BITTER TEARS
The Logic of Building the Body Plan | Flameshovel
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The members of this three-year-old indie-rock band all have respectable day jobs–their lineup includes a high school history teacher, a scientist, an art director, and a corporate financial adviser–but they may not be working them much longer. Though their previous output consists of a single three-song EP, last year’s Change Comes at Fourteen and a Half, they’ve recently become the object of interest from major indie labels like Domino and Barsuk. This new EP is a teaser for Appreciation Night, a full-length the band already has in the can–and tracks like the chugging, dirty-sweet rave-up “Wake Up, Ma and Pa Are Gone” ought to have lots of new Bound Stems fans counting the days till the album comes out next year. The music is smart and ambitious, incorporating a tongue-tying tumble of lyrics on “My Kingdom for a Trundle Bed” and a collage of field recordings on the two-part “Up All Night,” but it’s also emotionally supersaturated, achieving post-rock’s complexity without its aridity or pretension–this is clearly a band bound for greatness, or at the very least bigness. | boundstems.com
JAI-ALAI SAVANT
Major-label imprints like Elton John’s Rocket Records courted Brad Peterson’s old band Peat Moss, but those flirtations led nowhere and he dissolved the group in the late 90s. This self-titled disc, which he’s calling “The Red Album,” is his only output since (excepting a promo-only CD of solo demos in 2002), but he hasn’t reinvented himself during his years of silence: he’s sticking with the same sort of well-crafted pop he played in Peat Moss. The new album is polite and conservative, all Beatles hooks and light confectionery, but despite missteps like the cocktail-jazz snoozer “Nine,” its charming melodies are enough to make it worth a second listen–“I Die at the End,” one of the high points, even sounds a bit like the home recordings on Paul McCartney’s first solo LP. | bradpeterson.com
Longshot Presents: Civil War Pt. 2 | EV Records
