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Beach Fossils – Bunny (2023)

Beach Fossils – Bunny Give Beach Fossils credit, despite longtime comparisons to Wild Nothing, DIIV, and Real Estate, Dustin Payseur has always done a better job navigating the restraints of his sound. Beach Fossil’s debut is bright and lo-fi jangle rock, Clash the Truth brings a slightly harder and wispy, post-punk edge, and the underrated Somersault glistens in the sheen of a would-be major label debut. Each album is distinctly Beach Fossils though, the guitars and reverb-soaked vocals determined to reap the nostalgia of both fleeting, youthful summers, and the band’s own back catalog. Bunny comes six years after Somersault , a gap that saw the band celebrating the anniversary of their debut through live performances with label mate Wild Nothing as well as the release of an album of piano renditions of the group’s past work. The pandemic could partly be blamed for the long wait time, but regardless Bunny still holds a lot of expectations, and when the band’s last album landed

Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good! (2023)

Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good! 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? was a transformative album for Jessie Ware. It was marked by a spectacular burst in confidence, evidenced by the album’s seven singles, but somewhat miraculously, it actually warranted that kind of fanfare. As a dance album, few recent albums this side of Beyoncé’s Renaissance have been able to toe the line between disco homage and genuine innovation. The trick of course is that both albums are really more than disco albums, they function as a dilution of dance music as a whole, grouping in funk, Hi-NRG, and new wave into a glossy, and distinctly 21st-century invention. That! Feels Good! nimbly catapults Ware from being beholden to What’s Your Pleasure? to cementing herself as one of the most agile and important dance artists working today. That! Feels Good! had a lot of work to do. Its predecessor, although stylistically unique, had a prevailing disco trend and while effective, could have pigeonholed Ware if she hadn’

Concert Review: Wilco at The Riviera Theatre, – 3/26/23

Wilco at The Riviera Theatre, – 3/26/23 Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood was once the center of the city’s booming entertainment district. Located at what had initially been the end of the L Train system, The Aragon Ballroom, Green Mill Jazz Club, and long-defunct Uptown Theatre quickly defined the corners of Broadway and Lawrence Avenue as the designated area for Chicagoans to congregate for the arts. As the area’s zeitgeist waivered though, the theatres grew into a weekend oasis of vibrancy amongst an otherwise casual and sleepy north-side neighborhood. Given Wilco’s consistent championing of Chicago’s local institutions, and another Uptown landmark Carol’s Pub in particular, The Rivera Theater seems like exactly the kind of venue for the band to host their latest three-night run and the start of their spring tour. Jeff Tweedy and company know the former movie palace well, playing there many times over the years and even using it as the base for a five-night series of performances b

Fever Ray - Radical Romantics (2023)

Fever Ray – Radical Romantics Karin Dreijer’s debut solo album Fever Ray came out only shortly after Silent Shout , an album that was almost immediately hailed as The Knife’s masterpiece. The inevitable comparisons seeped out, no one was completely ready to accept the more cavernous Fever Ray as any sort of a replacement for the lush maximalism of Dreijer and her brother’s The Knife. Regardless, Dreijer had proved how essential they were to that project and by 2014, the two had disbanded. Fever Ray’s next album Plunge continued Dreijer’s push towards empty space with an angrier and more overtly political edge and simultaneously built Fever Ray into a proper entity in its own right. Radical Romantics is a Fever Ray album in that its fixations swarm around Dreijer, all their proclivities, and all their vulnerabilities. It’s also the closest Fever Ray has ever sounded like The Knife, whether it be the soaring and anthemic “Shiver”, or the pronounced synths ripples on “New Utensi

Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World (2023)

Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World Almost four decades into their career, a track like “Sinatra Drive Breakdown” should sound like a surprise. It should sound like a discordant, left turn for a band built around AM radio pop, windswept ballads, and drawn-out ambient montages, and if you’ve only been listening to the Yo La Tengo since 2006, that, and a lot of covers, are essentially all you’ve been hearing. But with its chugging bass line and feedback-laden theatrics, “Sinatra” and the fuzzy lead single “Fallout”, harken back to classic-era Yo La Tengo, and the set of albums that have earned them entry into the world’s best rock band conversation. Since I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass , the band has largely, forgone their harder edge, a symptom many presumed was a consequence of their graduation into a legacy band. Their output was still consequential though, albeit a little less riveting, as the band took the time to hone their softer more melodious side. That’s here

Beth Orton at the Irish American Heritage Center, 11/10/22

Beth Orton at the Irish American Heritage Center, 11/10/22 In a small, quiet residential area of west Albany Park, historically named Mayfair, and south of the even more historic North Mayfair, is the Irish American Heritage Center. Driving past you’d be forgiven for assuming it was one of Chicago’s many turn-of-the-century public schools, because for most of its history it was. In 1985 though, the center transformed the old Mayfair school, into a bastion of Irish heritage, one complete with a public house on the south end, with a bar built from classroom materials and a chalkboard counter. Still, the center often avoids expanding its booking beyond the usual folk revival and river dance performances, so when Beth Orton, the author of one of 2022’s greatest albums, announced her tour schedule, it was a welcome surprise. Heather Woods Broderick took the stage first, opening for Orton on a few other tour stops this year as well. With her long, banged hair and slender build, plent

Best Tracks – 10.28.22

Best Tracks – 10.28.22 King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – “Change” No band has been able to gleefully dive straight into a concept as succinctly as King Gizzard. Part of that is certainly a result of being prolific enough to release three albums in one month, but it’s the result of the band’s drive toward exploration and exceeding beyond self-imposed limitations that led to their lofty and disparate discography. Changes , their newest, is a collection of seven tracks, all built around the same chord and key change. This inherent constriction not only binds the album thematically but counterintuitively, provides the band with a necessary framework to guide their jams. The lead-off track “Change”, is a rambling 13-minute gem, a song that uses every one of its separate passages to convey a fun, and easygoing version of the band. This iteration of the group eschews convention for spaced-out keyboard-heavy jazz-prog, quasi-scatting, and eventually psych-rock guitar screeches.

Best Tracks – 10.21.22

Best Tracks – 10.21.22 Dry Cleaning – “Kwenchy Kups” One of the best albums of the year, Dry Cleaning’s second record expands their established sound while simultaneously making it more distinct. “Kwenchy Kups” especially, does all it can to push whatever Dry Cleaning formula there is into brighter and more dynamic territory. Florence Shaw’s lyrics and vocals may only be delineated by the band’s instrumental changes, but they remain relentlessly beguiling, finding room in just under three minutes to encapsulate the listener in every inch of British consciousness. Archers of Loaf – “In the Surface Noise” The first full-length Archers of Loaf album in 24 years should be greeted with riotous applause and celebration, at least it would be if you were tracing the band’s discography alone. Instead, we had the foresight to understand that Eric Bachmann’s interim solo career has been consistently hit or miss, and that while the band sounded great on their most recent tour, a fu

Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork (2022)

Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork Dry Cleaning seeped quickly onto the scene, debuting with two of the best EPs from 2019 and one of the best albums of 2021. The fact that they were so quick to rush out a second album was concerning. Was it a rush job, or a lighter album helmed on tour stops? Neither, in fact the seeds of Stumpwork were written before New Long Leg was even finished, which cements that not only are the band prodigious writers, but that when the band is given more time to hone their songs, as they do here, the results are that much stronger. While the previous albums played within a very specific, talk-sing, post-punk wheelhouse, Dry Cleaning’s newest blows any projected constraints away. Florence Shaw is still iconoclastically unique in her vocal style and presence, but it never feels like a gimmick, instead it sounds like she is beholden to the tracks, wrestling with the lyrics and the anxiety of the complex guitar and instrumental work, with the finished product as em