Results tagged “emptybottle”

If you're looking for something a bit more low-key than dancing with a thousand sweaty bodies at the Congress to the raucous antics of Girl Talk, then pencil in Swedish indie pop singer-songwriter Jens Lekman's New Year's Eve show at the Empty Bottle. Lekman's bittersweet melodies have won our hearts and we think they'd make the perfect soundtrack for stealing a midnight kiss from a stranger. Tickets are going to go fast, so grab yours now for $30 each.

             

Bad Veins did not let us down last night as they delivered an epicly lush set from the stage of The Empty Bottle. The fact that two dudes and a reel-to-reel tape machine can deliver such impassioned, majestic music is hard to believe until you experience it for yourself. We spoke to the band after the show and they hope to return to Chicago early next year, and when they do you should make sure you are in the crowd that night.

We're just as guilty as the rest of you when it comes to living for the weekend. We have a habit of working hard for the pleasure of playing hard come Friday night. All routines get old after awhile and lately we've found ourselves venturing away from our desks and outside our living rooms on weeknights to partake in the shows that grace our favorite venues on the off evenings. Here's our picks for the week ahead in weeknights.

First of all, let's just get this out of the way at the very top; Bad Veins sound a LOT like The Killers before that band went and embraced their Las Vegas roots to a ridiculous extent. Bad Veins singer Benjamin Davis bears a striking vocal resemblance to Brandon Flowers -- had Flowers ever taken vocal lessons and gained more control and range -- and the music he creates with drummer and musical partner Sebastien Schultz has that same expansive, epic feel that is catchy instead of monolithic. So there, that's done. Now that's out of the way, let's center on just how awesome these guys are.

If you've ever been to The Empty Bottle then you've seen Radley the Cat. Sometimes wandering outside, sometimes keeping an eye on the bar, and sometimes simply quietly passing judgment on the bands playing from the back of the room. We just got the sad word that Radley passed away at 2:32 this afternoon.

We weren't sure what to expect from Ghostly International's 10 Year Anniversary party last Friday night at the Empty Bottle. The lineup was certainly ambitious and we hoped the niche label would find a warm welcome in the fickle terrain that is Chicago nightlife. A rainy trek to the venue found us pessimistic and prematurely doubting Chicago's enthusiasm for the evening ahead. The audience for electronic music in this city is a hard crowd to bridge. Good times and drunken debauchery increasingly feel favored over critical listening and passion for the talent. We arrived and stepped inside the Empty Bottle to find our fears vanish and a grin grace our lips alongside a packed house of Ghostly fans as eclectic as the lineup.

Ann Arbor, Michigan’s Ghostly International has long been an independent label to watch. Label head, Sam Valenti, has a knack for culling a roster of some of the most interesting, off-kilter music out there. Though Ghostly has a decidedly electronic focus, Valenti is never one to adhere strictly to a single genre, and this open-mindedness is reflected in his artist roster which runs the gamut from DJ/Producer Matthew Dear to shoegaze band School of Seven Bells. Equally as strong as Ghostly's musical offerings is their carefully curated art pairings. Ghostly merges art and music flawlessly, teaming up artists, designers and musicians to form a label that is a sensory feast.

The recent, much publicized antics of stoner-garage act Wavves has everyone taking note of what just might become the defining musical trend of 2009. The recent popularity of experimental acts like Dan Deacon and Animal Collective convinced music fans to think outside the box of head-nodding choral loops and drum solos and embrace the new sound of improvisation. The second half of 2009 sees guitars take the place of samplers as bands both old and new wash off the smiles, don dark shades and take a walk on the wild side.

This weekend marks the return of one of our favorite music-centered Chicago streetfests, Do Division, held in Wicker Park at the Damen and Division intersection. For a five buck donation, the annual streetfest and sidewalk sale gives you access to specials from local vendors and retailers, fare from neighborhood restaurants and bars and an amazing lineup of live music from near and far curated by the Empty Bottle. Here are some of our top picks.

MP3: I Was A King "Norman Bliek"

Pontiak is heavy psychedelia powered by the sibling power-trio of Van, Lain, and Jennings Carney. On their latest disc, Maker, they combine caterwauling instrumental freak-outs with heavy blues sing-alongs backed by the choirs of the damned. This is the sort of music hellbent on destroying your hearing because you just won't be able to turn it up loud enough. This is music made for wild-eyed mountain men taking it cues from both backwoods foot stompers and desert dry stoner riffs.

We were big fans of Shiner's lumbering attack back in the day, so it's not exactly a revelation to hear that we really dig the band's offshoot, The Life And Times. Where Shiner was like a methodical steamroller though, The Life And Times nimbly swings. The songs are still heavy but we're more prone to swoon under their influence then pump our fist to their attack. We suppose that makes total sense when you consider their new album is titled Tragic Boogie. Fits, huh?

In true Easter weekend diversion news, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO hits the Empty Bottle Saturday night. This incarnation of the long-running Japanese psych/prog/experimental "soul collective" includes Acid Mothers founder and spiritual leader Kawabata Makato and tends toward freeform freakouts of the monolithic, 1970s moustache variety, blended of course with sci-fi ray gun keyboards and a hundred sudden left turns. Or, as the AMT & TMP UFO Web site puts it (creative spelling intact), "What you are going to experience is ass kickin' bud whippin' far out drop dead cool music from another solar system when the acient gods still rurled the Earth."

Usually we're giving out free tickets to cool shows -- and trust us, Thursday's Asobi Seksu show at The Empty Bottle is gonna be hot -- but this w4m Craigslist Missed Connection caught our eye:

Coupleskate was a band that rolled across our radar a while ago, but we won't lie to you ... we forgot all about 'em. And then we saw this week's Time Out Chicago and one of the gals within reminded us of the band's existence. Then ex-Chicagoist / current TOC staffer Scott Smith reminded us we had once looked into booking the band said gal was in for a previous CTRL-ALT-ROCK and it all came flooding back to us. This underscored the peril of being an infrequently gigging but obscenely talented local band ... you risk falling off the view screen.

Mr. Russia is not from Russia, but you probably already guessed that. What they are from, though, is some sludgy pool that formed behind CBGB's in the late '70s, stagnated throughout the '80s, was hit by lighting in the '90s, thus creating some rudimentary lifeforms that picked up some instruments and learned to play them alongside each other at the latter end of our current decade. Mr. Russia is primitive in their pursuits, clanking out simple-minded punk rock tunes that keep running after '80s synth pop flavors only to have those sounds melt away just beyond their reach. Mr. Russia wear uniforms that are not uniforms. Their look matches their sound, or is it the other way around? Mr. Russia plays "roots rock," or they would if the term "roots rock" hadn't been appropriated by a bunch of banjo and fiiddle playing pansies when in fact "roots rock" should be used to describe rock and/or roll that yanks itself out of the ground whole and squealing like a drunkard chasing after its basest tendencies. Mr. Russia had the balls to give out their last EP as a cassette only release. Mr. Russia's forthcoming debut, Teething, is one of the sweatiest sides of rock and/or roll we've enjoyed in the recent past.

Jay Reatard at The Empty Bottle

It's apropos that Milk At Midnight be featured on this installment of Rockin' Our Turntable since their new album, Less Love More Acid, is only physically available on vinyl. (Don't worry, it comes with a data disc of both WAV and MP3 files, or you can download a copy from their label, so you can still enjoy it without lugging around a portable record player.)

San Francisco's Lemonade remind us of late '90s Psychic TV, as they blend dance beats with visions of acid flashbacks while displaying a willingness to throw the entire enterprise over a cliff if only because they're curious about what that would sound like. This art-dance combos employs wildly eclectic sounds on their self-titled debut in boldly surprising ways without ever running into the danger of coming across as willfully obtuse. There's more than a healthy dose of experimentation, but even when things seem about to drift off into the ether -- for instance the hazy extended outro of "Blissout" that immediately follows a frenzied tribal drum break -- it's still naturally instinctual to the point that the tunes still make sense.

The Sea and Cake are playing The Empty Bottle tomorrow night to celebrate the release of their latest album, Car Alarm. We're going to be honest with you and admit that the new disc breaks zero new ground, and the last few Sea and Cake albums are basically interchangeable.* They're pretty, accomplished, and well done; but they come across as hermetically sealed documents too aloof to really connect. The new one is another in that line of thinking, but we really don't care. They're a band really good at doing what they do, and that's enough for us.

Brrrrr...can you feel winter in the air? Gone are the street festivals and summer nights spent on the patio at Happy Village, but the crisp air and transition from peep toes to boots ushers in one of my favorite time of year. What's more cozy that coming in out of the cold to a warm bar and good, Chicago-made music?

           

Tuesday night's show at Logan Square Auditorium was like a junior high hipster sock hop infiltrated and humped to within an inch of its life by the glowstick toting rave nation. Girls and their boytoys pogoed in unison -- with uniformly plastered smiles upon their sweat drenched mugs -- to the sugary sweet beats and NSFW come-ons chirped by French pop chanteuse Yelle. We would define the room's mood as exuberant bordering on noo-kyoo-ler. In short; it was pretty awesome.

A few years ago, Bedhead spent the night on the floor of our apartment – if we remember correctly one of them was “friendly” with our roommate at the time – and in the morning all the members woke up and shuffled around our pad in a daze and sporting, yes, bedhead. We had seen them play The Empty Bottle the night before and had been struck by just how powerful such a sleepy sounding and slowly building band could be. They rarely hit the distortion pedal but the lack of noise was more than made up for by an excess of emotional intensity. When the band broke up a few years later we were saddened but unsurprised since we reckoned it took a lot out of those guys to keep such surging depths under control night after night without ever just cutting loose.

Tuesday, Sept. 30

The Prairie Cartel's debut 12" successfully lays out the group's sonic manifesto in two original tracks, a cover, and a remix. The band is populated by men who can only be described as rockers and Chicago mainstays seduced by the sounds of the dance floor. Opener "Fuck Yeah, That Wide" features Scott Lucas' ragged vocal delivery over a combination of adrenalized four-on-the-foor beats and electric guitars. Think of it as punk blood in a Go-Go cage. It leads nicely into "Keep Everybody Warm," as the group subverts a hippy-dippy vocal sample and turns it into an entreaty to get even closer to your dance partner and loose yourself in the swirling rhythms.

We're beginning to wonder what they feed babies in Sweden since they all seem to grow up into pop producing monster machines. From ABBA to The Hives to Peter Bjorn and John and now to Lykke Li. Li is a 22-year-old overachiever eager to gain popularity and capable of crafting the sort of vehicle primed to vault her into the spotlight. Her debut Youth Novels, largely produced by Björn Yttling of the aforementioned Peter Bjorn and John, is an impressive collection of rhythmically driven pop tunes.

The first time you hear them, Dengue Fever is one of those bands that will most likely cause you to do a spit-take. Um, psychedelic Cambodian go-go music anyone?

North Carolinian experimental indie kids Annuals are on nature kick as they tour in support of their major label debut EP, Wet Zoo (Sony/Canvasback). The youngsters' catchy brand of loud-soft, organic-synthetic exuberance made them blog darlings in the Internet-fruitful musical year of 2006, and Annuals' exploration of the weird trappings of youth through a blend of rural-ish folk-pop and symphonic studio bombast continues on Wet Zoo.

M83 (a.k.a. Anthony Gonzalez) albums have tended toward being sweepingly atmospheric, with rumbling songs that stretch out and cover the landscape with warm gooey tones. The new album Saturdays=Youth starts off with a snippet that would lead the listener to believe this pattern would continue to hold true, until the deliciously cold and shimmering "Kim & Jessie" kicks in like the opening credits of a John Hughes film.

We have to admit we're a bit caught off-guard by an email we just got from the Empty Bottle: