Every year brother-sister duo White Mystery celebrate tokers’ holiday 4/20 with a sweet spring surprise—and 2015 is no different. This time Gossip Wolf’s favorite Chicago garage rockers have switched up the format, releasing not a new album but instead a feature film about their “breakneck nomadic lifestyle” called That Was Awesome. This wolf has seen only the trailer so far, but it features cartoons, basketball, poetry about the band written by drummer Francis White and read by their dad, and cameos from underground rock luminaries (among them Cody Blanchard from Shannon & the Clams and Timmy Vulgar from Human Eye). And of course it’s got enough burning WM live jams to keep even passing fans entertained for the movie’s 50-minute length. The world premiere of That Was Awesome is at the Logan Theatre on Mon 4/20 as part of CIMMfest, and White Mystery play the Cubby Bear on Thu 4/23.
Last week Chicago punks Mama released the double seven-inch EP Night Shoot on local label Automatic Recordings in a limited splatter-vinyl edition—and this wolf agrees with Reader writer Luca Cimarusti, who compares their “goofy, over-the-top, shreddy cock-rock” to Cheap Trick’s scorching power pop. Mama should have copies of Night Shoot when they play Cobra Lounge on Sat 4/18 with art-pop quartet the Gold Web and surreal new-wavers Yoko Homo.
It took Gossip Wolf a while to discover Jackknife, a four-song EP from Chicago singer-producer Justin Demus—he uploaded its four tracks of psychedelic collage-pop to his Bandcamp page (bit.ly/jdemus) several months ago. But this wolf got hooked right away: the mutated, sun-drenched melody of the opener, “Acid,” feels like just the thing for a beach volleyball game and a bottomless glass of iced tea. There’s probably nothing you can do to make summer come early, but for now you can go see Demus play the Whistler on Wed 4/22. v
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