Ran into Tim Pourbaix very briefly last night. When we ducked out for a quick smoke in front of the Sputnik, he informed me that his new record is nearly finished as is the Park-Pourbaix project he’s been working on with Ellison Park. No word on when the latter will…
Got there late and didn’t stay for the whole thing — mostly because I’d already had a full night taking in bits of Reverend Deadeye’s set at 3 Kings and SoundRabbit at the hi-dive, not to mention a few too many cocktails — but I was pleasantly surprised to catch…
Plenty of amazing seven-inch singles will be available at Twist & Shout for Record Store Day other than the ones we’ve featured thus far in April — stuff by Sublime, Taking Back Sunday, Tom Waits, Magnolia Electric Company, the Pretenders, the Jesus Lizard (a pack of nine singles, believe it…
All right, so I’ve been meaning to make mention of this, but somehow I keep forgetting: Last weekend, I finally saw Seven Pounds, the Fresh Prince’s latest blockbuster, and I noticed something that I’m wondering if anybody else noticed: Without giving the plot line away, there’s this scene in which…
Today I woke up thinking, “Thursday already, and no Flier of the Week to light the way?” Then I saw this delightful work and knew the gods of graphic design had seen my plight and taken pity on me. The muted color palette and sea-creature graphic seem especially suited to…
Histoire de Melody Nelson, a 1971 tour de force by eccentric French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, is among the top reissues of this still young year — and thanks for unearthing it goes to Light in the Attic, an imprint that specializes in bringing worthy oddities back onto the market. (Its…
Iuengliss. The name is damn near impossible to pronounce. Tom Metz, the up-and-coming electronic wunderkind who performs under the moniker, knows his handle causes fits. So there are no hard feelings if you butcher it. “It doesn’t matter how you pronounce it,” he says. “I pronounce it I-win-gliss. I put…
I’ve been into Western shirts for a few years and wear one pretty much every day of the week — usually solid black or some sort of plaid, untucked, with snaps. But that’s as close as I come to being a cowboy. I don’t have cowboy boots or a hat…
Evan and Paige O’Meara have been at the punk-rock thing with the Eight Bucks Experiment since the mid-’90s. To say this project has changed its sound over the years is a bit of an understatement. In the late ’90s, Eight Bucks (due at the Gothic Theatre on Saturday, April 18,…
You can’t talk about house music without bringing up Chicago, and you’d be remiss to discuss Chicago house without dropping Felix da Housecat’s name. A central figure in second-wave Chicago house, Felix was the legendary DJ Pierre’s protegé, releasing his first single way back in 1987, long before he became…
McGill’s “autobiography” claims that he was born in 1877 and lived in seclusion in Illinois until his death in 2056 — a joke that, intentionally or not, gets to the heart of his appeal. The Chicago-based performer, who follows Schofield and John Common to the Walnut Room stage, has been…
The dudes in the Black Lips get naked on stage sometimes. But a few months ago, some folks in India weren’t too stoked when guitarist Cole Alexander stripped and jumped into the crowd. Let’s just say a little chaos ensued and the rest of band’s tour got canceled. And last…
As a core member of the Anticon collective, Sole is arguably one of the most influential hip-hop artists alive today. Anticon artists aren’t generally on Top 40 radio. Instead, the imprint has been involved in developing, promoting and otherwise shaping — unwittingly, perhaps — the sound of cutting-edge hip-hop around…
The Kills haven’t let artistic progression compromise their minimalism. For nearly ten years, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince have offered a defiant, stripped-down brand of indie rock, music that’s reveled in the power of stark and simplistic ingredients. While 2008’s Midnight Boom showed a maturation of sound and sentiment from…
The April 2007 review of Standing Still, a previous release by these ska-punkers, declared, “There’s nothing new in the band’s sound, but the players channel old styles so well that the album is kinda fun despite itself.” And while the group’s membership has changed since then, its basic characteristics haven’t…
From the guy who did Kiss covers at a Devo convention a few years ago comes this latest offering of absurdist humor blended with bare-bones synth-pop. Putatively filmed live and broadcast via satellite to other parts of the country from the Quad Cities, this “digital” VHS release looks and feels…
For two decades, Neil Haverstick has explored microtonal guitar, using a nineteen-tone system of tuning rather than the standard twelve-tone one. Having performed previously with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, for this record the guitarist joined forces with the Colorado Chamber Orchestra to create a enthralling four-song suite titled “Spider.” Starting…
Listening to the mad Gypsy sounds of Taarka’s Seed Gathering for a Winter Garden is like a temporary escape from the mundane modern world into an exotic caravan traveling a fantastic world. The instrumentals range from the frenetic bluegrass stylings of the opening track, “Artic Meltdown,” to the insistent, intricate…
Over the past few years, the members of Immortal Dominion have undoubtedly experienced a gamut of emotions, from paralyzing grief spurred by a harrowing personal tragedy — the murder/suicide of former bassist Stephen Sherwood and his wife, Sara Elizabeth (guitarist/vocalist Brian Villers’s sister-in-law, whose children Villers and his wife are…
If you heard Forth Yeer Freshman’s 2001 debut, Drunkinomicon, and then listened to Regulators, the band’s new album, and thought you were hearing two completely different bands, you’d be right. As it happens, this is a completely different band. Literally. The only member remaining from the original lineup is frontman…
The resumé of Thomas Fehlmann is truly awesome. It stretches all the way back to the late ’70s, when he began experimenting with synthesizers in the company of people such as Robert Fripp and fellow Palais Schaumburg member Holger Hiller. Later, Fehlmann worked with seminal techno artists Eddie “Flashin” Fowlkes,…
Take this for what’s it’s worth; we’re still considering this hearsay (given the name of this section of the blog, that actually seems kind of fitting) at this point until we’ve had the chance to speak with the band to get confirmation: Several independent (and reliable) sources with ties to…
