thursday9
Thursday9
Marina & the DiamondsSleep
Friday10
Sam AmidonLesley FlaniganOvalRangda, Buke & GassRatatat
Saturday11
Ben FrostHigh Places
Monday13
No Age
Tuesday14
Corridors
Wednesday15
Joshua AbramsThee Oh Sees
SLEEP There are probably a few second-string doom-metal and stoner-metal bands who know in their heart of hearts that there’s simply no way they’ll ever be anywhere near as heavy and trippy and revelatory as Sleep or make a record as seminal as 1992’s Holy Mountain. But they soldier on anyway, in the shadow of the masters, perhaps reassuring themselves that people will settle for them because Sleep’s been split up since the late 90s. So when word went out that in May 2009 guitarist Matt Pike (High on Fire), bassist Al Cisneros (Om, Shrinebuilder), and drummer Chris Hakius (formerly of Om) would be anointing the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Minehead, England, with a live rendition of Holy Mountain, a lot of those B-listers must’ve had painful moments of reckoning with their bathroom mirrors. This fall Sleep are repeating that feat again and again, with Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder replacing Hakius. In addition to the entirety of Holy Mountain, they’ll play what their PR refers to as “selections from” their swan song, Dopesmoker (whatever “selections” means in the context of a single 63-minute track)—and the muddy, boomy acoustics of the Logan Square Auditorium might actually complement the sound for a change. Your nose will probably tell you that someone’s breaking more than just the smoking ban somewhere in the crowd, but that might simply be Sleep inducing synesthesia—their metal sounds like sticky bud smells. This show is part of the Adventures in Modern Music festival. Lichens and Ga’an open. 7 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie, 866-468-3401, sold out. —Monica Kendrick
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SAM AMIDON Sam Amidon inherited his love of folk music from his parents, a couple of traditional singers and folklorists from Brattleboro, Vermont, but in his own work he’s nothing like a purist. His excellent new I See the Sign (Bedroom Community), like 2008’s All Is Well, consists primarily of trad tunes that he’s inventively tweaked or totally reworked—his intimacy with the songs, and his understanding of their malleability and universality, allow him to transform the material. Playing guitar and banjo and joined by an excellent supporting cast that includes pianist Nico Muhly, singer Beth Orton, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, producer-bassist Valgeir Sigurdsson, and on some tunes a full complement of strings and winds, Amidon interprets children’s songs from the Georgia Sea Islands, a wide swath of old-timey and Appalachian folk numbers, and even R. Kelly’s “Relief.” He sings with a casual understatement that’s neither detached nor overwrought; on “You Better Mind” he and Orton redirect the gospel fervor of Bessie Jones’s version into insistently pulsing acoustic pop, as Ismaily (who’s primarily a bassist) drives the bus with some appealingly ramshackle drumming. The album concludes with the sole original, “Red,” which pushes an old-fashioned sound into something totally contemporary—Amidon chants “Found my lost sheep” as spiky string arpeggios drift into a dissonant drone. Here Ismaily will accompany Amidon on drums, bass, and vocal harmony. Via Tania opens. 8 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000, $12-$16. —Peter Margasak
LESLEY FLANIGAN On her lovely, self-released Amplifications New York sound artist Lesley Flanigan employs minimal tools—her voice and speaker feedback—to create something deceptively rich and fully realized. The speakers she uses, which she designed and built, double as sculptural objects; they’re equipped with external piezo microphones that are connected to the speakers with amplifying circuits and can be variously positioned to create different tones and rhythms in the feedback. While the opening piece, “Retrobuild,” uses layers of pretty, wordless vocals to create a dreamy piece of prerock pop that suggests Liz Fraser dabbling in exotica, most of her music treats her voice and the feedback as equal partners. “Sleepy” opens with her hushed soprano unfolding organically into swells of raspy low-end and droning midrange, and eventually additional layers of vocal melody open the piece up. Though her works are usually adapted to the specifics of each space where she performs, Flanigan always has deft control of the feedback, taming it as an instrument in service of her elegant compositional logic. This performance is part of Sonar Chicago. 5 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630. —Peter Margasak
Though their name makes them sound like an Austrian law firm, BUKE & GASS are a musical duo—a real fine one—born from the ashes of Hominid, seemingly the only great band from Brooklyn’s early-aughts hot streak that didn’t blow up beyond the ‘burg. B&G pick up where Hominid left off, whirling, lurching, and stomp-stomp-stomping, with rhythms that recall the Ex. Front woman Arone Dyer has a high, fluttery, pop-perfect voice that’s both girly and forceful—she sounds like Karen O might if she could sing-sing—and plays a modified six-string baritone ukulele (or “buke”), while Aron Sanchez plays the “gass” (a guitar/bass hybrid of his own devising) and works the kick drum. They’re busy and big like a full-size band, so it takes a while to realize there are only two of them—they claim not to use any looping pedals to thicken their sound—and that nobody’s playing a drum kit. They’ll play songs from their brand-new debut album, Riposte (Brassland). —Jessica Hopper
saturday11
monday13
