thursday31
Thursday31
Black KeysVon FreemanGirl TalkMargot & the Nuclear So and So’sPrefuse 73Urge OverkillWhite Blue Yellow & Clouds
Friday1
Black KeysVon Freeman
Saturday2
Von Freeman
Tuesday5
Von FreemanButch Walker
Wednesday6
DKV TrioButch Walker
VON FREEMAN See Tuesday. Freeman plays with saxist Ed Petersen, pianist Willie Pickens, bassist Brian Sandstrom, and drummer Robert Shy. 8:30 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552, $25.
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GIRL TALK Even when mashups were the new hotness, most of ’em left me cold. The prototypical format—the vocals from song A edited to fit the instrumental track from song B—just makes me wonder why kids can’t think of a more exciting way to flout copyright law. As such I’ve never had a dog in the fight over much-hyped, much-reviled mashup king Greg Gillis—aka Girl Talk—and my first listen to his music was an accident, the result of a misplaced click on a page of Lala search results. The Pittsburgh native is fond of the incongruous or ironic clashes that the mashup technique practically begs for, but unlike most of his smashy brethren he’s able to go beyond merely recognizing that it’d be hilarious to have Sinead O’Connor squeak “nothing compares to you” while Too Short carries on about a blow job in Shawnna’s “Gettin’ Some”—he can make it so that the resulting track, in this case “Play Your Part (Pt. 1)” from his 2008 LP Feed the Animals, actually rocks. He accomplishes this in part by folding a dizzying number of source songs into each mix; he also has a musical ear as sharp as his sense of humor. Can’t buy that in a cutout bin. Grand Buffet and Hearts of Darknesses & Urbindex (DJ set) open. 9:30 PM, Congress Theater, 2135 N. Milwaukee, 773-276-3600, sold out, 17+. —Ann Sterzinger
WHITE BLUE YELLOW & CLOUDS Saxophonist and composer Matt Bauder is best known (and deservedly so) as a killer jazz improviser—on Harris Eisenstadt’s terrific 2009 album Canada Day (Clean Feed) he loaded his flowing, sanguine solos with almost every postfree trick in his considerable repertoire—but he’s always pursued other interests as well. In the trio Memorize the Sky, for instance, he explores rich drones, and with his charming group White Blue Yellow & Clouds he rather unexpectedly pays homage to sunny California pop and old-school rock ‘n’ roll. On last year’s Introducing White Blue Yellow & Clouds (I and Ear) Bauder mostly lets the strap hold his horn while he sings covers of Sam Cooke, the Beach Boys, and a few old white-bread doo-wop numbers, as well as original tunes that reference that classic stuff. Bauder’s an adequate singer, but more important he’s smart enough to know he can’t duplicate, much less improve upon, the music he’s saluting; instead he puts an imaginative spin on it, adding a bagpipelike coda to his Cooke-flavored “Seeing Stars,” drowning his version of the Flamingos chestnut “Lovers Never Say Goodbye” in deliciously murky reverb, and reducing “God Only Knows” to just the song’s chorus, which cycles seductively and accumulates layers of vocal harmonies until the sparse instrumental accompaniment is almost inaudible. Though Bauder led an ensemble called White Blue Yellow & Clouds when he lived in Chicago a decade ago, that was a completely different project; tonight is the local debut of this one. The set might be a little ragged—his backing band will be Jason Ajemian’s the High Life, of whose members only Ajemian, who played on Introducing, is familiar with the material—but I bet it’ll be a hoot anyway. The High Life, who also open the show, include trumpeter Jacob Wick, reedist Peter Hanson, guitarist Owen Stewart-Robinson, and drum-mer Marc Riordan. John Herndon spins. 8:30 PM, Heaven Gallery, 1550 N. Milwaukee, heavengallery.com, $20 suggested donation. —Peter Margasak
VON FREEMAN See Tuesday. Freeman plays with saxist Ed Petersen, pianist Willie Pickens, bassist Brian Sandstrom, and drummer Robert Shy. 9 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552, $12.
