Empty Out Your Wallet

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 24, 2006 6:45PM

As we near the end of November and look to the winter, the on-sale listings begin to look a bit spare; only the hardiest of souls venture into a Chicago winter.

The California band Curtains records for the Sufjantastic label Asthmatic Kitty. And while its sound resembles the delicate folk of his records, that’s like saying Rivers Cuomo and Ira Glass resemble each other because they both favor heavy glasses and sweaters. Curtains favors spare arrangements that still sound as if they’re trying to play every instrument lying around the studio. It doesn’t always work, but the ennui it evokes means they have a good shot at doing the soundtrack for a remake of The Graduate.
Empty Bottle, January 11th, 9:30 p.m., $8, on-sale now.

If Bjork had been Genesis’ original lead singer instead of Peter Gabriel, then they’d sound like Under Byen. The Danes play an all-ages show at Abbey Pub with with Frida Hyvonen, which is good news for those who missed her solo show at Empty Bottle last week even after Jessica Hopper has been going on about her for the past couple of weeks.
Abbey Pub, March 13th, on-sale at noon tomorrow.

After all the coin they banked for that Outback Steakhouse commercial, we expected a rocking arena tour with pyro and inflatable farm animals. Sadly, Of Montreal disappoints and instead delivers another technopop love-in at Metro in support of its new album Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (out on January 23rd). Walter Meego opens.
Metro, March 15th, 6:30 p.m., $15, on-sale now.

And if you haven’t heard yet, January at Schuba’s marks the return of both its Monday night “Practice Space” residencies (with Pit Er Pat starting on January 8th) and Tomorrow Never Knows Fest, which starts on January 10th and expands from three to five nights. The bill includes French Kicks, Headlights, Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos, The Ponys, Paul Green’s School of Rock, Mucca Pazza, Office, and Bound Stems. TNK has generally been a hard-to-beat three nights of rock. We’ll see whether expanding it to five nights results in the law of diminishing returns.
Pit Er Pat: January 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th, 8 p.m. $6, on-sale now.
Tomorrow Never Knows: January 10th - 14th. Five-day passes are $50 while individual nights are $8/$15. See Schubas.com for showtimes and lineups.