thursday30
Thursday30
GoatwhoreMekons
Friday31
Weasel Walter
Saturday1
Baby TeethBrokencydeGucci ManeSerpentcultTV Pow
Sunday2
Jay Electronica
Tuesday4
Casiokids
Mike Reed’s People, Places, & Things
Wednesday5
Lisa De La Salle, Olga Kern, Joyce YangMike Reed’s People, Places, & ThingsWand
MEKONS In “Perfect Mirror,” the song that closes their most recent album, Natural (Quarterstick), the Mekons invoke a looming mountain, unchanging and unconcerned with human affairs, as they ponder ancient pagan ceremonies that have lost their meaning. With 32 years of history as a band, they have plenty of practice taking the long view, and they’ve needed it. They’ve been ill-handled by record companies big and small, and even the shelter of scout’s-honor-honest Touch and Go has proved impermanent—this spring, when the label downsized its operations, their almost-finished new album was orphaned. But despite their utter failure as a business, the Mekons have always cheerily carried on—they were founded as an art project and function like a family, so they’ve never expected to make any money. And they’ve always rocked—YouTube videos of an English gig in April provide the most recent evidence. Elements of country, folk, and reggae color their songs, and their lyrics (accompanied in print by quotes from the likes of Isaac Newton and Ben Hecht) challenge the status quo, but it’s the way the band’s singers swap places over big blasts of cranked-up punk guitars that makes me want to dance around the old stone idol one more time. One of those singers, Tom Greenhalgh, won’t make it to tonight’s show—likely the Mekons’ only Chicago date this year—but Jon Langford and Sally Timms will lead a host of old hands and special guests in a set they promise will include songs from the new record. Mar Caribe opens. The Mekons also play a free in-store at Raffe’s Record Riot (4350 N. Cicero) at 3:45 PM. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, $20. —Bill Meyer
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WEASEL WALTER, MIKE FORBES, AND ANDREW SCOTT YOUNG Since Weasel Walter split for the Bay Area in 2003, his output has exploded. Though he’d largely abandoned free jazz during his final years in Chicago, since the move it’s clearly energized him: he’s made blistering recordings with a continent-spanning crew of top-notch musicians that includes Peter Evans, Marshall Allen, Lisle Ellis, Marc Edwards, Mary Halvorson, Greg Kelley, and Henry Kaiser. (In a 2006 interview with Paris Transatlantic, he described leaving Chicago by saying “I felt like sandbags had been lifted from my psyche.”) Though Walter has certainly matured—he’s gotten much better at the give-and-take that’s necessary in collaborations, for instance—that’s done nothing to soften the violence in his music. One recent case in point: his scalding new album American Free (UgExplode), cut this March with young Chicagoans Mike Forbes (saxophone) and Andrew Scott Young (bass). Though the kids bring some impressive firepower—Forbes spits furious barrages of split tones and upper-register squeals with an intensity that reminds me of early Peter Brötzmann, and Young roils and grinds with both power and cogency—Walter’s drumming is what turns the music into something more than neo-free jazz. His high-velocity clusters of kick-drum impacts and nearly incomprehensible across-the-kit flurries make him sound almost inhuman, but despite its blinding speed his playing not only makes sense but expertly complements the rest of the trio. Eli Keszler headlines; Ashley Paul, Walter’s group, and Wummin open. Walter will also improvise with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and trombonist Jeb Bishop on Tuesday at Elastic. 9 PM, Enemy, 1550 N. Milwaukee, third floor, 773-772-3616, $5 suggested donation. —Peter Margasak
GUCCI MANE When Gucci Mane appeared on the mainstream hip-hop scene in 2007 with his Rick James-referencing single “Freaky Gurl,” there didn’t seem to be much setting him apart from any other Atlanta rapper—maybe just the hint of sinus congestion in his voice. But over the past year or so he’s turned into a rap monster, releasing so many mix tapes and random tracks and making so many cameos that a collection of the top 30 Gucci Mane songs of 2008 compiled by the blog We Eat So Many Shrimp only scratched the surface of his output. He’s more than a little like Lil Wayne these days, not just in his insane prolificacy but in his tendency to put an extremely berserk spin on any subject he touches, even if it’s something as played-out as trap-house rhymes (“I count a hundred grand / Then I ate some cereal / Stuff a half a brickie in a box of Cheerios”). And unlike the many talentless MCs aping Weezy’s hustle and flooding the Internet with garbage, Gucci makes songs that not only stand up to but basically demand repeat listens. Nicki Minaj and OJ da Juiceman open. 7:30 PM, Congress Theater, 2135 N. Milwaukee, 773-826-5000, $60, 18+. —Miles Raymer
sunday2
CASIOKIDS Norway’s Casiokids make inventive, elegant old-school pop electronica that they sometimes present onstage as though it were a silent film, using shadow-puppet plays and digital light shows to say the things the music can’t. On their first full-length, 2007’s Fuck MIDI (Karisma), they rarely sang, and when they did it was of course in Norwegian—though I get the feeling that their lyrics are mostly placeholders even for people who speak the language. The album’s one song in French, “Il Fait Beau,” sounds like Eddie Izzard parodying his French teacher (“I’m the commander of the great castle . . . I want cake!”). But the tunes make you feel too irrationally cheery to begrudge them their whimsy, and the band’s live shows are allegedly a party and a half. Since late last year the Casiokids have released a string of singles via UK label Moshi Moshi, which is sending them to tour the States as part of its tenth-birthday celebration. He Say She Say opens. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, $12, $10 in advance, 18+. —Ann Sterzinger
