thursday8
Thursday8
Zemog el Gallo BuenoFay Victor
Friday9
Fred Hersch TrioBaaba MaalMi Ami The Soft PackThe Tomasz Stanko QuintetFay Victor
Saturday10
Fred Hersch TrioMajor LazerMission of Burma
Monday12
Florence & the Machine
Tuesday13
Gebhard Ullmann Clarinet Trio
Wednesday14
Pissed JeansGebhard Ullmann Clarinet Trio
FAY VICTOR The Freesong Suite (Greene Ave Music), the latest album by New York vocalist Fay Victor, genuinely surprised me: as soon as I thought I had a handle on its style, the next track would do something else. Victor’s rich, creamy voice reminds me of heavy hitters like Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, and Jeanne Lee, and like them she’s restlessly creative, carving out her own unpredictable path. Early in The Freesong Suite she sets a strikingly intimate tone, using wordless, restrained improvisation that’s only very loosely framed by nubby bass lines and meandering guitar notes. But by the third track, “Bob and Weave,” her group has fallen into a bluesy groove and she’s singing a clear narrative. On subsequent cuts she taps into rock, free jazz, and other styles, but no matter what’s happening around her she’s always a highly communicative singer. Her original material has an ingrained storytelling quality that comes through even when the music is relatively abstract—”Joe’s Car” is a you-can’t-go-home-again song, and “Gone Fishing” is quite literally about a fishing trip. Victor is traveling with her regular guitarist, the resourceful Swede Anders Nilsson; tonight they’ll play in a trio with local drummer Tim Daisy. See also Friday. 10 PM, Elastic, 2830 N. Milwaukee, second floor, 773-772-3616, $8 suggested donation. —Peter Margasak
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BAABA MAAL “The whole world is coming to Africa to look for its music,” Senegalese singer Baaba Maal told Songlines magazine last year. “Why shouldn’t we go to them? Would it be possible for us to say, we are just musicians, not ‘African musicians’?” Maal has spent much of his career refashioning the traditions of his homeland to fit a wide-open aesthetic, an implicit rebuke to the notion that African music somehow loses its authenticity if it borrows from other cultures. Most of the time the results have been stellar—the notable exception is 1998’s Nomad Soul, with its “we are the world” bromides—and with last year’s Television (Palm Pictures) he made his most radical attempt yet. Working with pomo New York band Brazilian Girls, he’s created a gorgeous, subdued pop record; though it includes elements from West Africa, from trotting tam-tam drums to sparkling kora, it’s a genuinely global piece of music that could fit in anywhere. The focus is squarely on Maal’s powerhouse voice, which slides through the percolating, richly textured arrangements with the same soulful gravitas he brought to his hard-core mbalax recordings decades ago. Sabina Sciubba’s smoky, gentle singing—enfolded by atmospheric guitar lines, swirling electronics, and floor-shaking bass—serves as a foil to Maal’s exhortations, which sound even more striking by contrast. Though I’d love to see him play songs from Television with his Yankee collaborators, for this gig he’ll appear with his long-running Senegalese band, Daande Lenol, whose instrumentation for this gig consists of electric guitar, bass, keyboards, ngoni, drums, and percussion. Maal reliably delivers knockout performances with this group, and I’m curious how they’ll remake the new material. 8 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000, sold out. —Peter Margasak
MISSION OF BURMA Between 1979 and 1983 Mission of Burma remade rock by bringing much-needed ambition and genuine destructiveness to punk’s back-to-basics aesthetic and aggressive attitude—they made some great songs even better by scrambling them with churning tape loops and chaotic instrumental digressions. Since re-forming in 2002 they’ve built on that spirit of renewal-through-obliteration: on OnOffOn and The Obliterati they tampered with their own formulas, adding electronic keyboards, string sections, and the occasional disco beat. Their third and latest post-reunion album, The Sound the Speed the Light (Matador), is the first where Burma seem content simply to be Burma. Roger Miller’s maelstrom guitar, Clint Conley’s sprinting bass, and Peter Prescott’s battering-ram drums (plus Bob Weston’s captured-on-tape recycling of all of the above) are reassuringly familiar. And new songs like “Forget Yourself” tap into the same sentiment expressed in their early anthem “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”—everything’s falling apart, but I’m still standing. Mission of Burma may not be evolving at the same rate now that they were five years ago, but they still sound like one of the best bands in rock—themselves. Prichard opens. 9 PM, Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, 773-489-3160 or 877-435-9849, $20. —Bill Meyer
