Friday 29
SCOUT NIBLETT On her latest album, Kidnapped by Neptune (Too Pure), Scout Niblett employs drummer Jason Kourkounis (Burning Brides, Hot Snakes) and guitarist Chris Saligoe, giving some of her tunes a new faux-metal wallop while keeping her melodies sweet and modest. Her naif postures, like the hand claps and chanting on the opening of “Safety Pants,” are getting a bit tired, but the new album proves she can kick ass too: on the title track her girl-group shoop-shoops and sensual purrs are nicely offset by a sinister bass-and-drums throb. And her voice remains a beautiful wounded-bird chirp–she sounds like Cat Power’s Chan Marshall with the cunning and confidence of Polly Jean Harvey. But I can’t help but imagine what she could do if she used more elaborate arrangements, focused more on song structure, and stopped leaning on obvious tension-and-release exercises like the rambling “Newburyport.” Blesses/Curses and Static Films open. 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 3206 N. Wilton, 773-975-0505 or 866-468-3401, $10. –Peter Margasak
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JILL SCOTT On her latest album, 2004’s Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds, Vol. 2 (Hidden Beach), Jill Scott is likeable and smart. Live, she’s downright irresistible. Her band avoids treacly cocktail soul and pushy late-night talk-show jazz–the pitfalls of the genre–and her vocals are just as supple and poised. She works an emotional vulnerability that knows when to say when, and her frank sexuality pulls up short of ribald stank without wafting away on clouds of incense and Aveda product. Erykah Badu, Queen Latifah, and Floetry open. a 7 PM, Charter One Pavilion, Northerly Island at Burnham Harbor, 312-540-2000 or 312-559-1212, $59.50-$75. –Keith Harris
FAIRMONT This self-styled New Jersey “dark pop” band, whose claim to fame seems to be that they evolved from a group that used to open for the Strokes and lent a member to My Chemical Romance, sounds like the better acts from early-90s college radio (maybe Nirvana and the Violent Femmes) trying to play hippie folk tunes. Their current release, Hell Is Other People (Reinforcement/Renfield), is a concept album with a purported connection to Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, and yeah, it comes freighted with all the threadbare adolescent “revelations” you’d expect. It’s also kinda charming, at least if you used to think existentialism was the shit back in high school. The lyrics are more gleefully bitter than mopey and angsty (“I’m like an ant that you are burning black / Underneath your magnifying glass”), and the band’s penchant for shifting dramatically into bang-your-head-now half-time stomping almost makes me nostalgic for Alice in Chains. Minus Scale opens. See also Sunday. 9 PM, Big Horse Lounge, 1558 N. Milwaukee, 312-515-3897, $5. –Ann Sterzinger
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