saturday26
Saturday26
Robbie FulksMaggot TwatUnicycle Loves You
Sunday27
Jimmy Bennington’s Colour and Sound Featuring Perry Robinson
Monday28
Perry Robinson & Jimmy Bennington
Tuesday29
CzarThe Good LifeRoy Hargrove
Wednesday30
Josh Berman’s Old IdeaFiery FurnacesRoy HargroveYoahn John Kwon
MAGGOT TWAT Spam and Pizzer Manwhat (aka brothers Pete and Dan Manzella, both formerly of Hurtlocker) are the sentient members of this Chicago trash-thrash outfit, handling all the playing, programming, and vocals. “Drummer” Dick Pancakes is literally a dummy, propped up onstage and used as an all-purpose punch line and abuse receptacle—you can see a fair amount of such foolishness on Maggot Twat’s 2005 DVD The Morons That Ruined Heavy Metal. Other stunts they’ve pulled include launching chicken feet into the crowd, sawing instruments in half, and diving into trash cans full of broken glass. Even just listening to their ridiculously catchy gross-out metal is hazardous—I’m going to have “Raped By an Ape” (from the band’s most recent album, 2006’s 8-Bit Apocalypse) stuck in my head for weeks. Equally addictive are the lo-fi and sometimes hilariously filthy Flash games they host at their Web site. Maggot Twat’s set here, sadly their last, is part of the annual Holiday of Horror mini festival anchored by local “murder metal” veterans Macabre, which provides an essential community service by venting the tensions associated with the Official Merriest Time of the Year (and ironically might work to lower the murder rate). Macabre headline; Maggot Twat, Johnny Vomit, These Are They, the Muzzler, Earthen, and Primitive Evolution open. Idiom, an oddball local prog-metal combo with a lead xylophonist, play next door at Reggie’s Music Joint; they’ll perform Macabre’s 1987 EP Grim Reality, which was finally reissued on CD this year after decades out of print. 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, 312-949-0121 or 866-468-3401, $15, $13 in advance, 17+. —Monica Kendrick
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JIMMY BENNINGTON’S COLOUR AND SOUND FEATURING PERRY ROBINSON The Spirits at Belle’s (Cadence Jazz) is credited to the Jimmy Bennington & Perry Robinson Quartet, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s true that local drummer Bennington put the group together in late 2007, after setting up the first Chicago gigs that the New Jersey-based Robinson—one of the rare clarinetists to fly the flag for the instrument in bebop and free jazz since it went out of fashion at the end of the swing era—had played since the mid-70s. But the other two players in the quartet, Matthew Golombisky and Daniel Thatcher, are equally essential to the album’s novel sound. The two double bassists fill the space between Robinson’s adroit, graceful maneuvers and Bennington’s loose grooves and colorful fills with a rich assortment of tightly woven walking lines, darting solo forays, and out-of-tempo strums. They won’t join Bennington and Robinson for this record-release concert, but their replacements, bassists Mike Staron and Brian Sandstrom, are veteran session men who’ve both played with Hal Russell—in other words, they know a thing or two about rolling with the punches. See also Monday. 8 PM, Uncommon Ground on Devon, 1401 W. Devon, 773-465-9801, $10 suggested donation. —Bill Meyer
ROY HARGROVE For much of the past decade trumpeter Roy Hargrove has explored a variety of stylistic fusions: in his band Crisol, for instance, he played bracing Latin jazz, and in the RH Factor he dipped into funk and hip-hop. For the past couple of years, though, he’s been reclaiming his roots in hard bop, and in the liner notes to his 2008 quintet record, Earfood, he made that pretty clear: “My goal in this project is to have a recording that is steeped in tradition and sophistication,” he wrote, “while maintaining a sense of melodic simplicity.” He maintains that devotion to the familiar pleasures of old-school jazz on this year’s Emergence (Emarcy), the first recording by his long-running but only sporadically convened big band. Hargrove’s lyrical, sanguine improvisations, which sound more thoughtful and patient than ever, are surrounded with exceedingly plush arrangements—the band’s lineup is 19 strong. Much of the album has a strong retro vibe—the Count Basie oomph of the shuffle blues “Ms. Garvey, Ms. Garvey,” the smoky ambience of “My Funny Valentine”—but Hargrove doesn’t completely suppress his love for contemporary stuff, and at one point in his tune “Roy Allan” he drops in a musical quote from Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message.” On this trip he leads a sturdy quintet that includes dyed-in-the-wool bopper Justin Robinson on alto sax and flute and hard-swinging Montez Coleman on drums; rounding out the group are bassist Amin Saleem and pianist Sullivan Fortner, an upstart who’s been turning heads with vibist Stefon Harris. See also Wednesday; this engagement runs through Sunday, January 3, and includes a $50 New Year’s Eve show with sets at 9 and 11 PM. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, 312-360-0234, $20. —Peter Margasak
FIERY FURNACES I’m Going Away might be my favorite Fiery Furnaces album yet. The Friedberger sibs have located the perfect balance point between their passion for noodly complication and their love for smooth-edged AOR pop, creating a strange synergy from a combination that might seem antithetical on its surface. The album peaks with its closer, “Take Me Round Again,” a six-and-a-half-minute collision of stately, uber-accessible pop and Beat-inspired weirdness, alternating between verses where Eleanor’s lyrics shift and slide like a Burroughs cut-up and a chorus that’s one of the catchiest I’ve heard this year. It reappears on a new Thrill Jockey release of the same name, where Eleanor and brother Matthew each rework a half dozen songs from I’m Going Away. Matthew’s version of “Take Me Round Again,” steeped in disco-fied glam, ditches almost everything I like about the original, but both remakes of the relatively rocking “Keep Me in the Dark” are much better—Matthew gives it a woozy psych-soul treatment, and Eleanor turns in a sly, brooding acoustic take. Cryptacize opens. The same bill plays Lincoln Hall on New Year’s Eve for $25, $20 in advance; that show is 21 and up. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, $15, 18+. —Miles Raymer
