RADIUSEtc . . .(Gritty Goat)
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Raised in Gary, Indiana, but currently working out of LA, Freddie Gibbs got a huge boost when the New Yorker‘s Sasha Frere-Jones called him “the one rapper I would put money on right now” in an October 26 essay on the state of hip-hop. Yesterday he was just another MC dropped from a major label without a release—he’d recorded plenty of material but lost his deal after the guy who signed him left the company—and now he’s being touted as the future of rap music. The people at Interscope should be kicking themselves—Gibbs obviously has the potential to become much more than just a critics’ darling, and the mix tapes that have catapulted him into the spotlight include lots of tracks he made while he was still with the label. His taste in backing beats runs toward the dark paranoid style that came out of Houston and now dominates a good chunk of mainstream rap, and his vocals add a bit of heavy-but-nimble Houston-style flow to the double-time delivery that Twista and Crucial Conflict have made synonymous with Chicago. Anyone laboring under the mistaken impression that Gibbs is all hype should check out the video shot by the Fader where he murders “Iodine Poison” (a cut from his latest mix tape, Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik) with an iPod playing the backing track through a hotel clock radio.
LOCRIANRain of Ashes(Basses Frequences)
Rich Crook played with a bunch of great Memphis garage-rock bands—the Reatards, the Lost Sounds, Viva L’American Death Ray Music—before stepping away from music in 2006 to take a job on an oil rig. He came back later that year with the idea for a power-pop group called Lover!, which played its first show in May 2007 and has so far released two albums and a mess of singles on labels like HoZac and Douchemaster. Earlier this year Crook and his girlfriend moved to Chicago, and in the summer he took drummer-about-town Matt Williams down to Mississippi to record at the Fat Possum studio. (Since then the band has finally settled on a live lineup: Crook, Williams, Aaron Orlowski from the Baseball Furies on bass, and Johnny “Valiant” Grissom from the Black and Whites on guitar.) Though the accounts of the session I’ve heard make much of the oppressive deep-south heat, it doesn’t seem to have affected the bright, airy power pop on No Dreams Please. Crook’s an ambitious songwriter, avoiding simple verse-chorus-verse structures and stretching songs well past the four-minute mark. He’s best when he slows things down: “Three Fools” is mellow and countrified, with tastefully applied pedal steel and piano, and the six-minute closing epic, “Downstairs to Hell,” adds organ and a flute that can’t help but remind you of “Stairway to Heaven.”
Sat 11/14, 9 PM, Darkroom, 2210 W. Chicago, 773-276-1411, $10, 21+.
Locrian, Chord, Harpoon, Ratatosk
Fri 11/13, 8 PM, Enemy, 1550 N. Milwaukee, third floor, 312-493-3657, donation requested.
Lover!, Tyler Jon Tyler, Sang des Loups, Bass Drum of Death, Sleepovers
Sat 11/21, 7 PM, Bloodline, bloodlinehub.blogspot.com.
