thursday25
Thursday25
Goes CubeRickie Lee JonesVampire Weekend
Friday26
CitayDeadstring BrothersTegan and SaraVampire Weekend
Saturday27
AltanJudson ClaiborneAna Tijoux
Sunday28
Denise LaSalle
Monday29
Janelle MonaeTatsuya Nakatani
Tuesday30
Janelle Monae
Wednesday31
Tatsuya NakataniSerena-Maneesh
RICKIE LEE JONES Rickie Lee Jones is 30 years into her career and two albums into a fierce little comeback of sorts (she never really left us). As pretty much every review has noted, her latest, Balm in Gilead (Fantasy), is her best album in some time (some say a decade, others two—depends on how your preference in Rickie runs). It’s a linear work, even more so than 2007’s Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, where she interpreted Bible themes and made Jesus sound like the boyfriend she couldn’t get over. Balm is about as straight and poppy as the circuitous jazzbo rambler has ever been; her girlish voice, ageless and sunshiny, spreads beautifully alongside gravelly, weary cameos from Vic Chesnutt and Ben Harper. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-525-2501, $35. —Jessica Hopper
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
VAMPIRE WEEKEND Not to blame the victim, but Vampire Weekend pretty much asked for the kind of beatdown Jessica Hopper gave them in her January Reader review of their latest album, Contra (XL). If you don’t want to be accused of being vaguely yuppie world-music poseurs, it’s best not to attach phrases like “Upper West Side Soweto” or “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” to your music, or to issue obnoxiously fastidious press releases where you make a point of explaining that your use of Auto-Tune isn’t influenced by American pop (as if being influenced by American pop were such a terrible thing). All that said, I’m not persuaded that Vampire Weekend’s appropriation of African and Caribbean sounds is offensive—it’s certainly no worse than the Strokes copying Tom Petty or Robin Thicke trying to be a soul man—and I don’t think their cultural sampling is any more egregious than M.I.A.’s. Like her, they’ve achieved impressive pop success with such techniques, and it’s hard to see why they get so much more flak about it. Yeah, self-satisfied Ivy League kids can be annoying, but that’s not enough to ruin the jittery sugar high of “California English” or the balance of aggression and etherealness in “Giving Up the Gun.” Abe Vigoda opens; see also Friday. 7 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, 773-275-6800, sold out. —Miles Raymer
CITAY Guitarist Ezra Feinberg and his sprawling San Francisco psych band, Citay, are all about excess. On the group’s recent third album, Dream Get Together (Dead Oceans), the carefree, ambling grooves are piled high with layers of guitars—often including intertwined leads or florid, drawn-out solos—and the main vocal lines are often doubled or tripled, in unison or in harmony. On “Hunter” there’s even an analog-synth solo that would make Emerson, Lake & Palmer tip their hats. The band’s hazy hippie vibe and tendency to use lots of notes might seem to imply a lack of focus, but the music is surprisingly catchy and straightforward. Primary vocalists Tahlia Harbour and Meryl Press usually sing together, in a sunny, ultramelodic style that recalls the Mama & the Papas, and the rhythms are toe-tappingly direct. Guest vocals from Merrill Garbus, aka Tune-Yards, give a relatively blunt and earthy feel to “Mirror Kisses,” and the album closes with an unexpected cover of Galaxie 500’s “Tugboat.” Dream Get Together was produced by Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, who’s also among the guitarists laying down serpentine leads; he’s not in the touring lineup, though, which is scaled down to seven members from the 11 credited on the album. Michael Columbia and Baron von Something open. 10 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, $10, $8 in advance. —Peter Margasak
