With their jingle-jangle melodies, vintage cardigans, and puppylike stage personas, Very Truly Yours seem harmless, maybe even a bit precious. But in their own way, they’re rebels.
Indie pop has waxed and waned over the years, but right now it’s enjoying a significant revival in the States. Labels like Magic Marker, Cloudberry, Bus Stop, and Slumberland are carrying the torch, and New York City’s Popfest—where, back in May, Very Truly Yours was the sole band representing Chicago—is one of a growing number of annual indie-pop events, which includes gatherings in San Francisco; Athens, Georgia; and Northampton, Massachusetts.
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That made nabbing a gig with a Pitchfork-approved national act like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart even more crucial. Reiter understood that, and helped Very Truly Yours onto the bill as a sort of parting gift to the band. In May she moved Colour Me Pop to the greener pastures of London.
By the third day of their 1,000-mile journey they’d been humbled by an equal parts unruly and apathetic crowd at a dive bar in Akron. They were playing right before the bar’s karaoke night was scheduled to start, and people didn’t want to wait—a few of them started chanting “You suck!” through an open window behind Rogers’s head. “I’m really looking forward to a more receptive audience,” he said with a laugh.
But the band soldiered on, playing through the rest of the song. Soon the technical problem was fixed and the set picked up steam. A cover of the 6ths’ “Falling Out of Love (With You)” got the crowd firmly on their side, and the response to their set-closing one-two punch—the title track from their new EP, “Reminders,” which they’d self-released earlier in the month, and the infectious “Pop Song ’91,” from a 2008 split EP with the Understudies—was the kind of enthusiastic ovation the band could only dream of provoking back home.
Wed 7/15, 9 PM, Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, 773-489-3160. F
