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DOLLY VARDEN On the first album from these locals in five years, The Panic Bell (Undertow), the lyrics are darker than ever and the lovely melodies complicate rather than lighten the mood–you can’t always be sure what’s happening, but it probably isn’t good: “While the voice on the teevee jacks off your feelings / One million foreheads / Slow motion and grey / Coming over the ramparts in wave after wave,” leader Steve Dawson sings on the opener, “Complete Resistance.” The characters in these songs seem all but overcome by feelings of dislocation and disenchantment; it’s only simple human connection that salvages things. Alternately Beatlesque and twangy, the numerous hooks are well served by production that reconciles folk-rock detail and pop-rock gloss. The Latebirds open. a 10 PM, Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, 773-404-9494 or 800-594-8499, $10. –Peter Margasak
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GAMINE THIEF These local queer girls sound like their inspiration comes from a single source: Sleater-Kinney. They rock a two-guitar-and-drums setup, complete with back-and-forth single-string runs and dueling vocalists, one bleaty and quivering, one firing back plainly–it’s basically Dig Me Out without the insurgent luster. But on their new demo they sometimes sub in a trumpet for one of the guitars or let go of the ghost of Corin Tucker for a verse or two. This show is a benefit for Girls Rock! Chicago, a weeklong summer music camp for girls where all three members of Gamine Thief have been counselors; there’s no cover, but Urban Outfitters is donating 10 percent of the day’s take to the camp. Bottled Violins, the Cathy Santonies, Mommy Can Wait, and Sebastian open. a 7 PM, Urban Outfitters, 1521 N. Milwaukee, 773-772-8550. F A –Jessica Hopper
blues control The Queens duo Blues Control is keyboardist Lea Cho and guitarist (and sometime WFMU DJ) Russ Waterhouse, who also play together in the self-described “new age” band Watersports. I concur with one blogger that the Blues Control cassette Riverboat Styx (Fuck It Tapes) sounds a bit like Deep Purple’s Made in Japan, but only if you’re listening to the latter on an AC Delco eight-track player in a Pinto at the bottom of the East River. BC finds woozy psychedelia in unlikely places: “Losing Game,” from their cassette on the Palsy imprint, is a loop from an Electric Flag CD purchased at a CVS. They’re currently touring in support of their new Puff LP (Woodsist); a self-titled CD will be released by Holy Mountain in May. Number None opens. a 7 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $7. –J. Niimi
ctv on the radio On top of all the media accolades they got for releasing one of the best records of 2006, TV on the Radio recently attracted some attention for being hipsters. Black hipsters, specifically–or “blipsters,” as the New York Times put it, disingenuously citing urbandictionary.com for backup. Fifty-two years after Chuck Berry’s first hit, white people still think of black people in rock bands as a novelty, a phenomenon curious enough to qualify as a pop-cultural trend. Many of indie rock’s tastemakers–including Web sites like Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Brooklyn Vegan–apparently consider questions of race to be outside their purview, which is a big part of why the discussion’s stuck at such an early stage. Interrogating the underpinnings of your own critical outlook is seen as unfashionable, too purposely PC, the sort of heavy lifting best saved for academic conferences. But the simple fact is that indie rock is so thoroughly white-on-white that the simultaneous existence of a handful of indie bands with black people in them (Jai-Alai Savant, the Dragons of Zynth, the Eternals, Earl Greyhound, This Moment in Black History), including a smattering of really popular ones (Bloc Party, TV on the Radio), was enough to move the paper of record to comment. Sadly and predictably, the ensuing conversation on indiedom’s MP3 blogs and Web sites was pretty much all about how “blipster” is a stupid word and the Times was stupid to use it–not about why blackness in the indie scene is still such a rarity, why the issue is so hard to talk about even after all these years, or why it took TVOTR’s success for someone to try to put it on the table. Subtle opens; see also Tuesday. a 7:30 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203, sold out. A –Jessica Hopper
cdialogues of the carmelites See Friday. a 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, 312-332-2244, $31-$169.
