Most of the music was dreamy and drifting Thursday night (Oct. 25) at the Empty Bottle. Chicago’s Bare Mutants started off the evening with songs heavily laden with trippy Velvet Underground-esque drones.
The second band of the night, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, jammed more, but other than a few flourishes of dirty noise, most of the songs sounded pretty, not all that far removed from the music of Bleeker’s other band, Real Estate. The band’s interesting choice for its final song was “Animal Tracks” by Mountain Man; the original is a spare piece of Appalachian folk music sung by three women, but the Freaks turned into an extended Crazy Horse type of jam.
The headliners, Twerps, came to Chicago all the way from Melbourne, Australia, bringing some catchy if somewhat low-key indie pop tunes with them. (Check out their music at twerps.bandcamp.com.) At the end, they brought Alex Bleeker and the Freaks onto the stage with them, and everyone joined together in a ragged cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Virginia” — a change of pace from the mellowness that preceded it, but a rousing way to call it a night.
