Friday 31
ROBERT PALLARD Guided by Voices epitomized how indie rock reinterpreted punk ideology in the 90s. Countless bands were prodding the “anything is possible” limits of punk’s stylistic reach, yet there wasn’t a “songwriter” to be found–just regular folks who happened to write songs. So it wasn’t just OK for GBV to sound like a crappy Badfinger cover band, it was a fucking quantum miracle: Robert Pollard wound up being a rock star and utterly not a rock star at the same time. His latest solo album, From a Compound Eye (Merge), shows what a non-rock star does after dissolving his nonband: he releases an album that doesn’t run screaming from anything he’s done before. And I have a feeling his audience isn’t going to stop granting him license to go on being that tipsy Janus, spiting the new decade and its new rules with more half-finished tunes built from American verses and British choruses, brought to fruition through his same minimal self-editing instincts. The High Strung open. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203 or 312-559-1212, $18, 18+. –J. Niimi
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Sunday 2
Wednesday 5
Jack Rose headlines, Fursaxa plays second, and Bird Show opens. 9:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $8.
