Category: Spot Check

THOSE PEABODYS 7/18, SUBTERRANEAN This Austin buzz band is claiming its piece of the back-to-AOR action on its second album, Unite Tonight; the lesson here is that you can’t be […]

LES CLAYPOOL FROG BRIGADE 7/11, The VIC You might expect a bassist fronting a side project to take the slappin’ and poppin’ approach, showcasing the wanker tendencies that have traditionally […]

AFRICAN/CARIBBEAN international FESTIVAL OF LIFE 7/3-6, WASHINGTON PARK Much more than a music festival, this annual event is a sort of giant block party, with food, arts and crafts, workshops, […]

DARK STAR ORCHESTRA 6/27 & 28, SKYLINE STAGE Though there’s an actual version of the Dead on the road again, I doubt that the fan base for Chicago’s Dark Star […]

BUZZCOCKS 6/20, METRO It may be a bit premature to say the punk generation is aging better on the whole than the Woodstock crowd, but I’ll cite the Buzzcocks’ new […]

BRIGHTER DEATH NOW 6/13, EMPTY BOTTLE Swedish composer Roger Karmanik began this project with self-released cassettes in the late 80s, later branching out into a long discography of CDs (mostly […]

M.O.T.O. 6/6, BEAT KITCHEN No disrespect to the Beat Kitchen, but after more than ten years as a Chicago institution, M.O.T.O. deserves to hold a release party for its 17th […]

AMISH ARMADA 5/30, FIRESIDE BOWL Tired of hokey faux satanism? Neo-Nordics no longer yank your crank? Even Sumerian-themed gore getting tiresome? The fresh face of sacrilege this month is this […]

LYNYRD’S INNARDS 5/23, PRODIGAL SON On their third full-length, Untitled No. 3 (What Else?), these boys next door, still perfecting their I’m-such-a-loser puppy punk, flaunt their sloppiness and show a […]

ENON 5/16, METRO Brainiac guitarist John Schmersal took a break from music after the band’s front man, Tim Taylor, was killed in a car accident in 1997, but he reemerged […]

LUKA BLOOM 5/9, PARK WEST This Irish singer-songwriter, ne Barry Moore, cut his teeth on the folk circuit in the 70s, then spent a chunk of the 80s aping U2. […]

DALEK 5/2, EMPTY BOTTLE These days it seems like hip-hop is pronounced dead almost as often as rock. And as with rock, such postmortems are usually delivered by folks who […]

ELLIOTT 4/25, FIRESIDE BOWL For its third album, Song in the Air (Revelation), the Kentucky quartet Elliott scrubbed away the last trace of its punk past, then invited Christian Frederickson […]

LES BATON ROUGE 4/18, PRODIGAL SON Les Baton Rouge originally formed in Portugal and has since relocated to Berlin, which I’m glad to hear is still a welcoming place for […]

BOB LOG III, LONESOME ORGANIST 4/11, SUBTERRANEAN Neoblues wild man Bob Log III, a bundle of lascivious stage energy, can do more by his lonesome than most full bands–and with […]