The first time I listened to Australian singer-guitarist Gabriella Cohen’s Full Closure and No Details (Captured Tracks), I was drawn in by the nonchalance of her performance, but as the songs rolled on I came to realize I was overlooking their concision and tart bite. Now that’s all I can focus on. Cohen, who was […]
Category: Concert Preview
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Ukrainian group DakhaBrakha update the traditional folk sounds of their homeland
Since forming more than a decade ago, this energetic, highly theatrical combo from Ukraine have focused on translating the traditional polyphonic vocal tradition of their homeland for a global audience. Impressively, DakhaBrakha have done so without sacrificing their native essence—not even when trafficking in dub and electronic effects or borrowing rhythms from around the world. […]
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Veteran Detroit DJ and producer K-Hand still knows how to make electronic music feel alive
If the brass behind the Grammys really wanted their Bee Gees tribute to be an uproarious sensation rather than a limp nonstory, they should have ditched Little Big Town for Detroit DJ and producer Kelli Hand, aka K-Hand. The B side of her newest 12-inch, Project 6 EP (released on her long-running Acacia Records), kicks […]
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On the new Heartless, Pallbearer add rock heroics to their mournful doom
The consensus on Pallbearer’s new third album, Heartless (Profound Lore), seems to be that the Arkansas doom-metal quartet have finally unmasked themselves as a prog band. But even if you’re one of those benighted souls for whom “prog” is a four-letter word, you needn’t be alarmed—the shift is more of degree than of kind. After […]
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Even with the new Forget, it’s doubtful Xiu Xiu go the way of synthpop
Xiu Xiu have never and are not going to make a pop album. Despite developing a four-on-the-floor rhythmic backbone for their recent Forget (Polyvinyl), these monarchs of bloodletting through experimental music leave no reason to believe they’ll pivot into the warm embrace of synthpop. Rather, Forget is another genre exercise in a career that’s seen […]
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Alt-country icons Son Volt remain a model of consistency even while borrowing from the blues
Jay Farrar titled the first new Son Volt studio album in four years Notes of Blue (Thirty Tigers), and he’s explained that the record was inspired by the spirit of the blues, with certain songs employing tunings used by the likes of Skip James and Mississippi Fred McDowell. But it only takes a few seconds […]
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On Blood Bitch Jenny Hval questions binary divisions in gender, morality, and politics
After exploring her experimental side with the strong 2015 album Apocalypse, Girl, Norwegian singer Jenny Hval made another artistic turn with last year’s Blood Bitch (Sacred Bones), her prettiest and most accessible effort to date. But with Hval nothing is quite as it seems—her philosophical probing routinely undercuts song conventions. In interviews she’s spoken of […]
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Pontiak finesse their heady stoner-rock grooves and hypnotic vocal harmonies on Dialectic of Ignorance
Virginia trio Pontiak—brothers Jennings, Van, and Lain Carney—have spent years developing and refining a particular strain of groove-based hard rock, their indelible, fuzzed-out guitar riffs cycling hypnotically to summon a levitating power. Yet unlike so many bands purveying a similar stoner-rock sound—viscous, flanged guitar solos uncoiling luxuriantly but rudely over rhythms worthy of gentle headbanging—this […]
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Australian sound artist Lawrence English responds to a troubled world on Cruel Optimism
On his bracing new album Cruel Optimism (Room40) veteran Australian sound artist Lawrence English subtly erases boundaries between ambient drift and industrial roar, forging aqueous instrumentals that seem to occupy an entire world. Normally he creates his turbulent recordings entirely on his own, as he did with the 2014’s bruising Wilderness of Mirrors—an appropriate precursor […]
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R&B chameleons They. borrow from scattered pop sources in their quest to get to the top
Blog posts about rising LA R&B duo They. tend to reference the genre they label themselves with on some of their Soundcloud uploads—“grunge&b.”—but otherwise describe them in quite different ways. That reflects producer Dante Jones and singer Drew Love’s chameleonic songwriting history as much as it does their marketing: before teaming up, Love wrote with […]
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On Raw Rock Fury Ecstatic Vision blend MC5-style riffs with Beefheart freak vocals
As far as groove-driven heavy psych bands go, Philly’s Ecstatic Vision, right down to their grandiloquent name, ain’t necessarily cracking any mold. But then again, who says they’re trying to? A blend of drenched, swirling MC5-style riffs, Krautrock-influenced rhythms, and Beefheart-like freak vocals, the new Raw Rock Fury (Relapse) is very much a shrine to […]
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Kneebody blend rhythmic muscularity and lyric tenderness on their new album Anti-Hero
Muscular quintet Kneebody have spent more than a decade pushing against the limitations of jazz, forging an instrumental approach distinguished by high-level improvisation and a bruising ensemble attack. The band’s strong new album Anti-Hero (Motema) builds on that tradition: it’s essentially jazz-rock fusion, though their sound underlines the uselessness of that coinage. Drummer Nate Wood, […]
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The improvisational Boxhead Ensemble return to the scene of their first soundtrack triumph
It’s been 20 years since Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back first screened in Chicago. A black-and-white documentary about the encroachment of modernization on America’s last frontier, it was shot in the Aleutian Islands by directors Braden King and Laura Moya, but its gray-shaded score was tracked at the South Loop’s Truckstop Audio […]
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The Daniel Schnyder chamber opera Charlie Parker’s Yardbird receives its Chicago premiere
Contemporary jazz saxophonist and composer Daniel Schnyder’s 90-minute chamber opera about legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker was first performed in Philadelphia in 2015, and it’s receiving its Chicago premiere under the auspices of Lyric Opera. The libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly begins with Parker’s death at 34—brought on by drugs, alcohol, and a […]
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Local indie hip-hop label Closed Sessions took a gamble in 2016 that paid off
Closed Sessions cofounders Alex Fruchter and Michael Kolar went into 2016 viewing it as a make-or-break year. Well, not only did the young hip-hop imprint put out two full-lengths that helped define the local scene during a period when Chicago’s hip-hop community made itself well-known nationally—that’d be Kweku Collins’s Nat Love and Jamila Woods’s Heavn—but […]