Stage Buzz: Wicker Park Fest and My Gold Mask
Man Man
If you’re too broke for Lolla, too old for North Coast, and too sincere for Pitchfork, Chicago’s burgeoning Wicker Park Fest might be your ticket. Hailed by Chicago Magazine as Chicago’s best street fair of the summer, this gala retains everything about music festivals that their recent upcropping in America has diluted: a sense of community. Not only is Wicker Park Fest a celebration of the weekend’s thirty-some-odd talented bands – Man Man, Meat Puppets, and Ted Leo And The Pharmacists, to name a few – but a celebration of Wicker Park as a neighborhood, by Chicagoans for Chicagoans. If you need more proof of this, kindly direct your attention to the festival’s $5 admission fee. Oh, excuse us – $5 donation. (Saturday through Sunday@Milwaukee Ave. from North to Paulina.)
Fresh off a weeklong West Coast stint with fellow Chicagoans California Wives, post-rock trio-nee-duo My Gold Mask will return to the Windy City this Saturday in support of Canadian new wavers Metric. Formed in 2009 by singer/drummer Gretta Rochelle and guitarist Jack Armondo, My Gold Mask promise all the dazzling sonic layers of a synth-laced indie band with none of the excess fluff. With one guitar, one voice, a drum set and a half, and a shitload of reverb, My Gold Mask exude swells of sound that would take most shoegazers four Moogs and a studio backtrack to muster. Needless to say, this trio stays busy on stage; in making up for a dearth of band members, Rochelle’s live sing-drum-dancing borders on acrobatic. In pulling the sheer weight of their structural simplicity, My Gold Mask promise an audience something worth watching from opener to finale. (Saturday@House of Blues with Metric.)
–Matt Pollock
Category: Featured, Stage Buzz, Weekly
