By Dave Cantor

Varying hues of psychedelia have swirled around dingy clubs since the sixties, claiming new adherents every few years with insular scenes like the Paisley Underground or British strains being lauded in print. The new millennium saw a handful of players lumped into a vaguely acoustic strain of the music with bands like the Vanishing Voice eventually turning to electrified concerns. Not easily fitted into any singular conception of tripped-out music, Greg Ashley’s various recording and touring endeavors somehow slipped past most listeners who gravitated towards Devendra Banhart-type caterwauling or increasingly dance-centric Animal Collective clones. Ashley, with dusty roots reaching back to a Texas upbringing after relocating to Oakland, toured the Gris Gris coast to coast for a few years and issued a pair of albums with the ensemble while working up titles under his own name. There’s a through-line at work in those releases comprised of rambling country verses and half-hollered Pink Floyd gestures. Even with such an undeniably broad and well-contrived backlog of songs, Ashley concluded his run helming the band with a recorded performance, released as “Live at the Creamery.” That was three years back, but now he and Gris Gris bassist Oscar Michel head out in an ensemble fronted by both Ashley and Canadian ex-pat King Khan, who did time in a duo with a guy named BBQ before dispatching scuzz-based funk and soul with the Shrines. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ignoring the Detroit Cobras building its legacy on the backs of other’s songwriting is impossible, but the band’s delivery helps mitigate the transgression. At least there haven’t been any licensing squabbles to note. Hugely successful acts working in well-selected covers have been indispensable in shaping rock ‘n’ roll. How good is the Stones’ “12×5” and what would it be without Chuck Berry’s work opening the entire affair? More telling, though, might be Creedence Clearwater Revival beginning its entire recording career with a then-unknown track by some weirdo in a cape, hollering about being possessed by some bad juju. “I Put a Spell On You,” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ classic, turned a passable rock act from the sixties into psychedelic swamp evacuees over a four-minute runtime. Tossing in a tune penned by Steve Cropper didn’t hurt CCR’s first album, either. And the eventual reworking of the Temptation’s “Grapevine” might outdo the original. Read the rest of this entry »

By Dave Cantor

Sonically speaking, Puffy Areolas aren’t at all removed from the recordings which comprise the Toledo/Cleveland ensemble’s first long-playing album, Siltbreeze’s 2010 “In the Army 1981.” It’s odd given Damon Sturdivant, the band’s guitarist and songwriter, is its only remaining player. But that only speaks to the guy’s singular vision for dirtbag psych stuffs. Since he shuttles back and forth between Midwestern safehouses, bassist Drew Hart becomes the group’s mouthpiece ahead of the quartet’s appearance at HoZac’s Blackout Fest this coming Saturday.

“I don’t care if I ever make a dollar playing music,” Hart begins over the phone as the sound of his 5-year-old springs up occasionally in the background. There’s a heated chess match in progress as he answers questions. “I don’t need the money, I’m self-sufficient. People just need to hear my bass since there’s no one else playing music that sounds like this.” A pause follows, one which might be misconstrued as pregnant with pomposity. “Birds of Maya are close—all those one-note jams.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hearing anything recorded by Nagasaki-based Guitar Wolf seems as if it might have been set to tape in the company of Tav Falco or the Cramps. Each of the Japanese band’s endless slew of records could be misunderstood as a thirty- or forty-year-old collection of lost one-off releases. Trucking purely in antiquated tropes, the ensemble isn’t concerned with how garage and rockabilly have been turned into plastic arts, becoming something closely associated with campy kitsch and cheeseball shirts with flames on ‘em.

Beginning its career with a few recordings that didn’t initially make it to the States, Guitar Wolf has been on what amounts to a fifteen-year world tour. Leaving the road every once in a while, the trio sets up shop and cranks out another handful of tunes most listeners would have a hard time discerning the epoch from which it sprung. With such a concise understanding of its work, losing a founding member, bassist Hideaki Sekiguchi, six years back hasn’t slowed the band. Of course, any trio remaining fenced in by conceptions of rock music set up by Hasil Adkins and his ilk, but with a healthful bit of Stones’ swagger added in, don’t have much need to sit around contemplating the direction of their work.

Granted, the door fee for the show this Thursday could just as well get you a copy of any “Back to Grave” compilation featuring ridiculously obscure garage acts. But in lieu of just listening to half-talented players emulate their heroes, you can watch leather-clad foreigners do roughly the same thing. You might even be able to get away with pretending everything’s a Link Wray cover. (Dave Cantor)

May 19 at the Bottom Lounge, 1375 West Lake, (312)666-6775, 11:30pm. $15.

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2011 marks twenty years worth of recording from Medway, UK-affiliated singer and band-leader Holly Golightly. Surely, the name’s ripped from literature (or film, if you’d like), but Golightly’s creative lineage intertwines with a bizarrely prolific bunch of poets, would-be artists and theoreticians. For 1991’s “Girlsville,” Golightly, who was then fronting Thee Headcoatees, ostensibly appropriated a Billy Childish approach to antiquated R&B, going so far as augmenting the guy’s band name and recording his compositions. Childish’s career, pushing back to punk’s initial wave, doesn’t just encompass a range of garage interpretations. He’s released more volumes of poetry than can be easily wrangled in a single collection, penned Stuckist polemics against sharks floating in formaldehyde and worked with Golightly in a number of settings.

About the same time Golightly ditched Thee Headcoatees, she went and recorded “In Blood,” an album pairing her with Childish. Resulting in the expected combination of garage, blues and simplicity, the duo’s slinky songs should have placed them in a league with folks like the White Stripes, who were poised for international success back then. Read the rest of this entry »

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With all the garage offerings from local imprints like HoZac and its ilk, Chicagoans are apt to forget there are branches of rock music unrelated to Sky Saxon kicking around town—and Europe. Before heading off to Italy and all points EU, Disappears are set to dispense scores of minimally minded jams drawing as much from Neu! as spooky horror movies with eerie voices whispering foreboding phrases through layers of distant echo. Sure there’s a pervasive Spacemen 3 thing at work here, but doused with all that gray water Chicago chuckholes offer up.

Releasing two long players in just as many years, Disappears haven’t become the media darlings one might have expected while trucking in modernized psych workouts. Perhaps restricted by clocking songs at pop duration over its last full length, “Guider,” the band seems as comfortable during extended explorations of simplicity. Fifteen-minute songs aren’t foreign territory to these guys—that’s actually when they’re at their best. “Revisiting,” the only long-form composition on their latest album approximates every gesture strung-out Brits rushed towards during the eighties. Pulsing a single tone until it means almost nothing, Disappears is capable of turning that austerity inside-out through the use of effects and savvy most bands overlook or misuse.

Opening for Disappears is a wholly unrelated group, the Eternals, sounding like an amalgam of your favorite, well-read MC and a Dischord Records’ band during its post-hardcore days. There’s not too much congruence here, but that’s part of what makes the show such a remarkable occurrence, one unique to Chicago. So, get there early for openers Wumme as the duo dispenses some urban mystic-jams on drums and keys prior to what should be considered dual headliners. (Dave Cantor)

May 6 at the Empty Bottle, 1035 North Western, (773)276-3600. 10pm. $10-$12.

Photo: Allison Bohl

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This young band out of Lafayette, Louisiana—one of this year’s buzz bands at SXSW—is clearly inspired by late-sixties pop. Their single “People Want To Be Happy” seems to draw direct inspiration from The Beatles’ later numbers like “Honey Pie” and “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” while “Miniature Day Parade” brings back memories of psychedelic-era Beach Boys.

Brass Bed—Jonny Campos (guitar), Christiaan Mader (vocals and guitar), Andrew Toups (keyboards) and Peter Dehart (bass)—has its beginnings with experimentalism in the studio. They reportedly once used an electric toothbrush to create the sound of a drum, while guitarist Campos frequently uses a cello bow on his pedal steel guitar to create a whole new array of sounds in the same manner Jimmy Page did in the seventies with his Gibson Les Paul. The band hits Chicago this week on tour in support of its new release “Melt White.” (Ernest Barteldes)

April 4 at Pancho’s Cafeteria, 2200 North California, (773)772-7811, 8pm.

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If you’re looking for a way to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day that doesn’t include ceili dancing and drinking green beer until you see leprechauns, then you might want to check out the Sic Alps on March 17. Digging in the basement of sixties garage and psychedelic, the San Francisco trio of Mike Donovan, Matt Hartman and Noel Von Harmonson make a messy garage rock that plays off the lo-fi wave, putting them in league with bands like Tyvek, Times New Viking and even, on the extreme end of the spectrum, Psychedelic Horseshit. Their early contender for 2011 glory, January’s “Napa Asylum,” starts off sounding like a cleaner recalibration for the Alps, but proves to be every bit the buzzy deconstructed bar-rock fans of the Sic Alps have come to love. (David Wicik)

March 17 at Empty Bottle, 1035 North Western, (773)276-3600, 9:30pm. $8.

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Fresh off of their stint on Carnival Cruise’s Bruise Cruise festival, the world’s first floating indie music festival, the Jacuzzi Boys are once again spreading their swampy garage rock on the mainland. Hailing from Miami, a town better known for its cosmetic sex appeal and overly solicitous cocaine vendors than for its live music scene, the Jacuzzi Boys give the city reason to hope. Breaking down the music of their rock progenitors with ease, the Jacuzzi Boys’ lead vocalist Gabriel Alcala channels Lou Reed and Mick Jagger being, in turns, leonine and faded. Similarly, what the band self-identifies as “tropical rock ‘n’ roll,” or in their own local nomenclature, “little-Haiti rock ‘n’ roll,” is a slow-paced chug meeting halfway between blues and psychedelic. The track, “Komi Caricoles,” on Jacuzzi Boys’ EP “No Seasons,” features head-rush filter effects, dirge-like vocals, and a woozy pace that oozes a kind of voodoo weirdness unknown to West Coast garage. Whatever they’re doing, the Jacuzzi Boys managed to catch Miami emigré Iggy Pop’s attention, who was spotted cheering in the front row at one of their shows. If it’s good enough for Iggy… (David Wicik)

March 6 at The Hideout, 1354 West Wabansia, (773)227-4433, 9pm. $9.

It’s not surprising that the thirteen new songs on The Beets’ “Stay Home” don’t come off as significantly different from anything the Beets released a few years back on “Spit On The Face Of People Who Don’t Want To Be Cool.” That’s not the point of playing in a band like this. Instead, guitarist and singer Juan Wauters, along with bassist Jose Garcia, want to tackle tough issues like girls, hanging out and puking by using familiar musical constructions. Working with Captured Tracks for both of its full-lengths has granted the Beets a sympathetic outlet for its purposefully simple, acoustic-guitar-led sing-alongs.

“We released stuff with Captured Tracks, because Mike (Sniper, label honcho as well as the brains behind Blank Dog) wanted to put out the record we were selling on CD-Rs,” says Garcia via email. “Since then, he puts out generally anything we want. And we’re allowed to do any artwork we want for the record. That’s really important to us.” Read the rest of this entry »