Results tagged “reggies”

The first time we heard Kylesa was when they did a cover of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" for a metal Syd Barrett tribute record. We dug the heavy way they attacked the song but what really impressed us was the nuanced handling of the center psych-out section of the song. But it was just one song on a tribute record so we kind of forgot about them.

We really like the sloppy Springsteen-punk of Titus Andronicus. Their debut, The Airing of Grievances, is chock-full of Springsteen-ian anthems fueled by snotty punk speed-freakery. Their self-titled anthem kicks off with drums that sound like Phil Spector manning a cell-phone recorder before exploding into a seriously distorted harmonica and finishing with the band injecting an optimistic fervor into the nihilistic refrain of "your life is over."

Danielson's freaky folk-gospel music first caught our ear several years ago, when a friend included the bizarre but undeniably catchy "Did I Step On Your Trumpet" on a comp and left it in our car. Though the indie world had already filled our ears with weirdos - Devendra Banhart and Man Man come to mind as contemporaries - something about the celebratory nature of Danielson's freakiness stood out.

The term 'grunge' always inspires a shudder of self-consciousness in Chicagoist...primarily because when you're a fourteen-year-old eldest child trying to find culture in the void of early-90s Midwestern suburbia, you jump at the first "counter-culture"-ish offering you see. For many it was the commercialized version of the heavy, chugging rock dirge that had been slowly seeping out of the Northwest since the mid-1980s. While pop "remixologist" producer Andy Wallace may have coated Nirvana's Nevermind in an impenetrable shellac of radio-friendly shimmer, many of the bands who made that record's explosion possible continued to toil just under the surface veneer of the grunge phenomenon.

“See that’s what I love about playing in America,” said a smiling Chris Wall, lead singer of British rock band Air Traffic while on stage at Reggie’s Rock Club Sunday night. “You get that...’whoo!-whoo!’ sound. You just don’t get that in England.”

Baby, it's cold outside ... but Chicago's brightest musical talent is on display at a cozy venue near you. Here are some solid bets for this week: