Thursday3
Pieta Brown
Friday4
Katya KabanovaRusko
Saturday5
The Dutchess & the DukeField Music cancelled
Sunday6
ImplodesDave Rawlings
Monday7
GwarKatya KabanovaMew
Wednesday9
FrequencyPriestessRaekwon cancelledWelcome to Ashley
friday4
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
RUSKO Like drum ‘n’ bass before it, dubstep in its uncut form is too deep, dark, and weird to find a large mainstream audience, which is fine by me. I don’t mind if the real heavy shit never spreads beyond a small group of addicts. But the style’s characteristic rubbery, speaker-destroyingly deep bass and tweaked rhythms—twisted just far enough to be interesting without losing their danceability—could have some commercial appeal if someone lifted the vibe a bit. Which is why Rusko is better positioned to break out than anyone else in dubstep right now—he keeps the good parts but doses them with happy, ravey synths, creating candy-coated tracks like “Kumon Kumon” that are almost begging for a Britney vocal. Phaded, Quadratic, and Merrick Brown open. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203, $12, $10 before midnight. —Miles Raymer
saturday5
sunday6
monday7
MEW It’d be misleading to attach the phrase “force of nature” to these veteran Danish indie rockers—though the pleasures they deliver with their subtle blend of postpunk, disco, and stadium rock are intense, they’re mainly gentle. Still, the best way I can think of to share the feeling I get from “New Terrain”—the opening track of Mew‘s latest LP, whose absurdly long title I’ll truncate to No More Stories (Columbia)—is to ask you to imagine sitting in a warm wetsuit on the edge of a frigid north Atlantic beach, watching wild waves crash all about from inside your comfy second skin. The whole album is rich with melodic, liquid vocals that curl beautifully around spikes of rhythm. All the Day Holiday opens. 7:30 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203, $19. —Ann Sterzinger
