friday21
INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS In the midst of the bluegrass boom, it’s nice to find a band with killer chops that isn’t either pandering to the jam-band set or acting like a bunch of reconstituted hillbillies. This young Nashville sextet covers a lot of ground on its recent debut, Fork in the Road (Sugar Hill), from the pure, lyrical country of “Starry Night” to the Nickel Creek pop-grass of “Letter from Prison.” The songs are sturdy–a cover of John Mayer’s “3×5” notwithstanding–with elaborate vocal harmonies and a fierce rhythmic drive. Sometimes the arrangements are a bit too polished for my taste, but that energy more than makes up for it. See also Saturday. a 8:30 PM, Oaktoberfest, North Blvd. & Marion, Oak Park. F A –Peter Margasa
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ZOROASTER Are you a little doomed out yet? Believe it or not, I’ve been feeling that way myself–guess that’s bound to happen with a style of music that’s repetitive and oppressive by design. So it’s a good thing this Atlanta group just dropped its debut, Dog Magic (Southern Lord). In typical fashion, it’s more than an hour long, with several tracks topping ten minutes, but the climactic moments are particularly gorgeous. These guys obviously have an intuitive feel for dynamics, and their heavy use of Moog and Hammond reinvigorates an otherwise familiar sound with a touch of sci-fi fancy. Yakuza headlines and Withered opens. a 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $12. –Monica Kendrick
Iron & Wine headlines and Arthur & Yu open. a 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203 or 312-559-1212, $26. A
c Chemical Brothers The late-90s big-beat fad pushed dance music into the U.S. mainstream–in the process providing car manufacturers with a decade’s worth of music for their, err, racier commercials–but few of its anthems, and fewer of the musicians behind them, sound particularly good today. The Chemical Brothers are a notable exception, proving themselves time and again to be two of dance music’s most appealing innovators. History will remember them for “Block Rockin’ Beats”–one of the most ecstatically noisy songs to ever reach heavy rotation on MTV–but if their new album, We Are the Night (Astralwerks), is anything to go by, their best work may be ahead of them. The Brothers jump from the retro-lectro of the title track to the goofy, bouncy hip-hop of the Fatlip collabo “The Salmon Dance” to the meditative psychedelia of “The Pills Won’t Help You Now” without once tripping up. And while there are no real standout singles to compete with the recent bumper crop of dance tracks out there, strung together these tunes make one of the best electronic albums of the year. Ladytron opens. a 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, 773-275-6800 or 312-559-1212, $38, 18+. –Miles Raymer
cPERE UBU, GLENN JONES AND JACK ROSE It’s no mystery how this Cleveland avant-garage institution has survived for three decades, despite innumerable lineup changes, the occasional breakup, and a lack of commercial success so consistent it looks like a strategy: PERE UBU is undergirded by the iron will of front man and sole constant member Dave Thomas. Despite his rep as a prima donna–he’s a perfectionist with an idiosyncratic definition of “perfect,” which isn’t something easily communicated to soundmen–even a bumpy Pere Ubu gig has more promise than the most inspired set from a typical headliner. Even more remarkably, Pere Ubu violates the law of diminishing returns–the band’s two most recent studio albums, 2002’s St Arkansas (Spinart) and last year’s Why I Hate Women (Smog Veil), are possibly its best. Thomas’s lyrics are threaded together by a deep poetic logic, and the chugging music, which turns on a dime between meters and textures, is both unmistakably Ubu and somehow timeless. After synth player Allen Ravenstine left in the late 80s, he became an airline pilot–I like to think that’s the only way he could feel he was in command of the same kind of power. –Monica Kendrick
