thursday25
Thursday25
Richie Hawtin
Friday26
BloodymindedJohn MellencampTrap Them
Saturday27
Syl JohnsonBruno MarsA Masked BallJohn MellencampSabertoothMavis Staples
Monday29
Blind Guardian
Tuesday30
A Masked Ball
Wednesday1
Diamond RingsJenny Scheinman’s Mischief & Mayhem
friday26
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JOHN MELLENCAMP John Mellencamp‘s latest, No Better Than This (Rounder), was recorded by T-Bone Burnett with a single microphone and a 55-year-old Ampex tape machine in three iconic locations: Sun Studios in Memphis, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, and Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where Robert Johnson cut his first sides. Sincere as it may be, the concept flirts with shtick, but by and large the material prevents that impression from sticking. Mellencamp’s songwriting touches on various stripes of Americana, and he nods to prewar conventions by mostly doing away with proper choruses in favor of refrains; distinctive players like guitarist Marc Ribot, fiddler Miriam Sturm, and percussionist Jay Bellerose bring the raw arrangements to life. Though his lyrics don’t peg the songs to any particular era, they still capture the brooding darkness of America’s present and recent past—and even better, they don’t try to balance it out with cornball heartland optimism. These shows will be preceded by screenings of the Kurt Markus documentary It’s About You, which chronicles a 2009 tour of minor-league baseball stadiums by Mellencamp, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson. See also Saturday. 6:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300 or 866-448-7849, $42.50-$125. —Peter Margasak
TRAP THEM Trap Them claim Entombed, Disfear, Tragedy, Swans, and Black Flag as influences—it must take a brain like Stephen Hawking’s to comprehend just how pissed-off these four guys are. Their eruption of grindcore, metal, and hardcore punk doesn’t just pound on your door and yell—it kicks the damn thing down and charges in. On the recent EP Filth Rations (Southern Lord), Trap Them pile on the grit and filth: if their 2008 album Seizures in Barren Praise was an agile, vicious beast, then the new one is armor-plated too, and big enough to block a four-lane road. Vocalist Ryan McKenney spits his lyrics—which often have a political charge—like a stream of roofing nails, and the band is just as relentless, pounding out one brutal riff after another. Even the occasional slow song is so dense there’s no space to gasp for air. Trap Them’s third full-length is due in early 2011 on Prosthetic; recorded at GodCity with their usual producer, Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou, it’ll be their first with former Coliseum drummer Chris Maggio. If it continues the trajectory they’ve already set, they’ll soon go from supporting the likes of Napalm Death and Every Time I Die to headlining themselves. ETID headlines; Trap Them, Howl, and Downers (aka Downers of the World Unite) open. 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, 773-278-6600 or 866-468-3401, $15. —Kevin Warwick
BRUNO MARS The best pop songs sound inevitable, as if they’d been floating around waiting for the right person to pluck them out of the air. Bruno Mars and his partners in the songwriting concern the Smeezingtons have an almost disconcerting talent for doing this, and this year it’s seemed as though their efforts—including Mars’s “Just the Way You Are,” Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You!,” and Travie McCoy’s “Billionaire”—have owned every bit of the pop-music market share that Dr. Luke couldn’t claim. The songs on Mars’s generally excellent debut, Doo-Wops & Hooligans (Atlantic), take after “Fuck You!”—with the notable exception of “Just the Way You Are,” a baldly manipulative piece of power schmaltz destined to live on as a favorite of bachelorette party sing-alongs. “Runaway Baby” is a hyperactive piece of R&B-tinged sugar punk, “Grenade” is a pop-soul take on Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak phase, and “Marry You” takes a melody that belongs in a girl-group classic and blows it up to an epic scale the Arcade Fire would have a hard time matching. 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, 312-666-6775 or 866-468-3401, sold out. —Miles Raymer
SABERTOOTH Sabertooth have held down the Saturday-night graveyard shift at the Green Mill for 18 years, and it’s been eight years since the quartet had a lineup change. But in this case familiarity hasn’t bred contempt—it’s created a steady supply of energy, which powers tunes that are easy to like and hard to sleep through, no matter how long ago your bedtime was. Organist Pete Benson is playfully droll on the “Odd Couple” theme, and his adroit pedal work locks right into the fleet, hard-swinging groove of drummer Ted Sirota on the original “It’s Surely Gonna Flop If It Ain’t Got That Bop”; both appear on the combo’s most recent album, 2007’s Dr. Midnight (Delmark). But saxophonists Cameron Pfiffner and Pat Mallinger—whose two horns inspired Sabertooth’s name, suggesting as they do the eyeteeth of a big cat—are the ones who provide the band with its inexhaustible stream of ideas about how to meet the expectations of an after-hours jazz-party crowd without being slaves to convention. They can wail their way through the changes on a Horace Silver tune, then turn around and find the funk in a Grateful Dead song. Midnight, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552, $5 before 2 AM, free afterward. —Bill Meyer
BLIND GUARDIAN These German power-metal warriors seem so starry-eyed and earnest that it’s sometimes hard to believe they’re not making fun of their own genre: they employ a massive orchestra and choir to sell their blustery choruses, throw around their encyclopedic knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien, and profess a love of Queen that’s both unseemly and 100 percent sincere. Blind Guardian‘s willingness to go all-in is also evident in their live performances, which are so thoroughly, unironically fun that they can crack even the most jaded facade—I’ve seen it happen myself at a Metro show. Their first album in four years, this summer’s At the Edge of Time (Nuclear Blast), plays a little bit like Blind Guardian’s Greatest Hits. It has many familiar elements—string swells giving cover to throwbacky thrash, cast-of-thousands warrior ballads, fantasy-fiction homages (“Wheel of Time” turns a so-so series of books into a great song)—but unlike many of the band’s best records, there’s no overarching concept. So while it’s superficially effective, there’s a feeling that Blind Guardian are biding their time before something big. Remember the cautionary tale of Robert Jordan, guys—none of us is getting any younger. Holy Grail and Seven Kingdoms open. 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, 312-666-6775 or 866-468-3401, $25, 17+. —Monica Kendrick
