. The group’s new record, Population, strikes me as pretty good, a fairly pleasant listen, but then after listening to it, nothing much sticks in my mind. The band came to the Beat Kitchen on Saturday, and they were pretty enjoyable as a live band, largely due to the slightly demented demeanor of lead singer Adrian Jewett. I’m still not sure I’m going to remember these songs for very long, but I did like what I saw and heard Saturday night.

The first band of the night was a Chicago outfit called Blueblood, which was a pleasant surprise. Vigorous singing, strong rhythms and (you guessed it) post-punk angularities. The second band was Mock Orange. The group attracted some fans who showed their appreciation with loud yells (including one guy who urged Mock Orange to play “28 more songs” instead of one more as they wrapped up their set), but I can’t say I enjoyed the band all that much. Not my cup of tea, I guess.

See my photos of the Most Serene Republic, Blueblood and Mock Orange.