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In 2012 Winnipeg trio KEN Mode won the Juno Award for Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year for their fourth record, Venerable, which goes to show that the Junos have a much better handle on heavy music than the Grammys ever have or will (come to think of it, the Pitchfork festival hasn’t done such a great job either). The band’s follow-up, Entrench (Season of Mist), is even better—as my Reader colleague Kevin Warwick wrote in April, “For the first time, their noise-driven hardcore is almost wistful and melodic in spots.” It’s also tweaked by puckish humor, driven by utterly complete commitment, and informed by a real genius for upending math-rock cliches—the long, almost rambly “Romeo Must Never Know” springs a delightful booby trap at every turn. Also Fri 7/19 at Township, 21+, and tonight at Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+. —Monica Kendrick Blue stage
White Lung is on the Saturday itinerary of Reader music listings coordinator Luca Cimarusti.
The backstory to the latest Phosphorescent album, Muchacho (Dead Oceans), borders on cliche: Front man and sole constant member Matthew Houck was suffering through a breakup in early 2012, and he turned to songwriting to soothe himself. In the midst of this turbulent time, he spontaneously bought a plane ticket to Mexico and spent a week in a coastal hut in Tulum finishing the new album’s songs. Luckily, Houck’s cracked southern drawl and the cosmic twang in his arrangements give his music a lyrical beauty and homegrown soul that prevent it from sounding melodramatic or self-pitying. The best songs are ambiguous: “A New Anhedonia,” for instance, combines spiritual questing and slow, stately rhythms, and the disorienting power of lust spreads through the Neil Young-ish “The Quotidian Beasts.” Always restless, Houck seems to reinvent himself between every album, but his heartbroken wail never changes. —Peter Margasak Green stage
Parquet Courts are on the Saturday itineraries of Reader associate editor Kevin Warwick and music listings coordinator Luca Cimarusti.
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