thursday12
Thursday12
The 1900s, Brighton MADevoGirlsPeter Bjorn and John, El Perro Del Mar
Friday13
DevoGirls
Saturday14
Don ByronEarthen GraveKingdomShrinebuilder
Sunday15
Reigning Sound
Monday16
Devendra Banhart Berlin Philharmonic
Wednesday18
Brother Ali
DEVO It’s robotic and jerky and stuffed with artsy spiel about “de-evolution,” but to my ears Devo‘s 1978 debut album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (Warner Brothers), remains one of the greatest rock records ever made. Mark Mothersbaugh worked hard to be the antithesis of the cool front man, and between his bizarre vocals—simultaneously detached and hyperactive—and the catchy, off-kilter riffs, the songs struck just the right nerve, becoming subversive classics in spite of their conceptual freight. That’s not to say Devo’s philosophy was always a liability; their satire could be sharp and hilarious. But it worked best when it complemented the music, and eventually their combination of dystopian cynicism and faux futurism overshadowed their jittery punk bite—an unfortunate shift paralleled by the band’s move from a mostly guitar-based sound toward a synth-dependent one. All the same, there are some great songs on their later albums, and several turn up on 1980’s Freedom of Choice, which spawned the smash “Whip It.” Next year Devo will release their first album since 1990, tentatively titled Fresh Devo, but on this trip they’re playing Are We Not Men? and Freedom of Choice front to back, the first record on Thursday and the second on Friday—both were reissued earlier this month in remastered editions with live tracks from the band’s recent tours. The live cuts from Are We Not Men? don’t have the snap and excitement of the album versions, but I’m still psyched to see Devo play the whole album in the flesh, even if it is obvious that three decades have gone by. “If we looked like we were yellow cheeseburgers in 1979,” Mothersbaugh told me in an interview four years ago, “in 2005 we’re kind of like double-patty cheeseburgers.” JP Inc. (the current project from JP Hasson, formerly known as Pleaseeasaur) opens. See also Friday. 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, 773-472-0449 or 312-559-1212, $41, 18+. —Peter Margasak
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GIRLS Judging strictly by his lyrics, the default emotional state of Girls front man Christopher Owens is “heartbroken.” The band’s Google-confounding new album, Album (Matador), opens with the line “Oh, I wish I had a boyfriend,” and over its dozen songs it catalogs what seems like several dozen varieties of romantic sadness. But Owens and JR White—the group’s only permanent members—aren’t mopes when it comes to the music. They almost always set their bummed-out lyrics to frisky, jangly pop as weightless and giddifying as a balloon full of nitrous, combining Owens’s ragged voice—which alternates between a scrappy, nasal yelp and a campy pseudocroon—with retro-flavored bubblegum that seems supersimple until you listen closely enough to notice what’s going on inside it. But there’s one song on Album, “Hellhole Ratrace,” where the music gets as swoony as the lyrics, and it’s also the best—it spends the first half of its seven minutes as a sweet, delicately embellished acoustic ballad and the second half as a slow-motion fuzz-box meltdown topped by a vocal hook so satisfying that even three and a half solid minutes of repetition can’t wear it out. Real Estate and Dominant Legs (who share a backing band with Girls) open. See also Friday. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $10, limited $5 tickets. —Miles Raymer
On Sarah Assbring’s latest album as EL PERRO DEL MAR, Love Is Not Pop (Licking Fingers), she finds a work-around to help her make the most of her impossibly twee mini-mouse vocals—instead of putting them out front alone, the new record surrounds them with ghosty, moody 4AD-style new wave. Instead of sounding tiny, she sounds ethereal, which adds a new dimension to her precious, hoping-for-romance lyrics. Now that it’s floating in a sea of reverb and delay, her voice takes up more space, and she doesn’t seem scared of the sound of it anymore. The songs always stop shy of rocking out, their dark vamping and synthetic plinking staying closer to the realm of soundtrack music—some tracks feel like they could run on for another 20 minutes, drifting infinitely, soft and pure. What hasn’t changed on the new album is Assbring’s unassuming Swedish charm, something she shares with Lykke Li—they recently did a split single together, to which Assbring contributed a cover of Aaliyah’s version of the Isley Brothers’ “At Your Best (You Are Love).” In fact Love Is Not Pop might be what a Lykke Li record would sound like if you sucked the party music out and filled it with Valentine candy hearts. —Jessica Hopper
SHRINEBUILDER You want a real supergroup? Shrinebuilder‘s lineup is an embarrassment of riches: Scott Kelly, singer and guitarist for Neurosis; Scott “Wino” Weinrich, front man for Saint Vitus and singer and guitarist for Hidden Hand; Al Cisneros, bassist and vocalist for Sleep and Om; and Dale Crover, drummer for the Melvins. If they had a mind to, they could rip through the trendy underground metal scene like real vikings pillaging a Wagnerian opera set. Most of the tracks on their five-song self-titled debut, recorded in three days and released last month on Kelly’s Neurot label, are long, challenging, and supple, deriving their power less from raw fury and more from otherworldly grandeur, sinister patience, and the kind of cat-and-mouse tension that it takes a bunch of crusty old guys to really handle properly. All four members contribute vocals as well as moments that will remind you of their respective bands, and the total package is towering and regal, its geometry non-euclidean and its doomy ambience—especially on “Pyramid of the Moon”—grounded in seafloor-solid rhythms. Rwake opens the early show and Yakuza opens the late show. 8 and 11 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $15. —Monica Kendrick
