thursday20
Thursday20
Drug Rug
Friday21
ClipseTRS-80
Saturday22
The Horses’s HaMarmosetCale ParksSollaquists of SoundWanton Looks
Sunday23
Jon Snodgrass
Tuesday25
Zuill Bailey and Simone Dinnerstein
Wednesday26
Elvis Costello & the SugarcanesDe La Soul
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
TRS-80 Listening to TRS-80 is like getting a back rub in the path of a tornado. Though the repetitive electronic beats and cleverly varying melodic patterns massage your brain, pretty much everything else about the music is chilling and sinister: the glossy and somewhat sterile surfaces are disrupted by sprays of dissonant chords, horror-movie interludes, erratic punches of bass, sampled dialogue that invariably touches on the slavish tedium of existence, and beeping noises that vaguely mimic medical monitors or sonar pings. The end product is often a ghastly sort of beauty. Though founding member Jay Rajeck, who moved to LA in 2006, has had to perservere through a couple recent lineup overhauls—filmmaker and fellow Chicago expat Eric Fensler is his most consistent collaborator these days—he’s released the live EP Connect Sets (One Cell) and a studio disc called The New You (Vinyl International) since 2008. Cass McCombs and Vee Dee open. TRS-80 also plays a free all-ages show at 12:15 PM today in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium of the Harold Washington Library. 9 PM, Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, 773-489-3160 or 312-559-1212, $10. —Ann Sterzinger
CALE PARKS Chicagoan-turned-Brooklynite Cale Parks is best known as the drummer for Aloha, but he’s worked with a bunch of bands, from White Williams to Joan of Arc to recent tourmates Passion Pit. The multi-instrumentalist’s third solo effort, the recent To Swift Mars (Polyvinyl), is among the more straightforward collections of music he’s had a hand in. His previous solo material, especially 2006’s Illuminated Manuscript, sounded like indie pop scored by Steve Reich, but the new disc subordinates that cerebral tone and contemporary-classical flavor to broad, slightly skewed melodies and lush synthesizers. Album opener “Eyes Won’t Shut” and lead single “One at a Time”—both catchy new wave numbers with detached, mannered vocals—wouldn’t sound terribly out of place on a John Hughes soundtrack, and “Knight Conversation,” a reverb-swaddled duet with fiance Kendra Smalter, takes a quick detour into comfortably dusty retro territory. Lemonade headlines. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433 or 866-468-3401, $8. —Miles Raymer
sunday23
ZUILL BAILEY AND SIMONE DINNERSTEIN Cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Simone Dinnerstein began performing with each other more than a decade ago, before their now thriving solo careers had taken off. Bailey’s rise has been smoother and more certain than Dinnerstein’s—a late bloomer, she had to self-produce a recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations to get the classical music world’s attention. Together they’re a promoter’s dream: glamorous, charismatic, and immensely musical. Cellists owe much to Beethoven for expanding their instrument’s role in chamber music greatly beyond the one established for it by Haydn and Mozart, and Beethoven’s works for piano and cello have been the core of this duo’s repertoire from the beginning. Here they play all five sonatas, traversing the composer’s music from early to middle to late. This concert coincides with Telarc’s release of Bailey and Dinnerstein’s recording of the complete sonatas and variations, where they deliver performances that are full-blooded yet also wonderfully nuanced and conversational—you can hear their friendship in their playing. 8 PM, Bennett-Gordon Hall, Ravinia Festival, Green Bay and Lake Cook, Highland Park, 847-266-5100, $35. —Steve Langendorf
