Last Minute Plans: Bare Mutants At The Empty Bottle

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 13, 2013 6:20PM

We don't think they would want us to call them a supergroup, but Bare Mutants kind of is. Fronted by Jared Gummere of the Ponys and including Seth Bohn from Mannequin Men, Jeanine O’Toole from The 1900s, and scenesters/fine musicians unaffiliated with particular bands like Matt Holland and Leslie Deckard—if you go to shows in Chicago you've seen them—Bare Mutants is constructed by some fine local musicians.

Their debut, The Affliction, has just been released and it's a heavy album, drenched in melancholia and reverb. The songs creep along, often starting in a near meditative state, before building up into squalling waves of guitar, drums and organ all roiling against the other's sound. Gummere's vocals are deep and slink out of the basement darkness to reel you into the band's grip.

We saw Bare Mutants a few months ago and are pleased to report that they deliver all of the creepiness of their recorded work at an amplified level on stage. And we mean amplified both in the level of volume and the emotional intensity within the delivery. The band plays a record release show tonight, September 13, at The Empty Bottle, and it's a good bet that they'll cause that venerable club's walls to quake at their approach.