Thursday23

Cyrus Chestnut TrioSleepovers, Bored Games

Friday24

Cyrus Chestnut Trio

Saturday25

Cyrus Chestnut TrioPaul Di’Anno

Sunday26

Cyrus Chestnut TrioMacabre

Monday27

Mustard Plug

Wednesday27

James ChanceDKV TrioDi Wu

SLEEPOVERS, BORED GAMES I’m a sucker for a song with a title that includes the name of the band who wrote it. Maybe it’s the neat tautology—in this respect the obvious world champ is hardcore band Talk Is Poison, who included the track “Talk Is Poison” on their EP Talk Is Poison—or maybe it’s just because I think that, like the Monkees and the Banana Splits, every group should have a theme song. So local garage-pop act Sleepovers get points for including “Sleepovers Are Fun” on their new HoZac single, and double points for the fact that it’s true either way you read it. Blissfully unconcerned with Serious Art, they make tunes as lightweight as nitrous balloons and just as likely to result in brief, giddy highs.

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »

Bored Games‘ “Tangled and Confused” might be the best female-fronted power-pop single to come out of Milwaukee since the Shivvers’ 1980 cut “Teen Line.” That may sound like the faintest praise a critic could possibly damn a band with, but people familiar with the singular pleasures of that Shivvers song—record geeks and midwestern middle-aged former new wavers, basically—know better. “Tangled and Confused” is a little scuffed up by garage-rock grit, but the sweet-as-pie melody and slightly lachrymose performance are worthy of Lesley Gore. The rest of Bored Games’ material follows a similar formula, only with more energy and fewer tears.

CYRUS CHESTNUT TRIO See Thursday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth Ct., 312-360-0234, $25.

PAUL DI’ANNO Paul Di’Anno sang with Iron Maiden from 1978 through 1981, appearing on the band’s first recordings, but he’s overshadowed in metal history by his replacement, Bruce Dickinson—and that seems especially unlikely to change now that Bruce flies the custom-painted Iron Maiden 757 that the band charters for tours. Still, Di’Anno was the original voice of “Remember Tomorrow” (he also wrote the lyrics), and he deserves respect for that alone. Since the early 80s he’s strung together a checkered but unbroken career with bands like Killers, Battlezone, and Di’Anno, and if you believe his 2002 autobiography, The Beast, he’s taken his decades-long globe-trotting stumble through the underbelly of metal while so far gone in a haze of drugs and debauchery he makes Motley Crue look like a bunch of slumming Mormon missionaries. That he’s still with us at all is something to celebrate—and the fact that he’s maintained a respectable tour schedule this year, with Pittsburgh’s Icarus Witch as his opening act and backing band, is a marvel worth at least 15 bucks. Tonight Di’Anno will perform the 1981 Iron Maiden album Killers, some other Maiden material, and maybe a handful of songs from his later bands. He shares the bill with a different kind of vintage metal attraction: Joliet-born Slauter Xstroyes, who released a fantastically weird and proggy power-metal album, Winter Kill, in 1985 and broke up in ’89. The recently reanimated version of the band contains several original members, and they’ve got a new record in the works—judging from the live videos I’ve seen on YouTube, they haven’t lost a damn thing except hair. Di’Anno headlines; Icarus Witch, Slauter Xstroyes, Hell Awaits, and Kradikiss open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2109 S. State, 312-949-0121 or 866-468-3401, $15, 18+. —Monica Kendrick

MACABRE Who’s creepier than serial killers? People obsessed with serial killers, that’s who. But at least the guys in Chicago death-metal trio Macabre—at 25 years and counting, possibly the longest-running metal band in the world never to have a lineup change—do their research, and they do far more than I could stand to. Their annual Holidays of Horror concerts also provide a valuable public service during the Official Merriest Time of the Year, allowing people who’ve been surrounded by Christmas music, relatives, children, and cheer to safely vent their perfectly justifiable aggression. For the first time in eight years, Macabre have recorded new material: the 15-minute EP Human Monsters (Obscene Productions), released this summer, contains three brutal new songs and a cover of Venom’s “Countess Bathory” that’s well-suited to the season . . . assuming that’s not Santa in your chimney. It’s a teaser for the full-length Grim Scary Tales, due early next year. Reign Inferno, Bones, and Kastasyde open. 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2109 S. State, 312-949-0121 or 866-468-3401, $12. —Monica Kendrick

wednesday29