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There’re so many bands massaging garage and psych tropes into an end product split into two songs, etched on wax and sold for five bucks a pop that there’s not too much reason to keep paying attention. Sure, Thee Oh Sees are going to continue spewing out records that contain at least one choice cut. But there’s still a distinct lack of genuine experimentation within the music. Psych, in its more garagey incarnations, isn’t meant to do much apart from function within a pop structure, obeying the same rules that music on the radio does. Read the rest of this entry »

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With the Pitchfork Festival looking increasingly like a summertime fleecing as opposed to any sort of grand exposure to new and important music and the digital criticism machine moving its headquarters to Brooklyn, who knows how much longer this shindig will (or should) last. More importantly, how many times a year do Chicago audiences need to see Ty Segall? Apparently, at least once more. Granted, digging up acts like Olivia Tremor Control, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and exposing concert-goers to Olympia’s Milk Music is a worthwhile endeavor, but apart from those folks and A$AP Rocky, standing around hoping not to pass out from a booze-induced coma or heat exhaustion doesn’t seem like a good way to spend a day. Read the rest of this entry »

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There are a few figures still kicking around the American underground who can and should rightly be credited as independent artists who can do just about whatever they want outside the major-label system. Over a career that’s spanned several decades, Jack Yarber has recorded in a slew of different genres, turned over garage’s rotting corpse, cranked up some party music and slowly allowed music most would associate with his Southern upbringing to flood new recordings. Beginning with the Compulsive Gamblers, which didn’t garner too much attention during its initial run in the early nineties, Yarber hooked up with Eric Friedl, a Memphis denizen and took along Greg Cartwright (The Reigning Sound) from his then-current ensemble to form the Oblivians. Read the rest of this entry »

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HoZac’s Blackout Fest returns for another year of unrefined rock ‘n’ roll. And each evening’s headliner represents a different portion of underground weirdness: The weekend’s festivities run the gamut from psychedelia to South Bay hardcore and garage. Davila 666 sound like every other garage band you’ve heard—there are just more dudes in the group than most would find necessary, and the whole thing’s dispensed in Spanish. Read the rest of this entry »

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Being included on “Nuggets” hasn’t assured anyone success–in fact, it seems to have ensured musicians’ obscurity. From the show’s sixties heyday, through the punk era and the nineties Northwest and into the new millennium, only the most persistent folks have made it. Fred Cole, whose band the Lollipop Shoppe has been anthologized alongside the Seeds and various other sixties punkers, worked up Dead Moon along with his wife Toody and moved onto the Pierced Arrows a few years back with a release on Vice Records. As shambolic as Dead Moon could be, the band had moments of pop clarity. “I’m Out Nine,” off the group’s 1990 “Defiance,” never kicks into full-on rock mode, but Fred Cole’s quaking voice makes the song’s three chords feel fuller than they should. Read the rest of this entry »

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For those of you who lost all interest in Ty Segall around the time “Lemons” was released, there’s no tremendous need to rush out and hunt down his collaboration with part-time Strange Boy Tim Presley, who masquerades as White Fence. The pair don’t do any wrong on “Hair,” but Mikal Cronin sitting in on bass only points to the fact that his work with Segall on “Reverse Shark Attack” was a bit more intriguing. Read the rest of this entry »

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Successes in a vast array of the new millennium’s bigger garage groups only emboldened drummer-turned-frontwoman Frankie Rose. Her 2010 solo outing skirted around the periphery of the genre she’s most associated with, as tunes like “Must Be Nice” sound like it should be decaying on the b-side of a late-sixties single in your parent’s basement. Working with the same music on so many different projects, though, must have become tiresome. Rose’s new disc, “Interstellar,” discards her past, leaving sixteenth-note floor tom beats behind. There’s a difference between sounding cool and sounding icy. Read the rest of this entry »

Residing on the West Coast hasn’t disallowed Hanni El Khatib from cultivating a sound that touches as much on Tav Falco’s precedent as it does what all those Bomp! bands were up to during the eighties. El Khatib began issuing work a few years back after ditching the Bay for the sun-soaked pavement of Los Angeles. And while there wasn’t an immediate embrace of his garage machinations, he’s already toured Europe, hit SXSW and issued a long-playing album—not to mention scoring deals with major corporations, placing his work in national commercials. Read the rest of this entry »

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The difference between The Yolks’ pair of singles from 2008 and their long-player from a year later is pretty distinct, with quality of recording and songcraft varying wildly. The Yolks, a local trio drawing from the tepid pool of punk and garage, haven’t hit upon any significant music revelations. But with so little to screw up during the ensemble’s three-chord rants, there’s not much to take issue with. Folks seem smitten with “Mob City Hustle,” a cut from one of those releases. Read the rest of this entry »

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During the mid-to-late nineties, in pretty much any Midwestern town, there was a significant chance of happening upon an as-yet-undiscovered White Stripes—along with groups like the Gibson Bros or The Soledad Brothers—trudging around rock clubs, dishing up garage revival steeped in blues. If not for Jack White picking up on The Greenhornes, and incorporating some of their players into his lifeless Raconteurs project, most folks wouldn’t be privy to the Cincinnati group’s mixed bag of borrowed Stones licks. Witnessing the band during its first phase, before taking a break to tour with White and reconvening for a 2010 disc, The Greenhornes were a substantial draw despite their inability to hook up with a heavy to issue recordings. Read the rest of this entry »