Decent Days and Nights

By Tankboy on May 7, 2007 10:05PM

Considering what it's like outside, we were tempted to name this week's column Awesome Day and Decent Nights, but then we looked over the listings and realized Awesome Days and Awesome Nights would be more appropriate.

Tonight Chamber Strings begin their month-long Monday night residency at Schubas. A few months ago we caught their triumphant return to the stage after a five year hiatus, and can wish to bear witness that Kevin Junior seems to have vanquished whatever demons there were that kept him in the darkness for so long. Life affirming would be one way to describe his demeanor and stage presence now. Another way to describe it would be captivating. Look for the group to preview some new glam-orch-pop tunes from the in-the-works album.
Schubas, tonight, 9:00 p.m., $8, 21+

Cornelius' new disc is aptly titled Sensuous, and it is a lovely collection of weird asyncopatic bleeps, whirs, stops, and starts. The minimal songs thrash around within the confines Cornelius builds around them,, but we expect the multimedia of his stage show to set the beats free to run rampant through his aurdience. We suppose you could call this psychadelic electronic pop for its mind-expanding tendcencies, but we'd rather stick the notion of Cornelius as a genre-buster.
Park West, tonight, 7:30 p.m., $18, all ages

We admit that we have only become fans of CocoRosie recently, and it is wholly due to the excellence of their just released The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn. This duo of sisters creates ephemeral songs based on layers of vocals and anchors them with rhythms whose delicacy belie their strength as audio anchors. We fully expect songs like "Rainbowarriors" and "Japan" to turn the Metro's floor into an orgy of exultant bodies.
Metro, Friday, 8:00 p.m., $16 advance / $18 day of, 18+

UPDATE: We still haven't heard from the group's publicist but the internerd is abuzz with word that the band has had to cancel the whole tour at the last minute, and announced so via a cryptic MySpace bulletin.

Call Me Lightning would fit nicely into the whole stereotypical dance punk genre if they weren't so durn good. Instead of working one riff over and over again, and relying on one song repeated 12 times, Call Me Lightning tends to fall more into the camp of inspired grooves mined from Gang Of Four's precedent. They display restraint and aim to connect with emotive delivery and impassioned playing instead of just dialing it in.
Empty Bottle, Saturday, 9:30 p.m., $12 advance / $15 day of, 21+

Photo courtesy Jim Newberry