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CALLA These New Yorkers have been around since 1997, but only after they signed to Beggars Banquet a couple years ago did their intentions finally become clear: they’re trying to make goth respectable to the indie crowd. Not that Calla didn’t flirt with gloom in the early days–their second full-length came out on Michael Gira’s Young God label–but back then their music had more of an experimental bent, with the whooshing subway-tunnel atmospherics you used to hear in Wharton Tiers productions. The vocals on the new Strength in Numbers are more Elliott Smith than Robert Smith, but most of the songs make me wonder what Nine Inch Nails might’ve sounded like if Trent Reznor had escaped the suck vortex. The Zincs and the Narrator open. a 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $10. –Monica Kendrick
cTHE LOCUST It’s been nearly four years since the Locust put out their last full-length, Plague Soundscapes–I’m not counting the ten-minute 2005 “album” Safety Second, Body Last–but for me the bloom still hasn’t come off that giant buzzing corpse flower of a record. (Granted, that may be because I can only listen to it when I’m already trembling from insomnia.) On New Erections, released in March on Anti-, they cut the number of tracks in half and sometimes break the three-minute mark. The manic, pummeling drums are still foregrounded–last time I saw the band, the kit was on the front line with everybody else–and the arrangements are still facial-tic twitchy, belying the occasional depth of structure in all the grinding and screaming. Songs like “God Wants Us All to Work in Factories” and “Slum Service (Served on the Sly)” even have a new sort of urgency, distinct from the usual incoherent panic and fury–it’s as if they actually want you to understand what they’re saying. Daughters, Cattle Decapitation, and Bastard Noise open. a 7:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $14, $12 in advance. A –Monica Kendrick
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