Live Reviews
Two Cow Garage live!
Two Cow Garage The Hideout, Chicago Thursday, May 17, 2007 For the rusted-out, ’85 Camaro of a band they are, Two Cow Garage still packed a brass-knuckled punch at a packed Hideout on Thursday. Micah Schnabel’s perpetually hoarse, steel-wool howl scraped through the layers of guitar while drummer Dustin Harigle pounded the dusty rug of […]
Björk live!
Björk Auditorium Theatre, Chicago Saturday, May 12, 2007 Björk gets a lot of leeway because of her insatiable musical ambition and thorough reinventions, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t dump a lot of scrap in her fans laps. Saturday at the Auditorium the inconsistencies of her latest album, Volta (Elektra), carried into a set that […]
Mastodon live!
Mastodon Riviera, Chicago Saturday, May 12, 2007 Mastodon’s 2006 release, Blood Mountain (Warner Bros.), left a gigantic footprint in the heavy metal landscape, causing some to believe the Atlanta four-piece just might rock hard enough to propel the genre back into the collective consciousness. Even hailed by some as the savior of heavy metal, Mastodon […]
Regina Spektor live!
Regina Spektor Riviera, Chicago Sunday, May 13, 2007 Regina Spektor’s sold-out performance at Riviera on Sunday night won’t go down as historic for either her, personally, or the grand annals of pop music. It did, however, poke a lot of holes into two primary genres. Click here for a Flickr gallery of Spektor from Sunday […]
El-P live!
El-P Abbey Pub, Chicago Tuesday, May 8, 2007 The title of El-P’s new album, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (Definitive Jux), says a lot about this Brooklyn native’s work ethic. Everything about the rapping producer’s dark, intricate hip-hop sounds like it was carefully crafted into the early a.m. hours . . . the same can […]
Amy Winehouse live!
Amy Winehouse Vic Theatre, Chicago Thursday, May 3, 2007 Click here for more pics from the show To hear her voice is to assume Amy Winehouse is an Amazonian reincarnation of Ronnie Spector or Dinah Washington. But there she was, onstage at a sold-out Vic Theatre, a five-foot-nothing frame struggling to support her barely there […]
Ben Gibbard live!
Ben Gibbard Metro, Chicago Friday, May 4, 2007 “Those guys were kind of obscure.” Such was the quip delivered onstage by Ben Gibbard during his Friday night, late show at the Metro, following a piano-only cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies.” While obviously overly ironic, the statement very well could have applied to Gibbard’s full-band/day-job outfit, […]
Heaven And Hell, Megadeth live!
Heaven And Hell, Megadeth Allstate Arena, Rosemont Saturday, May 5, 2007 Metalheads, you may want to turn away from your screen and not read the next paragraph. Words no heavy music fan wants to say or read will appear. This is your last warning.
The Kooks, Illinois live!
The Kooks, Illinois Metro, Chicago Saturday, May 5, 2007 Watching The Kooks gratify a sold-out Metro on Saturday must have been what it was like to guard the French side of the Maginot Line in the early 1930s. Critics are lined up to shoot them down, but it probably won’t be enough to stem the […]
Art Garfunkel live!
Art Garfunkel Genesee Theatre, Waukegan Friday, April 27, 2007 Considering Art Garfunkel reunited with Paul Simon in 2003 and released the CD/DVD concert chronicle Old Friends (Warner Bros.) a year later, the half decade between solo albums and tours doesn’t seem nearly so long. But that’s indeed been the gap between a Park West performance […]
Kaiser Chiefs Live!
Kaiser Chiefs Vic Theatre, Chicago Friday, April 20, 2007 When Lollapalooza was baptized as a yearly Chicago event two summers back, some of the best surprises were the lesser known bands who handed in stellar sets. Case in point: Kaiser Chiefs from Leeds, England.
The Decemberists, My Brightest Diamond Live!
The Decemberists, My Brightest Diamond Riviera, Chicago Wednesday, April 18, 2007 Archaic. Cumbersome. These are words often applied to the bombastic, highly literate “rock” purveyed by The Decemberists. By arriving onstage to a Russian maritime anthem (the band’s name is an intentional misspelling of a 19th-century uprising against the czar) and lulling the audience through […]
Chris Cornell live!
Chris Cornell Metro, Chicago Wednesday, April 11, 2007 During the last decade or so, the stars of the alternative nation have engaged in what could be described as a massive game of musical chairs. And while the results — the likes of Audioslave, Zwan, and Velvet Revolver, to name a few — have arguably produced […]
Peeping Tom live!
Peeping Tom Park West, Chicago Sunday, April 15, 2007 Rap and rock? What is this 2000? No, no, wait. What is this . . . 1990? After all, that was the year Faith No More, fronted by Mike Patton, introduced themselves to mainstream music with a song called “Epic,”which combined rap vocals and heavy metal […]
Placebo live
Placebo House Of Blues, Chicago Friday, April 13, 2007 Placebo might not be who you think they are. Or, rather, they might not be who you thought they were.
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