thursday26
Thursday26
Johnny Rawls RevueWye Oak
Friday27
Coliseum, Fight AmpFruit BatsGod Bullies, TV Ghost
Saturday28
Memoryhouse, Twin Sister
Sunday29
Elisabeth Harnik
Monday30
Stereo Total
Wednesday25
Elizabeth CookAlon Goldstein
WYE OAK Wye Oak front woman Jenn Wasner sounds goth as hell on the Baltimore duo’s new EP, My Neighbor/My Creator (Merge). But she flips the script from suicidal to homicidal on “I Hope You Die,” uttering the title’s unsubtle sentiments while someone taps a woodblock gingerly in the background. Soft, dark, and spooky, Wye Oak are sonically and aesthetically miles from the DayGlo-rainbow ironic 80s-inspired buttsplosion that’s laid claim to Baltimore these past few years—by comparison, they’re practically traditional indie rock. Lou Barlow & the Missingmen headline; Young Man opens. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, $14. —Jessica Hopper
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COLISEUM, FIGHT AMP There aren’t many records that embody the desire to throw a cinder block through someone’s windshield like COLISEUM’s recent House With a Curse (Temporary Residence). Or grabbing the Blackberry out of a talky yuppie’s hand and smashing it on the ground. Or just straight-up punching a guy in the face for being a dick. Very few groups encapsulate the rage that wells up dozens of times a day when you’re crowded in with millions of other people, threatening to explode into your own private Falling Down, as perfectly as this Louisville trio does. Their arrangements are sparse enough to show off how dead simple the music is—a three-note guitar riff, a throb of a bass line, some drafty Bonhamin- a-castle drums, a melodic bellow—but the songs hit like a bag of cement. Bricking the plate-glass windows of the Ed Hardy bar in your hood isn’t rocket science. The soundtrack doesn’t need to be complicated either. —Miles Raymer
Coliseum headlines; Sweet Cobra, Burning Love, and Fight Amp open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2109 S. State, 312-949-0121 or 866468- 3401, $12, $10 in advance. A
There was a time, believe it or not, when you’d never heard anything like TV GHOST. Now, listening to these guys’ insecticidal howls— which pay tribute to early Buttholes, the Cramps, Suicide, no wave, and pretty much every avant-whatever with a backbeat from the past decade—I’m reminded of a line from PiL’s anti-nostalgia broadside “Memories”: “I think you’re slightly late, slightly late.” Which isn’t to say that this foursome from Lafayette, Indiana, is the Sha Na Na of shart-rock nastiness. They’re more like what the Jam was to 60s Britpop—the original sources are so great that a really enthusiastic imitation is still pretty good. A few years back during a set at Cal’s, they were energetic young malcontents who broke bottles and danced on the shards, and their effects pedals cut beautiful abrasions in the foul air. A splendid half hour’s worth of entertainment, no doubt—but instead of leaving with that inspired feeling you get when a band takes the raw material of influence and transforms it into something that feels new, I left brooding on what a bastard art form rock ’n’ roll is and always will be. —Brian Costello
It’s been a while since “Strong Island” was known for any sort of rock music not made by hardcore dudes in tearaway track pants. This summer’s bloggernet darlings TWIN SISTER are the inverse, drawing hard on feminine, fey, nerds-in-love vibes on their new EP, Color Your Life (Infinite Best). Front woman Andrea Estella has a soft voice that doesn’t go a lot of places, but she’s languorous to the max. The band matches her in dreaminess, coming on like vintage Yo La Tengo sans the guitar pyrotechnics—the songs are gauzy little clouds of drone and vibrato that pulse along with airy organ. Essentially the perfect music for lazy late August. —Jessica Hopper
