Gliss & Johnossi previews

Gliss/Johnossi
Empty Bottle/Logan Square Auditorium
Friday, October 19, 2007

One might suggest , looking at this week’s docket in Chicago, going to New York for the annual CMJ New Music Marathon isn’t worth it. Especially when two of the hottest new bands are in the Windy City on the same night.

Granted, when dealing with buzz bands you need to consider the source, and in this case both Gliss and Johnossi are represented by New York-based publicists. Gliss will earn the glaring leer of skeptics when not only is it revealed they call Los Angeles home, but are at the forefront of an enlivened L.A. scene. Throw in hints they recall the early work of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or the disco-punk infusion of ’04, and you have a built-in backlash.

Gliss, however, come with that requisite element of sleaze and carry a case of New York arrogance for backup. Everything about their Cordless debut, Love The Virgins, reeks of predictability but sensing this they overplay their hand to success. “Blue Sky” drips reverb and seems to drag its steps in a touchdown taunt from 10 yards ahead, though “Off To Bed” slithers through a genuine pop verse before uncoiling and choking the life out of its choruses.

Johnossi arrive with less baggage. Though the words “Swedish duo” have probably been echoed several hundred times in the last five years there’s a freshness to their self-titled debut that immediately wipes all assumptions off the board. At their basest, “reverberations of Mark Arm crooning over altered Spoon cuts” would seem to capture the gist, but things are even more basic than that. The self-titled debut deceptively begins with John Englebert shouting over an acoustic guitar, but soon Ossi Bonde joins him, and the rest of the album is a battle of the two trying to displace the others’ energy.

Gliss open for The Raveonettes. Johnossi open for The Shout Out Louds.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly