By Josh Kraus

If you’re wondering where you can catch five history PhD students busting out wistful folk-rock tunes on June 3, here is your answer. Introducing The Night Owl Choir: a diverse group of musicians who would rather be channeling a brooding Neil Young than researching the Byzantine Empire.

Set to release its debut album by the end of the year, The Choir is relatively new to the Chicago music scene. The group formed in the spring of 2008, after meeting each other as graduate students at UIC. Multi-instrumentalist Doug Miller had recently left his Minneapolis band of eight years, The Winter Blanket.

“That band was the focus of my life,” Miller says. “However, when I started grad school, I decided music would have to take a backseat.” Read the rest of this entry »

Trio in Stereo isn’t a trio at all. The core group is a quintet. But then if people who contribute to the group’s recordings and who occasionally join them for performances were included, the trombonist, the trumpeter, the cellist, the violist and the additional singers, the band’s roster easily exceeds ten people.

The group formed six years ago in Bloomington, Indiana, where all of the five full-time members went to college at Indiana University, studying subjects such as ethnomusicology, classical guitar and classical piano, giving the band a wide array of influences to draw from in addition to current, popular music. Read the rest of this entry »

By Caroline Picard

The Casiotone SK-1 is the instrument of choice for Owen Ashworth. It has been dubbed the “poor man’s sampler” and you can see old Ferris-Beuler-style commercials circa 1985 online. If anything, the ad is worth looking up because the thirty-two piano keys are so small. Popularized in the 1990s as an affordable (at the time, $100) household instrument for the family, the Casiotone is known for its lo-fi aesthetic—offering immediate entertainment in as much as one might record the squeal of a sneaker (among other things) and then play “Three Blind Mice” with said sound byte. Thus, using the SK-1 as a centerpiece for a band is pretty awesome. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

With A Camp, Nina Persson will steal your heart once again, as she has time after time with The Cardigans. The lovely orchestral pop, fronted by Persson’s crisp and often immaculate voice, stretches over twelve sonically joyous, thematically introspective songs on the band’s debut, “Colonia.” On the opening track, the swift and poetic “The Crowning,” Persson’s performance is so assured and confident that she’s able to pull off the line “We’re gonna party like it’s 1699″ without sounding silly, and the record’s first single, “Stronger Than Jesus,” hits you in an unexpected way that would take several thousand words for proper analysis and deconstruction. “Love Has Left the Room,” another stunner, features Persson’s soaring delivery to chilling effect, plus excellently assembled string accompaniment and a choral background. The record, comparable to Lucky Soul’s 2008 treasure “The Great Unwanted,” stands up to The Cardigans’ best work, namely 1995′s “Life” and 1996′s “First Band on the Moon.” For pure, pretty, expertly crafted pop, you can’t get much better. (Tom Lynch)

A Camp plays June 3 at Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, (773)489-3160, at 9pm. $15.

RECOMMENDED

Even as a pretty huge fan of gleaming classic sixties pop, I’ll be the first to admit that so many bands have dabbled in lo-fi AM radio production while removing all traces of minor chords (unless, its purpose is to gloriously lead back to the major chords) that it may be a tad overdone at this point. That said, I hope Scottish indie-pop quintet Camera Obscura never stops mining the caves of pop yesteryear. The group just released its forth record, “My Maudlin Career,” and it is a pop gem, an album that glows within frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell’s playful brattiness and drowns in a sea of unrelenting strings parts. While deceptively lo-fi and retrofitted with a pseudo-Wall of Sound mix, “My Maudlin Career” could transcend any decade. Campbell’s melodies and harmonies are like a sonic milk and honey, tempered only by her sarcastic one-liners and occasional sullen ballad, and when it’s countered with a cavalcade of strings, it’s difficult to imagine hearing a more pleasant collection of tunes this year. (Andy Seifert)

May 29 at Metro, 3730 N. Clark, (773)549-0203, at 9pm. $17.50.

RECOMMENDED

One thing you could always count on when Daniel Barenboim was music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was that we would consistently hear great Mozart in Chicago, often conducted right from the piano.  Since Barenboim’s departure, however, the CSO has had trouble finding conductors who can bring what is needed to this popular—yet for performers, often illusive—composer.  Legendary pianist Artur Rubinstein, who had been a child prodigy and had a long career into his nineties, did not begin performing Mozart in public until he was into his forties; “Mozart,” he assessed, “is too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.”  Kudos to the CSO for turning to Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie for this week’s program of eighteenth-century music featuring the work of Haydn and Mozart. Read the rest of this entry »

Former Wilco member Jay Bennett, who parted with the band shortly after the completion of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” was found dead over the weekend.

He was 45. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Lindstrøm fans are surely familiar with the name Prins Thomas, but don’t let your ignorance sway this decision. This Norway native specializes in a synth-driven adherence to the groove, applying the blend as vocals mesh with keys in ways the audience rarely expects. The addition of house and techno elements has spawned the oft-mentioned terms “nu disco” or “space disco,” particularly the sound’s alignment with the Italian disco scene, but Thomas is more than weird loops, tweaked drum sounds and a penchant for the varied set list. Disciples of eclectic blends of hip-hop, electro and downtempo ambience will rejoice at Thomas’ ability to concoct dance-floor magic from seemingly disparate galaxies. (John Alex Colon)

Prins Thomas performs June 3 at Sonotheque, 1444 West Chicago, (312)226-7600, at 9pm. $10.

RECOMMENDED

Classic rock retreads aren’t exactly bursting at the seams these days, and even the ones that do have an impenetrable layer of cool to deal with (ahem, Jack White, ahem). But at least we’ve got Portland psych-rock act Viva Voce, a band that takes compelling yet simple riffs, beats and melodies, and layers them to construct a world that’s dense, familiar and fun to digest. The creation of husband/wife duo Anita and Kevin Robinson, Viva Voce’s catalogue sounds carefully crafted one step at a time, each part lovingly produced within the Robinson homestead and able to perfectly mesh with one another, as if, for example, the squealing guitar and the encompassing auxiliary percussion were oh-so in love with each other. But Viva Voce’s mostly a lesson in the appeal of simplicity contrasted with eccentricities. Anita’s solos take you back to some of the blues-rock masters of the past (I was immediately reminded of my 52-year-old Clapton-adoring guitar teacher), and while it wouldn’t take a virtuoso to replicate her riffs, she’s undeniably effective amidst the ever-changing soundscape. Her axe becomes the common narrator in a series of weird, offbeat experiments, unafraid to change its voice as it introduces us to another track. (Andy Seifert)

May 29 at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, (773)276-3600, at 10pm. $12.

RECOMMENDED

Bands don’t come much cleverer than Portland indie rock trio Menomena (whose name, presumably, is a derivation of the nostalgic “Muppet Show” anthem “Mah Na Mah Na”). The group’s first album, “I Am The Fun Blame Monster!”, is more than a bizarre, attention-grabbing title, it’s also an anagram for “the first Menomena album.” By the band’s third record, Menomena had already reached the mind-boggling album art plateau, as “Friend of Foe” featured eight different variations of a Dante-esque hellscape. But these are merely intelligent ornaments to the band’s actual music, a genre-blending mishmash that allows each member to take turns on every instrument. A mixture of pop and post-rock, Menomena’s use of immediately consumable lyrics (“O, to be a machine. O, to be wanted, to be useful”) and detail-oriented arrangements (a ominously persistent tenor sax part will remind a few of Radiohead’s “National Anthem”) consistently points to a band that puts an abundance of time and consideration into its work. Most moving music comes from the gut, the heart or the balls—but Menomena comes straight from the cerebral cortex. (Andy Seifert)

June 1 at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, (773)276-3600, at 9:30pm. $15.