Thursday2
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and ChorusSuperchunkMichael Thieke Canceled
Friday3
Sonny BurgessChicago Symphony Orchestra & ChorusDoomtree
Saturday4
Chicago Symphony Orchestra & ChorusGalactic InmateEd Herrmann, Jason Adasiewicz, Adam Vida, and Sam HertzLoVidRootsMichael Thieke
Sunday5
Chris Speed’s Endangered Blood
Monday6
Jeffree StarTalk Normal
Tuesday7
Dans les Arbres
SUPERCHUNK Majesty Shredding (Merge) is the first new Superchunk album in nine years—a gap almost half as long as the Chapel Hill band’s career—so it’s not surprising that they’d spend part of the record looking back, half wondering where the time went: on “Fractures in Plaster” front man Mac McCaughan pleads, “When the past proves hard to resist / You’ll keep a loose grip on my wrist, won’t you?” In “My Gap Feels Weird” he discovers that the passing years have turned him into the sort of “old guy at the show” that his younger self dissed for not knowing what the kids were about; in the video for “Digging for Something” the band pokes fun at its own persistence, showing drummer Jon Wurster working for a dentist, bassist Laura Ballance selling pottery at a fair, guitarist Jim Wilbur meditating in a shack, and McCaughan leading a cringe-inducing “Superchunk 2.0” full of caricatured twentysomething hipsters. This self-awareness complements musical choices that recall the brashness and energy of the foursome’s first few albums, with the exception of the superfluous keyboards that soften the arrangements. It’s not exactly retro for the band to play like they used to, in part because their old sound has been kept alive by so many younger groups, but Majesty Shredding is the spunkiest, most aggressive Superchunk record since the early 90s. Times New Viking opens. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203, $21, 18+. —Peter Margasak
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MICHAEL THIEKE Canceled. German reedist Michael Thieke impresses me as much with his nonchalant breadth and curiosity as he does with the actual music he plays; he’s developed post-Jimmy Giuffre chamber jazz in Nickendes Perlgras, produced ephemeral art-pop with the Magic I.D., and played hard-driving postbop in Dok Wallach. Thieke is interested in the clarinet’s potential to produce unorthodox sounds, but he’s just as invested in its traditional tone, which he applies to improvisations of uncommon beauty and energy. Recently he and fellow clarinetist Kai Fagaschinksi, who perform together as the International Nothing, released their second album, Less Action, Less Excitement, Less Everything (Ftarri); its title is arguably appropriate to the duo’s minimal instrumentation, but it’s a somewhat self-deprecating description of their patient, painterly playing, where sublime intution guides the unfolding of undulating harmonies and upper-register multiphonics. Thieke will perform with percussionist Michael Zerang and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm; Keefe Jackson & Jeb Bishop open. See also Saturday. Update: Tonight’s show is canceled due to a failed heating system at the venue. Thieke’s Saturday show is still on. 10 PM, Elastic, 2830 N. Milwaukee, second floor, 773-772-3616, $8 suggested donation. —Peter Margasak
SONNY BURGESS There are two well-known recording artists named Sonny Burgess—the other one is a standard-issue Texas country dude, and no more needs to be said about him here. This Sonny Burgess, born in Arkansas in 1931 and drawn like a moth to the flame of Memphis’s Sun Records in 1956, plays rowdy, swinging rockabilly in the classic style he helped define. Though he never reached the level of stardom he must have dreamed of, he and his band the Pacers consistently tore up the south, and songs like “Red Headed Woman” and “Tiger Rose” sound even fresher and sexier now that history has made it clear what a huge explosion they touched off. Burgess and his current group—now called the Legendary Pacers—still take to the road, playing casino gigs as well as the occasional high-profile festival in the U.S. and abroad, and Burgess hosts a weekly radio program called We Wanna Boogie back home in Arkansas. This is a rare opportunity to hear some of his legendary fire live. Mars Attacks and the Honeybees open. 8:30 PM, Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace, 773-463-5808 or 866-468-3401, $15, $12 in advance. —Monica Kendrick
ROOTS The Roots don’t sound nearly as bleak by the end of their latest album, How I Got Over (Def Jam), as they did on their two previous records. I expected them to lose some of their creative drive after they became the house band on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon—it would’ve been easy for them to parlay that job into a series of crossover attempts with big-name stars—but instead they’ve regained their vitality and spark, breaking out of the rut they’ve been stuck in at least since 2006’s Game Theory. How I Got Over is front-loaded with dark tracks where Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter’s rhymes reflect the sinking mood of the country with their forceful descriptions of isolation, futility, and depression. On “Dear God 2.0” the group works a beautiful, harmony-rich snippet from Monsters of Folk’s “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)” into a list of crises and tragedies that becomes an elegy for faith (“Why is the world ugly when you made it in your image?”). The title track, named after a gospel standard by Clara Ward, is the album’s turning point; a feeling of uncertainty remains, but determination, contemplation, and sobriety create glimmers of hope. (“You came to celebrate / I came to cerebrate,” Black Thought intones on “The Fire.”) Several fine MCs, among them Dice Raw, Peedi Peedi, and STS, contribute guest rhymes that forgo self-aggrandizement for self-awareness, and the album’s indie-rock cameos and samples (M.O.F., Joanna Newsom, the female singers from Dirty Projectors) dissolve my usual cynicism about such maneuvers by working—on “Right On,” for example, Newsom’s harp arpeggios become a killer bass line. Of course, when the bedrock of your band’s sound is the cracking drums of Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, you’ve got a head start when it comes to making things work. 7 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, 312-923-2000 or 866-448-7849, $50-$80, 17+. —Peter Margasak
