The work week is back, and once again, it’s a week full of interesting and exciting shows.
Some notable events include Permanent Records’ seventh anniversary party on Mon 10/7 at Empty Bottle, which is a diverse, free show featuring all local acts: Verma, my band Basic Cable, Rectal Hygenics, and the Funs.
There’s also the wild match-up between punk legend Marky Ramone and party monster Andrew W.K., who will be playing together at the Double Door on Tue 10/8 as Marky Ramone’s Blitzkreig. The band, which W.K. will be fronting, are playing a set of 35 classic Ramones songs. I can’t even imagine hearing those timeless numbers sung by anyone other than Joey, so it should be an experience to see how this all unfolds.
Another excellent band to see this week is Baltimore-based proggy psych act Horse Lords, long one of my favorites. They’ll be arriving to play at the Burlington on Wednesday night.
Some more picks from our writers in this week’s Soundboard after the jump.
Tue 10/8: Obits at Empty Bottle
My pick for the week was for guitar-heavy postpunkers Obits, who are fronted by Rick Froberg from Hot Snakes, one of my favorite guitar players ever. I wrote that on their new record, Bed & Bug, “they settle further into a calmer rhythm, but the music still leans heavily on rough-edged melodies and loud, sharp guitars. Those guitars are the stars of the show, as they have been in most every Froberg project—he’s always been a master of tone and chunky, interweaving riffs, and they’re all over Bed & Bugs.”
Tue 10/8: Saint Vitus at Reggie’s Rock Club
Last time doom-metal pioneers Saint Vitus came into town was about a year ago. “Lillie: F-65 (Season of Mist) is Saint Vitus’s first since 1995, and it sounds like it was pulled straight out of ’87, when their lean, crusty, body-dragging chug sounded like a record by one of their SST labelmates played at the wrong speed,” wrote Monica Kendrick last September. “Guitarist Dave Chandler still plays in his tightly coiled trademark style, sometimes striking like a cobra, and Wino’s broken-toothed articulation is likewise intact. It doesn’t sound so much like a comeback as it does a resurfacing—it’s like they’ve been here all along, just in another dimension where we couldn’t hear them.”
Wed 10/9: Birgit Ulher & Eric Leonardson at Bond Chapel
Experimental duo Birgit Ulher & Eric Leonardson play Bond Chapel at University of Chicago on Wednesday. “For Chicago sound artist Eric Leonardson, improvisation isn’t just a way to use an instrument; it’s how to make your instrument. He devised what he called the ‘springboard’ by attaching contact microphones, screws, and springs to a block of wood mounted on a walker, and he’s spent nearly 20 years modifying it and looking for new noises to coax out of it. Sometimes his playing sounds like a lumber mill in operation; at others, it’s more like an especially lively piece of musique concrete,” writes Bill Meyer. “Hamburg-based trumpeter Birgit Ulher uses microphones to wrest tiny gurgles and pops from the depths of her horn; she also turns it into a resonating chamber by playing radio static into its bell.”