thursday1
Thursday1
Digital PrimitivesWhite Hills
Friday2
Anti-Pop Consortium
Saturday3
Fever RayMonotonixMoore Brothers
Sunday4
Living Colour
Tuesday6
OmYo La Tengo
Wednesday7
Butthole SurfersFaustKylie MinogueYussuf Jerusalem
WHITE HILLS New York combo White Hills have covered a lot of territory in the past few years, from searing guitar freak-outs on 2007’s Heads on Fire (recently reissued on vinyl by Thrill Jockey) to spacious ambient meditations on 2008’s A Little Bliss Forever (Drug Space), which may be why people can’t decide whether to call them stoner rock or space rock. Common to all of the band’s music, though, is devotion to a groove—it’s kind of ironic that their Dead EP, due this week on Thrill Jockey, includes a remix of one of their more rocking songs that actually deemphasizes the beat in favor of pulsing feedback and guitar tones. Those imperturbable rhythms, whether chugging or crawling, provide a broad canvas for grainy, blown-out guitar reveries—or, as the lyrics to one song call them, “electronic oceans of sound.” The band sometimes chants simple lyrics, weaves in found recordings of voices, or colors the songs with synthesizer washes, but nothing can dislodge its druggy, extravagant six-string excursions from the foreground. Wovenhand headlines; White Hills and DRMWPN open. 9:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $12. —Peter Margasak
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ANTI-POP CONSORTIUM New York’s Anti-Pop Consortium made their mark at the turn of the century by subverting hip-hop orthodoxy. Two of APC’s MCs had been regulars on the spoken-word scene, and there were more than a few strands of electronica in the group’s genes; their rhymes were like riddles and their beats were often built mostly from bleeps. Many of their songs created a queasy tension between the rapping and the music: either or both might be oddly lumpy and off-kilter, bunching, stumbling, and dragging counterintuitively. Internal squabbling splintered the group in 2002, and the spin-offs—Beans‘s solo career, High Priest and M. Sayyid’s collaboration Airborn Audio—made it clear that the three of them (plus longtime producer Earl Blaze) sounded better as a unit. They seem to have realized this themselves: on October 13 the Anti-Pop Consortium will release Fluorescent Black (Big Dada), their first album since 2002’s terrific Arrhythmia (Warp), and they’re picking up more or less where they left off. Of course, that means everybody else has had seven years to catch up, and as a result the album’s relatively straightforward tracks—like “Shine,” with its garden-variety narrative about an artist who can’t handle sudden fame—sound a bit passe. Much better is “C Thru U,” where the MCs’ stuttering flow complements a manic electro groove and stabbing, paranoid synth. The gang chorus on “Volcano” taps into some P-Funk shit, and on “The Solution” some of the vocals are treated not with the ubiquitous Auto-Tune but with vocoder, a technology that had its heyday in the 70s—just the kind of contrarian jab for which APC has always had a special gift. Magical, Beautiful and I Kong Kult open. 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $10. —Peter Margasak
MOORE BROTHERS Whether it’s because they share DNA or just because they’ve shared so much else, certain brothers—from the Delmores to the Louvins to the Everlys—have an undeniable way of harmonizing. Though they don’t play country music like those other groups, the Moore Brothers—who recently moved from Oakland to the small town of Grass Valley, California—definitely do belong in that category. On their fifth album, Aptos (American Dust), Greg and Thom Moore hang the exquisite tapestry of their vocals over a framework of gentle folk pop. Their supercatchy originals have a Beatlesque sweetness, and their harmonies evoke Simon & Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills & Nash—but they’ve got an angle to play that those greats didn’t, since their voices sound almost exactly alike and blend together flawlessly. On the record they’re joined by a rhythm section that brings extra crispness and focus to the songs, but here they’ll be a duo, both playing acoustic guitar. That shouldn’t matter much, though—even a cappella, their singing would knock me out. Vintage Gramma and Rachele Eve open. 9 PM, Dollop Coffee, 4181 N. Clarendon, 708-655-6753, $3 suggested donation. —Peter Margasak
