RECOMMENDED

The master emcee continues to carve out fat swaths of flow on his new album, 2011’s “Gutter Rainbows,” which is notable not only for being released in part by Kweli’s own label, Javotti Media, but also for attracting a cavalcade of heavy-hitting producers (such as Khrysis, Ski Beatz and Blaq Toven) to add their own boutique touch to individual tracks. For the most part we see the lush neo-soul backbeats that have come to characterize East Coast conscious hip-hop. Kweli, who has always tried to tread a line between self-indulgent hip-hop purism and the tit-for-tat games of mainstream rap, comes off well on “Gutter Rainbows.” As usual, he tells real stories (and not always his own), with the right amount of good-natured self-inflation. (David Wicik)

February 4 at The Shrine, 2109 South Wabash, (312)753-5700, 9pm. $35.

RECOMMENDED

It was only a matter of time before surf-centric smashers Bethany Cosentino and Nathan Williams, of Best Coast and Wavves respectively, took their buzz-topping romance on the road. And with both bands releasing highly acclaimed albums last summer—both, incidentally, prominently featuring animated versions of Cosentino’s meme-launching pet cat Snacks in their album art—the timing for the shared tour couldn’t be better.

Best Coast is the partnership of Cosentino and Bobb Bruno. The duo make indie-pop confections sending up sixties girl-pop, in Cosentino’s vocals, and surf-rock, with alternately fuzzy and wet guitar and bass. 2010’s”Crazy For You,” Best Coast’s debut full-length, highlights Cosentino’s pennings of sun-steeped slacker love, (e.g., on title track, “Crazy For You”: “I’m always crazy when I miss you. / I’m always lazy when I miss you. / And even though you are my guy, / I always freak when I get high.”). Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Personally, the only thing beautiful about a Minnesota winter would be the thought of leaving it in my rear view mirror. Duluth’s Retribution Gospel Choir, instead of being repulsed, cowed or defeated by such frigid prospects, however, seems to draw inspiration from it, as the album art to its latest release, “2,” will attest. The frozen blue slabs of glacial ice piled like pig iron on a slag heap that occupy the cover of the new record entomb, we must imagine, the Atlantic’s western-most deep-water port (Duluth, that is), and if I can be permitted to trespass into the realm of shoddy metaphors, RGC’s music is, like those harbors, cold, deep and hard-working. The part-time gig of Low frontman Alan Sparhawk, RGC definitely borrows some of the doleful attenuation of that project as well as some of the psychedelic guitar brume of the seventies. It’s kind of like Acid Mothers Temple on Valium doing BTO covers, and if you can’t picture that, imagine if instead of the desert, Jesus went to test himself for forty days on the frozen tundra. (David Wicik).

February 5 at Schubas, 3159 North Southport, (773)525-2508, 10:30pm. $12.

Emanuel Ax, Anthony McGill, Yo-Yo Ma/Photo: Todd Rosenberg

“I am a human being first, a musician second, a cellist third,” said Pablo Casals, a quote that cellist Yo-Yo Ma thinks sums up the Chicago Symphony Orchestra-sponsored “Citizen Musician” initiative that formally got underway over the weekend at various points across the city.

“We’ve had many talks over the years about the purpose of music,” said Ma Saturday afternoon at a Citizen Musician summit at the Cultural Center, looking over at his friend and pianist Emanuel Ax in the audience. “Manny and I have been playing together for forty years, since we were students at Juilliard. Even as students, we used to talk about the purpose of music and I know that for both of us, we make music because the act of doing so makes us feel better as human beings.” Read the rest of this entry »

Quiet Life

RECOMMENDED

This Americana/folk band paid their dues in their native New London, Connecticut for several years, but recently they picked up and left for the West Coast. Led by vocalist Sean Spellman, their sound has very strong country tendencies with a rock edge. Think of them as an update on Crazy Horse with tight CSN & Y harmonies, which can be heard on tunes like “Downtown”—sort of a jaded look at New York City and “Young Girls,” a tune that goes even heavier on their country side. The band is rounded out by Ryan Spellman, Craig Rupert, Jeremy Bruno, Harris Pittman and—as their official Facebook page states—friends… whatever that might mean. They have a strong following via social networks, which they use to advertise gigs, post videos and invite fans to concerts. They are currently on a major national tour in support of Seattle-based The Moondoggies, another folk group with stronger rock ‘n’ roll tendencies. (Ernest Barteldes)

February 4 at The Hideout, 1354 West Wabansia, (773)227-4433, 10pm. $10.

RECOMMENDED

Known for his one-man shows (in which he uses samplers, loops and computer-generated sounds), Keller Williams has taken his music in various directions over his career. In 2010 he released “Thief,” an album with his side project The Keels, that included covers from the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Amy Winehouse and Cracker (among others). In the meantime, he also went into Dan Zanes territory by releasing the aptly titled “Kids,” which contains a collection of original tunes aimed at children under 10. He’s performing in support of the new disc (he will also be doing an adult-themed show later in the evening), with his touring band. Expect a mix of the music from the disc with some of his own tunes re-styled to fit the much younger audience and also the parents who will be escorting them—passing the fan torch to the next generation. (Ernest Barteldes)

February 5 at Park West, 322 West Armitage, (773)929-5959, 3:30pm & 8pm. $15-$23. 18+.

Photo: Clay Patrick McBride

RECOMMENDED

The fifteen-player ensemble led by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has gotten a lot of attention after their recent tour in Cuba, a country that had been virtually off-limits for American musicians during the Bush era (during his presidency, Cuban musicians who lived in their native country were also denied visas to play in the US). Their visit spawned a “60 Minutes” special on CBS that also heightened awareness about the educational opportunities that Marsalis provides for talented young musicians. On the program for the current tour is a selection of classic tunes from the likes of Kurt Weill and Billy Strayhorn (who wrote “Take the ‘A’ Train” for Duke Ellington), newly arranged material from Chick Corea and the orchestra’s latest release “Vitoria Suite,” a new extended work by Marsalis that explores the nuances of the jazz and blues of North America and also the indigenous music of the Basque region and flamenco from a blues-oriented point of view. (Ernest Barteldes)

February 4 at Symphony Center, 220 South Michigan, (312)294-3000. $52-$195.

Pat Grumley of promoter Cold Grums, issued this press release late yesterday:

It’s my unfortunate duty to inform you all that Afrika Bambaataa has become ill and is unable to make it to Chicago tomorrow, so the event is CANCELLED.  Although it isn’t serious, he is in the hospital and we should send him our positive energy for a fast recovery.

We are working to reschedule this event, but must wait until Afrika recovers to plan a new date.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

Refunds are available for all presale tickets.

Hot on the heels of the Empty Bottle’s new free-with-RSVP concerts comes the announcement, by the Logan Square bar and concert space the Whistler, of a new “50 Free Records” series, beginning February 2. As the name implies, the promotion offers a free record to the first fifty customers every Wednesday night.

Visitors might be surprised to learn that the Whistler also runs its own in-house label, which was actually opened before the tap ever opened the doors at its Milwaukee Avenue locale, debuting with a release by Karl Blau in March 2008, six months or so before the Whistler opened. Blau, a folk musician from Anacortes, Washington, is quite a catch for an upstart record label’s first release considering his longstanding relationship with legendary Olympia, Washington-based K Records. Read the rest of this entry »

By David Wicik

You probably have never heard of San Francisco’s Christopher Dexter Greenspan before, and unless you are either a music blogger or a member of the indie-music twitterati, you likely have not heard of his project, oOoOO (pronounced “Oh”). Nevertheless, in the world of emerging music, Greenspan, and the trend that oOoOO stands for, seems to be a fair bit of noise.

Ever since Pitchfork reified the decentralized phenomenon of “drag” or “witch house” it has been virtually an imperative for music writers to have a take on the phenomenon. The predominant narrative seems to be that witch house is a strange and unnecessarily obscure hybrid that invests too much energy in inaccessible, glyphic naming schemes (e.g. †‡†, ///???\\\ or Ritualzzz and Horse MacGyver respectively), is only popular because it is different and that most people who champion it are only hyping a fad.

The music can most adequately be described as a marriage of the gothic coldness of certain new-wave synth tones and the dissociative reprocessing of Houston hip-hop-originated chopped and screwed music, with something of the wonked-fi texture of old Troma soundtracks thrown in for good measure. Greenspan, who was recently named one of the top five new artists for January by Spin magazine, and who is the author of the lengthy quote which leads off the previously alluded to Pitchfork article (“Ghosts in the Machine”), has more or less unwittingly been cast as a figurehead for drag. Read the rest of this entry »