Screaming Females’ “Power Move” is a well-deserved uppercut of thrilling punk prowess, born from the blood and sweat of basement shows and beer-stained jeans. The New Brunswick, New Jersey band was born in that scene, that ever-inspiring punk community, and this record, the trio’s third but first released via a label (Don Giovanni), thunders along on the strength of singer and guitarist Marissa Paternoster’s booming voice and Jarrett Dougherty’s slaughterhouse drumming. Paternoster shreds solos with seeming ease and her voice, the child of Corin Tucker and Karen O, often careens into a raging, throaty scream. “Power Move,” awesome in its shocking intensity, features Screaming Females on top of their game.

“We never really talked about what we wanted the sound to be like,” Dougherty says of the band’s origins. “I’m adamantly against bands that decide what they want to sound like before they play together. You don’t get a union of people playing together [like that].” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Swedish brother-sister electronic duo The Knife dropped “Silent Shout” on unsuspecting audiences in 2006 and it remains a high point of musical boundary-pushing and exploration, a moody, strange record that just happens to be wholly brilliant. The Knife’s singer, Karin Dreijer Andersson, ventures on her own with Fever Ray, and though the sound is eerily similar to her work with her brother, it still manages to exist as its own bizarro masterpiece, as Andersson so effectively distorts her vocals to sound simultaneously dead and alive. The self-titled record, which came out much earlier this year, is a more mellow endeavor than “Silent Shout,” but works much in the same way, changing the world around you as soon as you press play. Encompassing headphone music, uneasy, not afraid of the casual hook, the choruses acting as beacons of  light within the chilly air. The Knife’s live performances are reportedly unforgettable—there’s no reason to believe Fever Ray won’t match them. (Tom Lynch)

October 3 at Metro, 3730 N. Clark, (773)549-0203, at 9pm. $25.

RECOMMENDED

Lovers of deep house and techno have probably heard of Jin Choi thanks to his recent releases on Archipel and Lessizmore, or high-profile collaborations and remixes with the likes of German techno star Daso or French trio dOP. Through his productions, Choi mines for emotion with every deep tool at his disposal, including Castilian-sounding guitars, jazzy interludes, heartfelt vocals and static and fuzz, but mostly with his hypnotic sense of rhythm. And now, thanks to Migrashun, the Korean by way of Cologne will make his Chicago debut with a live performance as part of two exclusive US dates (the other being in Detroit, natch). Migrashun residents Arial Frank and Daniel Fox provide additional deck support alongside special guest Aran Daniels—a Detroit DJ who excels in moody, slow-burn techno. Tonight’s show at Redno is the fifth show for Mathias Matthew’s fledgling Migrashun crew, who most recently gifted Chicago with the debut of Swiss artist Ripperton. Here’s hoping they can continue bringing sophisticated international acts for Chicago’s discerning dance-floor fiends. (Duke Shin)

October 3 at Rednofive, 440 N. Halsted, (312)733-6699.

Alex Brown Church’s Sea Wolf has been tiptoeing along the line of mediocrity for a handful of years, and while the band’s new record, “White Water, White Bloom” (Dangerbird) is the best work it’s offered so far, the indie-rock blandness still proves oppressive. Sure, the songs are pleasant enough, as Church’s mid-tempo creations feature agreeable string arrangements and some nice vocal harmonies. (Some of this is even reminiscent of Elliott Smith’s full-band work.) But after the first few tracks your mind wanders so much you don’t even pay attention to the alt-country bits of the record, and by the time it’s all over, you’re not sure you listened to anything at all. And that’s more depressing than any of Church’s somber acoustic entries. Maybe I’m being too harsh, but I imagine Sea Wolf as an Okkervil River devoid of invention—if it’s your sort of thing, have it, but my patience for this stuff has all but disappeared. (Tom Lynch)

October 1 at Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, (773)525-2508, at 9pm. $12-$14.

RECOMMENDED

Though I’m an unapologetic Yo La Tengo nerd who has seen the band countless times and has encyclopedic knowledge of (almost) all of its songs, I’ve been a bit disappointed by the band’s output in the last few years, from 2003′s boring “Summer Sun” to 2006′s hit-and-miss “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.” Now the trio presents “Popular Songs,” its twelfth record, and like on “I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One” the band explores all of its strengths, from the pure-pop nostalgic grooves to the mellow tunes to the long, distortion-heavy guitar epics. At this point, you pretty much know what you’re gonna get from Yo La Tengo, and “Popular Songs” is a strong record for the most part. Perhaps the most notable is the band’s decision to place the three sprawling rockers at the end of the record, creating one hell of a half-hour-long coda. (The dreamy “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven” is the best song that the band’s written in years.) Live, of course, Yo La Tengo remains incredible, so the strength of the record hardly matters. (Tom Lynch)

October 6 at Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield, (773)618-8439, at 7:30pm.

You probably best remember New York’s new-wave revivalists The Bravery from the band’s debut single, “Honest Mistake.” The first time I heard it, I thought, “maybe this whole new-wave revival thing is getting a little tiresome.” Not that “Honest Mistake” was complete junk, just nothing special, a meaningless pop song with an average hook and the pretense of post-punk mystique. Next thing you knew, Sam Endicott and the boys were pushing a video featuring the quintet rocking out on five speed boats, doing their darndest to make a repetitive, bland single seem really bad ass. The band’s last record, “The Sun and the Moon,” was mostly forgettable, an album rife with regurgitated arena-sized anthems, though you probably caught the single “Believe” if you happened to catch the shows “Friday Night Lights,” “The Reaper,” “Prison Break,” “Gossip Girl” or the Luke Wilson feature “Henry Poole is Here” (Whoa, slow down, guys! Save room for “Smallville”)—I suppose when you’re living under the shadow of The Killers, you’ve really gotta scrape and claw your way towards relevance. The Bravery may not be one of music’s most unforgivable bastions of crap, but a band so lifeless, pallid and devoid of even an ounce of originality deserves to be largely ignored. (Andy Seifert)

October 4 at Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield, (773)618-8439, 7:30pm. $18.

RECOMMENDED

This Texas-born chanteuse seems to have done it all over her two-decade career. Starting off as a more traditional country singer, Womack started out following in the footsteps of Dolly Parton and the late Tammy Wynette before crossing over to pop during the first half of this decade. Two Grammy Awards later, she seems to have settled back into her roots with last year’s “Call Me Crazy,” a disc that took a darker tone with several songs about drinking, breakups and cheating men. Womack understands the importance of giving back—she recently sang at Cincinnati fundraiser for the Pink Ribbon foundation, and has also appeared in numerous charitable events. Judging from reviews of her recent shows, expect a generous mix of hits and new tunes during her set, which is sure to include her smash “I Hope You Dance” (which she infamously featured during the 2004 Republican National Convention) and gentler tunes like the jazz-country standard “You Don’t Know Me.” (Ernest Barteldes)

October 2 at Joe’s, 940 W. Weed, (312)337-8818, at 8:30pm. $20.

RECOMMENDED

Having spent most of September triumphantly touring Europe with Bernard Haitink, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra returns home to start the new season a bit late but with a program well worth the wait.  Soprano superstar Renée Fleming, whose appearances at Lyric Opera have steadily dwindled as her international popularity has increased, makes her only area appearance this season in a program that includes her traversing Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” an evocative and nostalgic vocal tone poem that manages to catch the lazy mood of a summer evening in the deep South nearly a century ago.  Fleming is one of our best interpreters of the sumptuous music of Richard Strauss, which has been AWOL at Lyric Opera now for two seasons in a row.  She will sing four of his orchestral songs—“Freundliche Vision,” “Zueignung,”  “Winterweihe” and “Verführung” as only Fleming can, and given the sense of occasion and the usually frantic response of the crowd, expect encores, perhaps even an operatic morsel or two to tide us over until Lyric is able to engage her again.  Also on the program is Strauss’ orchestral tone poem, “Till Eulenspiegel,” a CSO staple, and Leonard Bernstein’s Divertimento for Orchestra.  Bernstein also figures heavily in a one-night-only pre-opening-night concert that includes his colorful “Candide” Overture and his “Serenade” for violin and orchestra based on Plato’s “Symposium” that will feature the CSO debut of Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman.  Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra,” a spectacular CSO signature piece, will close out that concert; both will be conducted by Paavo Järvi.  (Dennis Polkow)

October 3, Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, 220 N. Michigan, (312)294-3000, 7pm.

RECOMMENDED

Fifty years ago, two Shanghai Conservatory of Music students—Gang Chen and Zhan-Hao—wrote and premiered a unique work fusing traditional Chinese music with Western classical music called “The Butterfly Lovers” that initially was a sensation and became widely performed.  Five years later as a prologue to the Cultural Revolution, the work was declared “decadent” by the Communist Party, performances were banned and its composers were sent off to prison.  After the death of Mao Tse-Tung in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the work began to reappear and has been the signature piece of East meets West both within China and abroad ever since.  It is this piece—with Chicago erhu soloist Betti Xiang—that will take the spotlight in the Chicago Sinfonietta’s season-opening concert appropriately called “West Meets East” and which will also feature the Chicago premiere of Chinese-Canadian composer An-Lun Huang’s “Saibei” Dance from his “Saibei” Suite, a 1975 piece that spotlights the percussive woodwind style typical of the Saibei region of northwest China.  Also on the program: Ravel’s “Ma Mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose) Suite, which includes Ravel’s attempt to emulate a Javenese Gamelan ensemble style in “The Empress of the Pagodas,” and the Rachmaninov First Piano Concerto with Chicago pianist Jeremy Jordan.  Sinfonietta founder and music director Paul Freeman, who is stepping down this season, will share the podium with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor Mei-Ann Chen.  (Dennis Polkow)

October 4, Dominican University’s Lund Auditorium, 7900 W. Dvision, River Forest, 2:30pm. And October 5, Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, (312)236-3681, 7:30pm.

As post-punk usually signifies a genre, in the case of Dylan Posa and Three Cheers for One Dead Man, it not only helps describe the band but also those creating it. This band manifests the idea of what happens when punks grow up. Headed up by Dylan Posa on guitar and vocals, he acts as a sort of Cab Calloway bandleader peppering in humor with musical artistry. Posa has paid his dues in the indie-punk scene playing in acts such as Cheer Accident and the Flying Luttenbacher—now he manages the Reckless Records store downtown. The other band members maintain ex-punk-rock lifestyles as adults—one works as a day trader on the stock market and another is an attorney.

“All the musicians in the band came from various sub-sects of the Chicago Music scene, so they all bring their own development into the band,” says Posa. Joining his ranks are fellow scene veterans drummer Eorl Scholl and bassist Justin Wexler, proprietor of Forge Again Records. Add to their ranks the recent addition of a horn section featuring Elanor Leskiw on trombone and Dave Levine on sax.

Their sound has a unique feel with its long, flowing free-form jam sections and its tongue-in-cheek banter. Songs feel angular as well as fluid, with musical interludes seemingly created on the spot that end on a dime. Post-punk might even be a dated description: It’s like listening to Fugazi or Nation of Ulysses while the television is spewing dialogue from syndicated sitcoms. Posa describes their sound as Mathpop. “I finally started finding people I wanted to play with who could execute complex time signatures and subtle in-jokes with equal finesse,” he says. Read the rest of this entry »