RECOMMENDED

The best part of the weeks surrounding Christmas, considering live music in Chicago anyway, is that there’s only limited touring acts coming through town and more bills than usual are stacked with strictly local acts. This week features several of those Chicago-centric evenings at different venues across the city. Though there are quite a bit of notable shows, my pick for the week’s best has local goofball-punk band Lasers and Fast and Shit as headliners, with support from Old Fake, Call Me Lightning, Driftless Pony Club. Lasers don’t have a record to speak of—they don’t believe in CDs, they boast on their MySpace—but the band’s thrilling live shows, featuring handmade lighting equipment and near psychotic energy, are really all one needs. (Endlessly enjoyable songs about lemon bars and arctic wolves help as well.) This is grimy fun. Rock ‘n’ roll trio Old Fake entertains as well with its distorted haze and undying pop sensibility. This night’s a night for rock music. (Tom Lynch)

December 20 at Metro, 3730 North Clark, (773)549-0203, at 9pm. $9.

RECOMMENDED

The doo-wop-loving garage-rockers known as King Khan & BBQ Show (aka Arish Khan and Mark Sultan) made headlines a few weeks ago—at least on music blogs—when they and their tour manager were arrested in Kentucky on alleged possession of shrooms. Three missed shows and $3,000 later, the band was back on the road in support of the November-released “Invisible Girl.” It’s highly sexual 1950s-and-1960s-inspired rock with raunchy lyrics that in a live setting encourages the audience to seriously drink and mosh along to the freak show unfurling on stage. Khan, always clad in a unique costume (think a Prussian soldier hat, Peter Pan costume sized for a little girl, hot pants, etc.), was named performer of 2008 by Impose Magazine. Find out why. (Kelley Hecker)

December 2 at Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie, (773)252-6179. 8pm. $15.

RECOMMENDED

Combine punk and country? Dude, can’t be done! Those are just two diametrically opposed genres—it’s like mixing oil and water, right? Well, Memphis sextet Lucero set off to prove me wrong back in 2001, and the results were pretty solid—a seamless blend of alt-country’s riffs with punk-rock’s sloppy guitar and scratchy vocals. Nowadays, Lucero has cleaned up and refined its sound, as the band’s newest, “1372 Overton Park,” reflects an act that has evolved over six albums and is now a suspicious duplicate of The Hold Steady (if Craig Finn had a pretty rough cold). But there are worse things to emulate than a band that emulates Bruce Springsteen, and Lucero should still appeal to anyone who gets off on loud, rambunctious horns section and a lot of tattoos. Plus, I think we’re all suckers for songs drenched in organs, trombones and whiskey anyway. (Andy Seifert)

October 24 at Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, (312)929-2022, at 8pm. $16.

RECOMMENDED

Another Canadian buzz band, Vancouver’s Japandroids duo—Brian King and David Prowse—got its start with a couple of hard-to-find EPs and earlier this year released the heavily distorted, punk-garage-inspired “Post-Nothing,” a musical slam dunk that boasts enough melody to fill a life. Normally a band with two members, even powerful duos like The White Stripes or Local H, sounds slightly empty, but Japandroids might actually hurt from having another member—King and Prowse, who share vocal duties, have a rare chemistry that makes the band more a pure partnership than anything else. And “Post-Nothing,” a fabulous title for a record that seems to smirk from the first note, bursts at the seams with high-flying energy and outrageous volume. (The deep, near-metal-like guitar tone makes this material.) Opener “The Boys Are Leaving Town,” nothing short of mesmerizing in its inescapable frenzy, might be the rock song of the year. The band lists Mclusky as an influence—going so far as to cover the great “To Hell with Good Intentions” on a previous EP—and that comes as no surprise. Raw, aggressive beauty. (Tom Lynch)

October 9 at Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, (773)525-2508, at 10:30pm, $12, and October 10 at Schubas at 3pm.

RECOMMENDED

San Diego four-piece The Soft Pack play a powerful sort of revivalist sixties punk that’s as energizing and motivating as it is simplistic, snotty fun. Much has been made of the band’s history thus far, having changed its original name, The Muslims, reasons still unclear, after already gaining some notoriety and modest acclaim. With just a couple EPs and seven-inches out so far, The Soft Pack haven’t made much of a recorded statement, but live shows have been intense and smartly endearing—you can tell these fellas have read their books. It takes intelligence to craft such engaging material with such basic elements, and the cleanly presented guitars and howling hooks are the swarmiest thing this side of the Brit invasion. Watch out for this band, they’re definitely onto something. (Tom Lynch)

September 25 at Chopin Theater, 1543 W. Division, (773)278-1500, at 10pm. $10.

RECOMMENDED

Chicago’s Tight Phantomz deliver all the supplies needed for a killer party: big riffs, intense choruses, song titles like “Power Tramp” and a couple of kegs (hopefully). Rowdy, rambunctious and totally “in my face,” Tight Phantomz is borderline punishing, with piercing distortion and guitar tone as heavy as a punch to the face. Frontman Mike Lust is, by himself, worth the price of admission, a total old-school showman, working the crowd like it’s Madison Square Garden instead of The Hideout, and employing leg kicks and that “quickly throw your body backwards on a particularly heavy riff” rock move that I doubt has been seen since the 1980s. The guy just flat out moves like he has authority from the heavens, and it’s awesome to behold, especially when the soundtrack fits the attitude. It’s not my prerogative to make empirical claims about musical tastes, but if you don’t enjoy Tight Phantomz, then you don’t like rock music. That’s just a fact. (Andy Seifert)

September 25 at Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, (773)227-4433, 10pm. $8.

No, the band’s not actually from Russia.

Chicago four-piece Mr. Russia produces a pulsing, core-shaking punk that recalls the aggressive work of The Stooges, and “Teething,” the band’s debut full-length from earlier this year, practically throbs out of the speakers. Heavy, melodic and fast, Mr. Russia crushes you. Without guitars.

Drums, keys and two basses, the relentless assault is both thrilling and haunting. More the latter on “Training for the Gameshow Host,” the band’s new EP (the release of which is celebrated this week). The foursome eases up on the attack and leaves more open space—the results are strangely chilling Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t heard of The Safes yet, then you must not be related to them. This trio of family members—brothers Frankie O’Malley and Patrick O’Malley with cousin Patrick Mangan—belt out rock ‘n’ roll that could have been overheard coming from the Chess recording studio on Michigan Avenue back in its day. Yet The Safes can also hold their own amongst bands trying to resurge the garage-rock sound. It’s surprising how effortlessly the band crafts songs melding classic-rock riffs with pop melodies and a hint of rhythm and blues.

The Safes brothers grew up in the suburb of Park Ridge as part of a large family. Fortunately they grew around a family that housed a wealth of musical talent. It is a testament that over the years they have been able to keep the band in the family. “It’s the only thing I know,” says Patrick. “We’ve been playing together since we were kids.” The two are the main songwriters for the band, sharing guitar and vocal duties. “We are not ‘yes men’ for each other,” says Patrick. “We are one-hundred-percent honest with each other and both greatly value each others’ opinions and suggestions.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Another band out of New Jersey carrying the flag of “angst”? The garden state’s own Titus Andronicus made a pretty good case for another Springteen-influenced, gritty rock record with last year’s “The Airing of Grievances,” which was less like the self-glorified “Sam’s Town” and more like a pedal-to-the-metal version of Arcade Fire. Sloppy, rowdy, loud—parts of the album sound like too many elements are trying to cram itself into the mix, but the effect is an explosion of energy and sound. The muffled mix combined with its E. Street arrangements and breakdowns immediately position the band in the top tier of indie rock’s drunken blue-collar division. Most heart-pumping is the vocal work of frontman Patrick Stickles—I have no idea what he’s talking about half the time, and a few of the record’s song titles have “existential bullshit” written all over them (doggone it, I thought I was the first person to write a song called “Albert Camus”), but there’s no doubting the guy when he’s screaming from his bowels. (Andy Seifert)

September 7 at Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, (312)929-2022 at 8pm. $10-$12.

RECOMMENDED

Omaha natives Box Elders bring happy, sloppy garage pop on the band’s full-length debut, “Alice and Friends.” The band self-proclaims its music to be “cave pop” and, admittedly, between the record’s lo-fi production and the band’s infatuation with 1960s reverb, it does kind of sounds like the band may have recorded within a damp cave (or they may have simply used “cave pop” because that genre-label hasn’t been taken yet). Combining melodies reminiscent of the old, peppy Kinks and the punk-pop bounce of the Exploding Hearts, the Elders can, at times, come across as a less grating version of Wavves, just without the perplexing loud distortion and inaudible vocals. With many songs clocking in around the minute-and-a-half-to-two-minute mark, The Box Elders can arrive and play a couple of tunes before you’ve even wrapped your head around the inevitable sugar high. It’s the time-honored tactic of effective, bouncy pop-punk, er, cave pop. (Andy Seifert)

August 13 at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, (773)276-3600, at 9pm. $8.