Chicago rapper Femi Adigun, aka Femdot, is fully prepared to indulge the endless desire for new music content. Last year he began rolling out a series of well-honed EPs that whetted appetites and built his profile rather fast—and by December he was opening for the Cool Kids at Thalia Hall. But I balk at calling […]
Category: Concert Preview
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Shambling San Francisco garage rockers experiment with different modes on their new cassette, Gord’s Horse
Since forming in 2011, San Francisco quartet Cool Ghouls have made a virtue of no-frills consistency, doing little to disguise their devotion to 60s garage pop. Loose, chiming guitars ring out over chugging rhythms, but it’s their singing—which borrows from the early Beach Boys without sweating shortcomings in pitch or precise harmony—that makes each album […]
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Chicago rapper-producer Valee has a strange, seductive way of showing his swagger
Chicago rapper-producer Valee Taylor, who records and performs under his first name, talks a big game. If you believe the claims in his breakthrough single, “Shell,” he’s the kind of guy who walks through luxury-brand stores like a master gamer let loose in an arcade with a backpack weighed down by quarters—he’s effortless and in […]
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Jambinai builds postrock’s future with instruments from Korea’s past
Last year Ilwoo Lee, guitarist and principal songwriter for Seoul postrock group Jambinai, told Noisey that “many Korean people don’t listen to traditional Korean music and they don’t respect Korean traditional culture.” Having studied music at the country’s National University of Arts, he’d been exposed to historically important forms in which few people his age […]
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Spires That in the Sunset Rise and Michael Zerang blend primitive folk and spacey improvisation
Since forming 16 years ago, Spires That in the Sunset Rise have been blazing their own trippy path, with the group’s two core members, Kathleen Baird and Taralie Peterson, increasingly embracing a more improvisational ethos while retaining homemade folk roots. That shift has never been more pronounced than in their ongoing collaboration with percussionist Michael […]
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Bluesman Billy Flynn makes his Delmark debut with Lonesome Highway
Billy Flynn has quietly been playing an essential role in Chicago blues for some time. A Green Bay resident, he’s frequently made the five-hour drive from Wisconsin to Illinois to play behind the distinguished likes of Jimmy Dawkins (whom Flynn considers his mentor), Billy Boy Arnold, Jody Williams, and Willie Kent as well as with […]
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On his charmingly low-key Drag City debut, veteran Chicago guitarist Bill MacKay shows his full range
For years Bill MacKay has soldiered on as one of the most skilled and tasteful guitarists in Chicago, a player who fluidly moves between jazz and rock while making several stops in between. He’s gained attention for his quartet Darts & Arrows—a tuneful fusion band that somehow bridges a gap between Larry Coryell’s early work […]
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Justin Townes Earle settles into sobriety, marriage, and roots-rock orthodoxy on Kids in the Street
Justin Townes Earle wrote his new album, Kids in the Street (New West), in the wake of a sustained period of stability and happiness thanks to a new marriage and several years of sobriety. Luckily the songs aren’t about kittens and high-fives—the main conceit of opener “Champagne Corolla” is to celebrate a woman who’s cool […]
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The artists behind both High Plains and Anjou have been crucial in defining the sound of Chicago’s Kranky label
This impressive double bill features gorgeously patient ambient sounds created by a group of musicians long faithful to influential Chicago indie label Kranky Records, where minimalism, new age, and gentle noise have combined in shifting timbres for nearly 25 years. Headlining the evening is High Plains, a duo featuring Vancouver’s Scott Morgan—who’s frequently recorded solo […]
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Norah Jones rediscovers the piano and finds contentment on her latest album, Day Breaks
In 2014 singer and pianist Norah Jones shared the Kennedy Center stage with legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummer Brian Blade—both of whom played on her first couple of albums—for an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of her label, Blue Note, later telling writer Nate Chinen of the New York Times that she wanted those […]
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Folk-metal giants Arkona redo their almighty debut, Vozrozhdenie
Russian pagan folk-metal legends Arkona really didn’t need to hit the reset button and rerecord their 2004 debut, Vozrozhdenie (Napalm)—as their first throwdown of a chain-mail gauntlet, it still reverberates beautifully. But they did, and on their 2016 redo, driven now by the duo of front woman and songwriter Masha “Scream” Arkhipova and her husband, […]
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Retirement be damned, minimalist composer Phill Niblock is going strong at age 83
The hoped-for paradox of minimalism is that reduced means will result in maximum effect. No artist has accomplished this more completely than composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock, whose music intentionally eschews rhythm and melody in favor of massed, sustained tones. The beats that result when microscopically variant pitches are played at sufficient volume turn unchanging […]
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With You Are Not One of Us, Buildings advance Minneapolis’s great legacy of noise rock
There’s just something about a noise-rock record from Minneapolis, like a bowl of gumbo from Baton Rouge. Forged among the pillars of the almighty Amphetamine Reptile imprint—and no doubt guided by a trail of dismembered Big Muff pedals—Buildings churn through noise rock loyal to their Twin Cities and North Dakota forefathers (Hammerhead, Godheadsilo, etc). The […]
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Chicago Fringe Opera’s Lucrezia is a sly, seductive comic romp
Chicago Fringe Opera shows off its cast in a warm-up cabaret act of William Bolcom songs in the Chopin Theatre’s cozy underground lounge, then moves into the adjacent black box theater for a deliciously droll production of this one-hour romp of an opera, scored for two pianos and five singers. Composed by Bolcom in 2007—and […]
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Mastodon’s metal universe expands even further on Emperor of Sand
As Mastodon worked their way from the underground into the realm of radio metal over the past decade or so, the evolution of their expansive, florid sound never felt painfully labored—rather it’s been more gradual and predictable. Since their record of record Leviathan, the Atlanta band’s forceful, heavy dual-guitar sludge riffing has been a bit […]