This week’s live music offerings can’t be committed to a true-to-form theme; but after some deliberation, I found a way to jam these round pegs into their square holes. One trail blazed her own genre (Patti Smith), another oscillates somewhere in between noise rock and what-the-fuck (Black Pus), and one can’t seem to pick a favorite (Deer Tick), but this grab bag of performers share one lot of common ground—experimentation. Unconventional in both purpose and approach, the artists headed to Chicago this week have taken refuge in their own artistic ideals and the fact that no one else does it quite like them. Don’t miss your chance to watch these mad scientists at work.
BLACK PUSBrian Chippendale has a mean case of “shiny ball syndrome.” From penning queasy comic strip Puke Force to wrinkling thick sheets of fuzzy noise rock as one half of Lightning Bolt, there’s always yet another project on the back burner, never hesitant to crank up the heat. Chippendale’s latest pursuit? Well, in case you haven’t yet enjoyed his conversation with Zath’s Seth Sher, it’s his prog-clattering solo project Black Pus. As the rhythmic anchor of Lightning Bolt, Chippendale battered through his sets with unmarred intensity, groaning into a mike housed in his mask with morbid commitment. These sentiments were all but abandoned in the pursuit of Black Pus. Now manhandling a kit and a platter of pedals, Chippendale orchestrates all the hysteria himself. He reams with organized chaos from behind his paint-spattered drum kit, so haphazard and glaring that it looks as if he it barreled through a kindergarten arts and crafts table. Now touring behind new release All My Relations, Black Pus gurgles with unexpected contrast, a balance best harnessed in “Marauder” with its squawking vocals—as if they’re spewing from a kazoo—and sludgy guitar curiously nestle into a crisp drum loop. Admittedly not a technician on the throne, Chippendale still weaves in shards of classical influences. “All Out Of Sorts” hops across a bed of slick jazz fills and impossibly fluid wails, eventually bowling into an abandon-all-hope crescendo. With a lust for the bizarre, Chippendale always seems miles ahead of the rest of us; but eventually we all manage to catch up, just keep your ear pressed to the ground. Oozing Wound and Mounds open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, $10, $8 in advance.
