Friday 17
EATS TAPES This San Francisco duo makes music the old-fashioned way: they jury-rig decrepit beatboxes, circuit-bent gadgets, and other banged-up junk, mount it all in a set of old suitcases, and tweak knobs until asses start wigglin’ and titties start jigglin’, or someone vomits. Recent signees to techno/weirdo label Tigerbeat6, they’re set to put out their debut album, Sticky Buttons, later this summer; their unreleased demos sound like Take Your Kids to Work Day at Throbbing Gristle’s studio, though they manage to hopscotch their way to a hot groove or two in the course of things. Reports say you can indeed dance to this stuff live, but when I try to imagine what type of dancing that would be, I need to lie down for a minute. Tussle headlines; the Watchers play second. 10 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, 773-278-6600 or 800-594-8499, $8. –J. Niimi
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MATSON JONES I had a couple good reasons to dislike this Colorado band before I’d even heard them. First, they make way too much of the fact that they’re playing indie rock without guitars–instead they use two cellos, an upright bass, drums, and a touch of Casio. Second, one of the ladies with the cellos (they both sing too) is wearing those terrible Bettie Page lobotomy bangs in the CD-insert photo. All right, maybe they weren’t such good reasons. But once I got to the music on Matson Jones’s self-released 2004 debut–which Sympathy for the Record Industry reissued this month–it won me over. Though it’s too pretty, arty, and controlled to qualify as “punk,” no matter what the Denver Post says, it is taut and urgent and dripping with a fun, tear-in-my-merlot sort of melodrama. The vocals often sound like they’re run through a harmonica mike, for a tasty “ex-girlfriend making threats on the answering machine” effect, while the low strings chug and throb like an overworked heart. The hooks aren’t bad either, and just when the chamber-music instrumentation starts to feel ponderous, a dash of cheap synth lightens things up. The Floorbirds open and Office headlines. 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, 773-281-4444, $8. –Ann Sterzinger
NEKROMANTIX Since 1989 these Danes have stuck to sardonic, lusty, B-horror psychobilly, with the usual campy trappings: Kim Nekroman’s coffin-shaped upright bass, song titles like “Backstage Pass to Hell,” and so on. (Nekroman also likes to tweak Americans for acting like they have some special relationship with rock ‘n’ roll, but he recently moved to LA–uh-oh.) Last year’s Dead Girls Don’t Cry (Epitaph) is inconsistent, but I admire these guys’ persistence; they cling to their own cliches with such a sweaty delight that they manage to reanimate them. The Henchmen (not to be confused with Detroit’s Hentchmen) open. 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203 or 312-559-1212, $11 in advance, $13 at the door. All ages. –Monica Kendrick
LORAXX Chicago enjoys an international reputation for three things: Al Capone, deep-dish pizza, and pigfuck noise rock. While the first two have actually killed people, the idea behind the latter is to fool you into thinking it could. Loraxx comes as close as anybody has on the recent Selfs (Automatic Combustioneer). Guitarist Arista Strungys is a walking Marshall stack; her vocals on “Choke Damp” make Lydia Lunch sound like Melissa Manchester. Bassist Jeff Lauras and drummer Elliott Talarico keep things simple and tight, leaving plenty of room for Strungys’s knotty riffage and unhinged feedback blasts. “Three Witches on Brooms” is a crisis hotline operator’s worst nightmare: a call-and-response between horrified vocal outbursts (“No one stalks me anymore / Nobody cures me anymore”) and exquisitely timed guitar shitstorms. That gives way to some amazing bits where Strungys dispenses with lyrics and instead attempts to out-scream her amp. She wins. Failed Resistance, Big Whiskey, and the Its open. 9 PM, Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, 773-489-3160 or 312-559-1212, $8. –J. Niimi
EASY ACTION John Brannon is one of rock’s all-time great howlers: he employed an ungodly screech in the proto-hardcore band Negative Approach and a vaguely bluesy wail in the mountain-wrecking Laughing Hyenas. He still sounds great on Friends of Rock & Roll (Reptilian), the second album from his Detroit-based band, Easy Action–his “singing” is all throat-shredding screams and subtle melodic movement a la Birthday Party-era Nick Cave. But he can’t transcend the cliched tunes and the heavy-handed musicians playing them: guitarist Harold Richardson seems to play the exact same pedal-hopping wah-wah solo on every song. Red Villain and Smoke or Fire open. a 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 3206 N. Wilton, 773-975-0505 or 866-468-3401, $6 in advance, $8 at the door. –Peter Margasak
