Rock icon Bruce Springsteen’s last year has been rather significant, with his musical contribution to “The Wrestler,” stumping for President Obama and a brand new record released this week. Despite lukewarm reviews to his new album, “Working on a Dream,” and some even calling song “Queen of the Supermarket” the worst he’s ever written, everyone seems to love The Boss. I mean, who doesn’t like The Boss? What kind of person are you?

Fresh off a Golden Globe win for the song he penned specifically for Darren Aronofsky’s film, Springsteen and the E Street Band are primed to play during halftime of Sunday’s Super Bowl, for a whopping twelve minutes. Springsteen, and the rest of the band, held a press conference yesterday as part of the Super Bowl media marathon, his first since 1987, apparently, which everyone is making a big deal out of for some reason I don’t entirely understand.

Anyway, The Boss referred to himself as “The Boss” a handful of times during the press conference, which sounded equally endearing and bizarre. When asked who decides what songs to play on tour, he replied, “Well, I’m The Boss. The Boss decides. The Boss decides what we play.” A few minutes later when it was discovered another band member’s microphone wasn’t working, he joked, “Only The Boss’ works.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if he does this all the time, not just with Stevie and Max and crew, but with strangers, friends, family. If he and his wife are deciding what to eat that night, does he get the final say?

“I’m The Boss. I say pizza.”

Or deciding what movie to take in at the theater?

“I’m The Boss. ‘The Reader’ it is.”

Who will win the Super Bowl?

“Boss. Steelers.”

Man, that would be so annoying. (Tom Lynch)

You can see The Boss refer to himself as such here. The band plays Sunday during halftime, and May 12 at the United Center.

By Todd Miller

The Wiitala Brothers have been twin brothers for twenty-nine years and have been playing and creating music with one another for as long as either can remember. Their combined musical history includes a high school punk band…but whose doesn’t? Where Christopher and Trevor’s story becomes unique, though, is that by the time they were twenty-one years old, they made up half of a band called The Blamed, a Chicago-based unit that toured heavily in North America and Europe, and that was, at one point, signed to a fairly large independent record label, Tooth and Nail Records.

But as things go, after its first Tooth and Nail release, The Blamed soon met its end, and Christopher and Trevor found themselves again writing and recording together, and this time they kept it within the family as The Wiitala Brothers.

This February marks the five-year anniversary of their first show with that moniker, and although it’s been five years that may not have been as easy or exciting without the deep pockets of a record label or the occasional European tour, it’s been a half decade in which the brothers have both gotten married and, as they have matured, been writing some of their best music to date.

The Wiitala Brothers’ sound is, basically, straightforward, minimalist indie rock. The songs speak for themselves without a blanket of effects or over-saturation of supplemental sounds. 

The band takes influences from all over the musical landscape. “We love Motown, not just for the fact that they created great pop music, but their production techniques were really innovative and we like to try to incorporate some of those ideas when we record,” Christopher says. He also cites artists like Bono and Bob Dylan for their ability to make songs that matter and that say something with substance. “As far as what we listen to affecting our songwriting, more than anything it’s getting us to think about writing songs centered around different instrumentation such as piano or stripping down an arrangement.”

The two are now hard at work on their debut full-length record, “Bad Blood.” The title is a play on Christopher’s successful battle, five years ago, with Hepatitis C and the fact that, as brothers, they share “bad blood.” The album is tentatively slated to be released independently. But, keeping things independent, without pressure from a label to produce and tour is liable to leave bands susceptible to taking a long time to finish something due to a lack of firm deadlines. “We definitely have set ourselves a deadline,” Christopher says. “Our hopes are [to be finished] by summer at the latest.”

Until then, while they continue to work on “Bad Blood,” Christopher and Trevor are playing songs from the upcoming release to audiences around Chicago. But, between them, they only have four hands, and there are multiple guitar parts, bass, drums and occasional keys prevalent in the songs. On stage, Christopher plays guitar and Trevor is behind the drums. “We basically have bass guitar and keyboards and additional guitar parts prerecorded in AudioDesk,” Christopher says.

Even though The Wiitala Brothers have always used sampling opposed to enlisting extra live musicians, the idea of sampling is becoming more and more frequently accepted with the success of bands like Animal Collective, a band that samples much of their instrumentation live, and Yeasayer, a band that has four members playing live instruments, but also uses sampling to supplement some of the sounds that they choose not to recreate on stage.

“When we first started playing shows we were nervous about how people would react because we use tracks, but we’ve never really gotten a poor response, as far as I know. It may be that people don’t care or they just don’t notice it,” Christopher says.

Opposed to some other bands that run rampant with sampling, The Wiitala Brothers are aware of it and try to be careful not to overstep with too much prerecorded material. “We definitely want to embrace technology but not rely on it. In our newer songs we’ve tried to keep the extra parts very minimal.”

To go along with the release of  “Bad Blood,” The Wiitala Brothers are also in the process of planning a tour for August and September that will take them, for the first time in a long time, back on the road.

January 31 at The Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, (773)276-3600, at 8pm. $10. With Baby Teeth and JT and the Clouds.

“What cheap beer will you have?” asks the bartender at the Empty Bottle. The music venue hosts a listening party for New Pornographer AC Newman’s new solo record, “Get Guilty,” with two hours of free beer—PBR, Schlitz and an unknown beer called American Pale Ale. Curious, we do the Pale Ale.

It comes in a bottle and whenever the bartender opens one, foam oozes everywhere. The weather outside is frightful. Snow plummets, but at least it’s not seventeen below zero anymore. The weather must be staving-off people because the place isn’t crowded. As we imbibe, Bob Ross paints fluffy, white clouds on TV, Newman continuously sings upbeat pop songs and Radley, the in-resident cat, nonchalantly walks back and forth across the bar. The evening progresses and more people fill the bar. Thankfully, their chatter drowns out Newman’s third playing of “The Palace at 4am.”

At 8:30pm, the bar announces the free booze is over and picks the winners of the Newman concert raffle. We win nothing. The bartender asks us if we want to stay for the Franz Nicolay show. “Who?” we ask. “Yunno, the mustached guy from The Hold Steady.” “Oh, that guy.”

We decline and have to leave the bar. Not quite satiated, we stumble out into the dreary night and decide to go to another hole to and keep the buzz going. “Our submarine pulls into Stockholm….la, la, la” echoes long into the winter night. (Garin Pirnia)

AC Newman’s “Get Guilty” is out now.

By Duke Shin

Known best for being at the forefront of the current Scandinavian disco revival, mid-tempo dance maven Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is touring the U.S. in a rare three-date mini-tour behind “Where You Go I Go Too,” his follow-up to 2006’s “It’s a Feedelity Affair.” While his initial solo effort was mostly a collection of previously released singles, his latest all-new effort (released Stateside in December) has landed itself atop many critics’ best-of-2008 lists, including influential tastemakers at XLR8R and Pitchfork. And while the disco bug has been virulent over the last couple of years, spreading from producers and remixers to find places in DJ sets and Blogosphere playlists from across the musical spectrum, Lindstrøm approaches his growing success with a detached curiosity.

“There’s so much good music in the past that if more people get into the old music, and maybe another way of making music, then it’s really good,” he says, speaking from his home in Oslo, Norway. “If disco is only going to be this year and maybe next year, nevertheless, I’m not able to control it. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.” (And by the way, calling his music “disco” or “nu-disco” is just fine, but please avoid the popular “cosmic disco” tag. “Kind of corny,” he says).

Lindstrøm’s individualistic thinking is apparent in everything he does. Exhaustion with the rehearsals and setup required to be in a band led him to DJing, which eventually led to production. His brand of disco edits with psychedelic-tinged audio-dramatics might be elbowing its way into dance aficionado’s shelves previously stocked with minimal house and techno, but his latest opus is a risky three-track release of instrumentals clocking-out at just over fifty-five minutes.

“Where You Go I Go Too” is a winding musical story, complete with a sonic three-act structure. The album-titled lead-off track establishes the characters and setting, with initial deep bass warbles in sinister keys giving way to sunnier melodies and chords, as a building disco beat gives sufficient inertia to bounce through near-thirty minutes of sweeping synths. Disco guitar licks warm Lindstrøm’s patented sonic permafrost tricked-out with lonely chimes, ambient playground noise and disembodied breathing. The second act “Grand Ideas” opens with rewind noises and an Italo-edged handclapped beat. As famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was noted for reinventing reality, Lindstrøm recaptures the sun-drenched feel of long summer days, with the Italo stains so influential to his youth being remade in his own unique way. The third and final track, “The Long Way Home,” starts with a maddening and dizzying arrangement of synth noise and guitar, which eventually gives way to chilled-out electronic funk…dareIsay resolution?

“[It was] nice to write and record it, [but] it was a nightmare to finish it,” he admits. After working for months on a pop collaboration with a singer, Lindstrøm had hit a creative brick wall. He decided to shelve the project, and begin working on his next solo album. “To get the whole picture of a track, the best thing is to listen to it from start to finish,” he explains. But due to the length of the tracks, the finishing took weeks instead of days to finish. “I’m not going to do that again!” he laughs.

While the mastering might’ve been tough, Lindstrøm’s tuneful compositions are truly conceptual pieces fleshed-out in the studio by his abilities as a multi-instrumentalist who plays all the instruments himself, first learning to play guitar and bass when he was 20, then moving on to drums and other instruments. “I’m really curious about being able to play all kinds of instruments. I’m not really good at any, but when you’re using it in the studio, you don’t really need [to be],” he admits.

Despite his perceived limitations, Lindstrøm sees other advantages to producing music in his D.I.Y. fashion—most notably when programming beats while having knowledge of the drums. But despite his golden ear for melody, there’s no set formula to making a track. Sometimes it starts with the rhythm; sometimes it starts with the melody. But the unifying thread is his use of chords—something he obsesses over. “It’s really important to me that there’s something more happening than a monotone drum break and a one-note bass in one key… It’s like after disco died, I guess the art of making disco arrangements, like strings and stuff like that, sort of vanished in a way. Most people making dance music now are DJs without musical training… Maybe it’s changing now,” he pontificates, citing the increase of DJs remixing indie bands, indie bands using computer plug-ins, and house and disco rhythms finding their way into contemporary rock music.

Combining his knowledge and musicianship with his affable self-effacing tendencies, perhaps its not surprising that Lindstrøm is most at home in the studio. “There’s this thing with DJs where you have to be abated with everything, and there’s so much really crap music! I know there’s a lot of DJs who are playing it and feel like it’s crap music—but it’s new music. I was never really happy with living that,” he explains candidly.

He also isn’t comfortable fronting a huge stage show. So when you see Lindstrøm tonight at Smart Bar, he’ll be performing live, with a keyboard and a laptop running Ableton Live sequencing software. “Well, the music is nice, but it’s not really interesting to watch it, so hey, let’s dance,” he imagines a fan saying at one of his performances. “I’m kind of happy with that in a way,” he chuckles yet again. “They want my music.”

January 30 at Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, (773)549-0203, $10 before midnight, $15 after.

By Lisa Torem

Michael Doucet, of the Grammy-award winning Cajun band BeauSoliel, has a lot on his plate—and not just Jambalaya. First, there’s his sacrosanct commitment to preserve Acadia’s native-tunes, then there’s the rip-roaring resolve to infuse both those traditional songs of his forbears and the originals with fresh reinterpretations—often two-parts fiddle to one-part accordion. Kick this pepper-pot up a notch and it bubbles over with blues, country-swing and jazz influences.

Doucet, frontman and musicologist, plays fiddle, guitar and sings in his native French. He once had an epiphany in high school that when the people of a culture perish, so does its musical legacy. To that end, Doucet and BeauSoliel have spent the last three decades perfecting Cajun music for future generations. Whether performing a stomp, reel or waltz, or playing a frottoir ( a rubboard used in Zydeco­—Cajun’s capricious cousin) or banjo, BeauSoliel brings world music to the homefront. If you don’t “die of happiness” during John Sebastian’s harp solo in “Little Darlin’” you just might two-step back to the bayou and rediscover your roots.

Prior to the Chicago concert, Doucet speaks about Cajun music and culture and the making of new release, “Alligator Purse.”

How would a traditional tune, like “Marie” from “Alligator Purse,” have been played live 100 years ago?

(Laughs) Just the same way. No, it probably would have been a ballad. When I was growing up there was this TV station that had a Cajun band—twin fiddles, steel guitar. They played “Marie.” It was just a nice waltz—we do it as a swamp pop.

BeauSoliel translated into French and recorded the song “Rouler Et Tourner” (“Rolling and Tumbling”), which luminaries Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan also recorded. What’s the backstory?

We played the New Orleans Jazz Festival. Dylan played there, too—we both played the fest, but on different stages. We played at a little club and Dylan came out the next day. He said: “Can’t believe you played that old blues song—that’s really cool.” Well, Clifton Chenier would take old Chicago blues and New Orleans songs and make them Zydeco songs. We had been playing [these old songs] for thirty years but had never recorded them. We said, “Why not?” I didn’t really translate, but I added new words.

What did you learn by hearing the original Cajun tunes performed by those of your grandparents’ generation?

There were people like Dennis McGee—born before 1900—the first of our culture to commercially record between 1929-1936. Growing up in Louisiana—it’s a very musical place. It is so diverse. I would go twenty miles away and people would play something totally different. There were so many influences—jazz, blues, delta, country.

It took less than ten days to record “Alligator Purse” even with the addition of eight guest artists.

It took four days—then we mixed it in four more days. [The musicians] were pretty good—very relaxed. We’re not big on doing overdubs. There’s the feeling of “this is how we do it” live.

How is “Alligator Purse” different than your previous records?

The sound is different, the mix is different. We began with a twin fiddle song by Dennis McGhee (“1929”) and we end with an accordion played by Amedee Ardoin and in between we show the music and styles of southern Louisiana which we grew up with. The other influences were Cajun, Creole French and the New Orleans influence of Bobby Charles (“See You Later Alligator,” “Walking To New Orleans”) and Fats Domino. There’s the whole gamut of swing, ballads. It’s all reinterpreted. It’s a BeauSoliel record but it’s got a different slant to it. It’s difficult for me…it’s just an evolution of what we’ve been doing. We continue to grow and evolve as a group and basically we’re not trying to prove any points. We’re not trying to sound like somebody alive a hundred years ago. The music is so wrapped around our culture and our heritage—so many things have changed. The greatest thing is the decrease in the number of people speaking French…In 1970, there were about one million French-speaking [Louisianans], then the 2000 census showed less than 100,000. This is a barometer of what’s going on now.

Your ancestors were expelled from the Nova Scotia area and brought their music to Louisiana. Did this have an impact on the culture?

There are very few songs that talk about it. When a culture is uprooted, it’s very traumatic. Their armor was not military protection—it was French. But living in the isolated areas—that helped in our survival. You had to speak French. My culture grew up speaking French and English like it was no big deal. Our parents—in the twenties and thirties—were punished for speaking French in the playground. That really changed in the sixties. You can’t be nostalgic—you just have to go with it.

 January 31 at Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, (773)728-6000, at 4pm and 7pm.

RECOMMENDED

With a rusty, often cryptic voice spinning tales of societal woes, Armageddon and the inevitability of death, twenty-three-year music veteran Vic Chesnutt is kinda like the crazy old wise man of indie rock, croaking lyrics like “It’s ok, you can take a Valtrex/It’s ok, you can get an abortion, and then keep on keeping on” with a smirk on his face and lines like “It was fun while it lasted/now let’s all turn to dust” with the fire of God in his eyes. The Athens, Georgia singer/songwriter has collaborated with Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Lambchop, Widespread Panic and essentially any artist that accidentally visits his house, choosing fellow Athenian psych-rockers Elf Power for “Dark Developments,” his latest endeavor into scathing wit and mid-American folk. Even though Chesnutt’s unlikely to speed up past a slow trot, his work rarely qualifies as a dull affair, particularly because he chooses wholly capable partners who can anchor his lyrical virtuoso within a halfway melodic soundscape. For this show, Elf Power opens, then doubles as Chesnutt’s backing band, a pretty damn cool opportunity to witness two veteran indie acts share the stage. (Andy Seifert)

January 29 at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, (773)276-3600, 9:30pm. $12.

RECOMMENDED

I’m not one for directly quoting press releases, but any band that sells itself as a “household name from Siberia to Moscow and beyond” deserves a notice. The band describes its sound as “rockapops,” which is basically a blend of, yes, rock and pop, which in these hands sounds and feels a hell of a lot like a laid-back Russian Pulp. “Comrade Ambassador” is Mumiy Troll’s North American debut, and its devilish slickness impresses throughout all proper thirteen tracks. The final bonus track, a bizarre cover of The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’,” works both on straightforward and ironic levels, considering how strange it is to hear it sung in Russian, and the image it creates of the band performing the song to a Siberian crowd. (For a band originally formed in 1983, “Comrade Ambassador” feels delightfully fresh.) Huge in its homeland, Mumiy Troll has been attacked in its past by Communist leaders, labeled “socially dangerous” to people at large. You can decide for yourself, but when I think of socially dangerous bands, Mimiy Troll isn’t the first that comes to mind. I’m looking your way, Matchbox 20. (Tom Lynch)

January 30 at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, (773)276-3600, at 10pm. $20.

RECOMMENDED

One of the most energetic acts you can catch today, New York’s Les Savy Fav produces a live sound that’s comparable to Fugazi forced through a meat grinder. Lead singer Tim Harrington you’ll have to see to believe, but these days its hard to find a frontman so readily willing to leave his blood, guts, piss and pain on the stage after a set. His charisma, or power, is a show on its own—while the band plays, I dare you to take your eyes off of him. The band’s tamed slightly in recent years, at least musically, focusing more on an indie-rock/art-punk sound, but the live show, Harrington’s presence, penetrating drums and thrashing, angry guitars, can make you lose your shit, if you’re willing. Jai Alai Savant opens tonight, and this band’s thunderous, inescapable live show—heavy on reverb and pure musical muscle—should make a fine lead-in to the mayhem. (Tom Lynch) 

January 31 at Epiphany, 201 S. Ashland, at 8pm. $15-$18.

It was inevitable that this decade would feature several successful retreads of the eighties’ trademark sound—that occasionally cheesy, always catchy synth-pop we’ve come to associate with monstrous perms and Anthony Michael Hall’s boyish charm. Bands like New York’s The Virgins may also prove unavoidable—one of a possible onslaught of acts whose watered-down retelling of the 1980s seem more inspired by the retro tributes than the real thing. The stale production, the total lack of a novel idea—not even a twist on an old theme—suggests the band members came upon a dusty OK Go album from some older sister’s CD collection and exclaimed, “How come nobody’s done this before? This shit is blowing my mind!” The boys’ self-titled debut offers generic funk riffs, some blatantly insincere attempts at debauchery and stupid, big-ass choruses with an average word count of seven (example: “Teenager lovers don’t wait/Vacation is over”). No audible synths, no fun cheesiness—if this is supposed to be a throwback, it’s a throwback to 2005, at best. (Andy Seifert)

January 29 at Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, (773)525-2508, 9pm. $10-$12.

RECOMMENDED

Outside of a bassist who just underwent a sex change, few elements can turn around the dynamic of a rock band as fatefully as a showstopping lead singer, someone who possesses a voice that hits your gut like a bloodthirsty wolf attacking raw meat. Cincinnati blues-rock trio Heartless Bastards have the good fortune to feature such a frontwoman, the lovely Erika Wennerstrom, whose aggressive alto transforms the Bastards from merely a solid garage band to an emotive, lyrically dense, assertive and snarky rock ‘n’ roll machine. That’s not a dig on drummer Dave Colvin and bassist Jesse Ebaugh, who provide a helluva lot of noise on the band’s signature blues-rock standouts and adapt surprisingly well to the temporary foray into folk on the band’s newest record, “The Mountain.” But just like all the other acts on the band’s Delta blues label, Fat Possum, it’s the Bastards’ killer mouthpiece that affects the soul. (Andy Seifert)

January 31 at Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, (773)404-9494, at 9pm. $15.