Photo: Robert Loerzel
Speedy Ortiz kicked off Sunday’s Blue Stage schedule with a burst of scrappy garage rock chords. As Sadie Dupuis sang the verses in an almost understated manner, the songs occasionally loped into off-kilter rhythms, bringing to mind the early music of Liz Phair. The three guys in this band kept the music charging forward, but the focus was all on Dupuis, whose voice rose to pleading peaks in the refrains of her songs. Whenever the time came for an instrumental break, she seemed to revel in stepping back from the mic and whipping her hand across her guitar strings. (Robert Loerzel)
Related Stories
Defiantly Undefined: A New Music Festival Flouts Categorization For Resonant Bodies, a fest of experimental vocal music that has done well in New York and now arrives in Chicago, singer and producer Lucy Dhegrae has chosen a handful of wildly creative vocalists and given them complete freedom. Creativity is baked into the model… which doesn't happen as often as you might think.- Jerusalem on Lake Michigan: Chicago’s Birthright Claim To Gospel Music Festival With the occasional exception of crossover artists like Sir the Baptist at Lollapalooza—gospel isn't going to make a significant showing at any festival that’s not exclusively gospel-dedicated. Fortunately for Chicago, the gold standard in that regard occurs annually on our lakefront.
- Long Live Post-Rock, Dead Or Alive RECOMMENDED The Who's Roger Daltrey first sang “Rock is dead / long live rock” way back in 1972. So it shouldn't be all that surprising that forty-five years later there's a musical genre known as post-rock, even if the term is so vague as to have no real meaning. Nonetheless, post-rock is the favored label applied to Tortoise. From Tortoise's…
- The Incredible Expanding Band: A Preview of The Claudettes at 210 Live The Claudettes’ sound is hard to pin down; there’s a strong foundation of barrelhouse and stride piano jazz, but there’s plenty of boogie-woogie in there as well. And even on its first album, the band delivered its original music with a punk attitude.
- Still Breathtaking: A Preview of Sting at Ravinia Festival Sting's solo catalog boasts more than a dozen studio albums. He may not rack up the hit singles like he once did, but he remains a compelling writer, musician and performer.
[…] My photos of Speedy Ortiz’s performance on Sunday, July 20, in Union Park during the third day of the Pitchfork Music Festival. (My review of the set is on Newcity’s website.) […]