Live Review: Brokeback at Epiphany for the Arts Center • Chicago

Brassneck | July 27, 2025

Brokeback

Epiphany Center for the Arts, Chicago, IL

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Review and photos by Jeff Elbel

Chicago-based instrumental quartet Brokeback appeared in the upper Sanctuary hall at Epiphany Center on Friday to perform new material, while also celebrating the release of Long Days, Pleasant Nights by their friends in Dark Canyon. When completed, the new Brokeback album will be the band’s first since 2017’s Illinois River Valley Blues.

Despite the long gap between releases, Doug McCombs and his ace bandmates have each been actively making music around and away from town. On Friday, McCombs and Tweedy guitarist Jim Elkington (and Janet Beveridge Bean, in attendance on Saturday) performed an Eleventh Dream Day set in Horner Park. McCombs has forthcoming activity with Tortoise, including a concert with the Chicago Philharmonic at the Auditorium Theatre on November 11. Elkington will soon travel to the UK to perform new material with Steve Gunn.

True to form, Brokeback’s new material was a meditative and intoxicating blend of ambient atmosphere and roots-oriented tones meeting at the intersection of Daniel Lanois’ spacious soundscapes and the arid atmosphere of Ennio Morricone’s Western film soundtracks. Elkington’s Fender Telecaster sparred and intertwined with McCombs’ deep twang and languid melodies while drummer Areif Sless-Kitain played oceanic cymbal swells and nimbly improvised tom-tom patterns. Bassist Pete Croke alternated between undulating countermelody and bedrock growl.

“Great Danger” was built atop a foundation of two-chord drone, morphing from octave-split tandem melody into a sinewy Elkington lead that sounded like backward guitar. Soon, Elkins’ guitar interweaved with McCombs’ lyrical lines during a finishing crescendo.

Sharp chords, rising harmony, and glistening arpeggios rang through “Colder Milder” while Sless-Kitain played with a freewheeling jazzers’ touch. Croke’s single-note bass line tethered “Metal Moth” to the earth while the guitars rose from gentle harmony and climbed skyward toward caterwauling fury. “Invasion” proceeded with an urgent, locomotive cadence.

Closing song “Dead Hands” featured intertwining lines from all three stringed instruments that seemed to run separate courses and then meld into unity alongside colorful rhythmic patterns.

McCombs spoke briefly to thank friends and supporters for coming and to announce that all of the songs from the set would be included on the next Brokeback album. The release date has not yet been determined, but will presumably be announced in due time via the local institution Thrill Jockey Records.

Brokeback performs on the Grand Central Stage at the Illinois State Fair on Saturday, August 16. The band appears in Chicago at the Color Club on September 18.

Michael Novak of Dark Canyon took the stage alongside his bandmates on bass and drums. Novak promised “a bunch of spaghetti Western–inspired music” as the trio launched into the familiar melody of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” “Ghostwood” rode an understated but taut riff reminiscent of The Zombies’ “Time of the Season.” The lean trio’s evocative palette included watery guitar lines, twang that dripped like molasses, tape delay saturation that crushed tones into loose gravel, plucked bass, brushed snare shuffles, and rhythms performed simultaneously on drum set and congas. “Bone Collector” crafted a haunted and starlit mood in search of a lost Clint Eastwood movie.