Events Search – Recommended
312-733-9463Johnny Young, Michael Vallera, MT Coast, Double Morris
Tue., Jan. 22, 9:30 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
In the duo Cleared, multi-instrumentalist Michael Vallera launches surges of jagged guitar chords and looming electronic fog banks against Steven Hess’s unyielding drumbeats. In solo settings Vallera sticks to an electric guitar and pedals, but his music hardly sounds limited; without another player to establish a rhythm or set boundaries, he stirs up masses of sound that feel as big as weather systems. Tone and texture can vary drastically from one set to the next; I’ve heard him drone like a squadron of WW II bombers and swirl like he was auditioning for the Cocteau Twins, and on the upcoming EP Dead Suns (Nihilist) he lets fly with some shredding that sounds like someone fed steel girders into a lumber mill. —Bill Meyer Johnny Young headlines; Michael Vallera, MT Coast, and Double Morris open.
$8, free with RSVP at rsvp@emptybottle.com
MAKE: A Literary Magazine Release Party
Thu., Jan. 24, 7 p.m.Literary Events
To celebrate the release of MAKE's latest issue, which centers on the theme of "architectural" and features new work from Chris Wiewiora and Paul Pedroza, local comedian Adam Burke hosts a Q and A session with the City of Chicago’s Official Cultural Historian, Tim Samuelson. Also slated to appear is poet Ted Mathys and Reader contributor Tovah Burstein.
$8-$10
Erin McKeown, Jenn Grant
Fri., Jan. 25, 9 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
Erin McKeown shows off the malleability of the songs on the new Manifestra (TVP) by including a bonus disc that acknowledges her coffeehouse roots with ten acoustic-guitar versions of the polished full-band tracks on the album proper. McKeown has always seemed to me like a pop polymath trapped in the body of a protest singer, but here she approaches politics with a heavy-handedness she’s previously kept in check. “The Politician” helpfully points out that corruption is bad, and “The Jailer” notes that current border policies are fucked-up. “Baghdad to the Bayou,” which channels the swamp-rock grooves of CCR and ties the war in Iraq to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, was cowritten via text message with Rachel Maddow. I’m down with what McKeown is saying, but I’d personally prefer to find such opining on the op-ed page. Thankfully her delivery—with the exception of the horrible rapping on the title track—redeems these lapses in judgment. Like the proverbial spoonful of sugar, her effortless singing and charming melodies help even bitterest lyric medicine go down. McKeown is joined here by Marc Dalio on drums and Matt Douglas on horns. —Peter Margasak Jenn Grant opens.
$12
Ital, Chrissy Murderbot, Hieroglyphic Being
Sun., Jan. 27, 9 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
According to a Village Voice profile by Michaelangelo Matos, San Francisco postrocker turned Brooklyn dance-music producer Daniel Martin-McCormick considers Malcolm X his primary fashion inspiration and says that he tries “to exclusively wear Bob Marley shirts”—in other words, he’s either a completely radical guy or the worst kind of obnoxious smirking ironist. But I don’t care which—Dream On, the 2012 album he released under the pseudonym Ital on incredible British label Planet Mu, is so good that I’d forgive behavior more egregious than fake Marley fandom. Martin-McCormick also plays in noisy experimental group Mi Ami, where his work has grown increasingly electronics-based, but nothing he’s done there has suggested that he was developing into what Dream On has revealed him to be: a full-blown techno producer with one foot in the form’s Detroit roots and one in its wiggy, art-damaged fringe. The album is full of odd sounds and challenging ideas, but more crucially it’s also the sort of thing that can get a crowd moving. —Miles Raymer Chrissy Murderbot and Hieroglyphic Being open.
$8
Lucinda Williams, Doug Pettibone, Kenneth Brian
Sun., Jan. 27, 8 p.m. and Mon., Jan. 28, 8 p.m.Folk & Country
Faith Healer
Through 2/3: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
TurnAround Theatre had a hit with this drama by Irish playwright Brian Friel back in 1995. Now the Den Theatre has reunited director J.R. Sullivan with the original cast for another go. Comprising four monologues by three unreliable narrators, the play recounts the slow unraveling of self-doubting faith healer Frank Hardy (Si Osborne), his embittered wife (Lia Mortensen), and the Cockney showbiz promoter (Brad Armacost) who loves them both. Every second of Sullivan's remount is riveting, thanks to a cast who manage to seem deeply connected to one another even though they're never onstage at the same time. I didn't see the original version, but it's hard to imagine younger performers conveying the same depth and hard-won experience. —Zac Thompson $28
The Unveiling and Dozens of Cousins
Through 2/9: Fri-Sat 8 PMTheater & Performance
James Joyce had Stephen Dedalus, David Mamet had Bobby Gould. And Vaclav Havel had a hapless alter ego named Ferdinand Vanek, bearing witness to life's absurdities in four plays that Havel wrote over the course of 25 years. Trap Door Theatre mounts the first and the last of those plays. In 1975's The Unveiling, Vanek spends an excruciating evening with maniacally status-conscious Vera and Michael, who are hell-bent on "resolving his situation" by turning him into a consumerist clone of themselves. In 2010's Dozens of Cousins, Vanek returns to find the dissolute but defiantly condescending couple in the throes of collapse. Beata Pilch's manicured, high-strung staging makes the submerged menace of the pieces hilarious, bracing, and deeply disturbing. Her laser-sharp cast turn 65 minutes of increasing irrationality into a giddy psychological thrill ride. —Justin Hayford $20-$25
Barnstormers
Through 2/23: Sat 4 PMTheater & Performance
Two caveats regarding Drinking & Writing Theater's SportsCenter-style comedy show: One, it's a celebration of functional alcoholism, which is inherently icky. Two, although dolled up with sketch bits, it's basically a literary history lesson . . . set in a bar. Get over those hurdles, though, and you arrive at a casually fascinating edutainment covering booze, sports, and journalism, with set pieces on topics ranging from the notorious MLB wife swap involving Yankee Fritz Peterson to Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo Kentucky Derby trip. There are also first-person essays by Drinking & Writing principals Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda. It's far from polished, but that's a part of the appeal. For better or worse, Benjamin and Mosqueda make you feel like their old drinking buddy. —Dan Jakes $15
