Group show featuring work by local photographers. Opening reception 11 AM-6 PM.
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
Clear some space in your makeshift beer cellar (aka coat closet), because the Beer Temple in Avondale is now open, and it's stocking the kind of craft brews that belong in goblets and chalices and other fancy-pants stemware. Co-owner Margaret Quinn told the Reader's Julia Thiel that the beer-dork haven carries beer from more than a dozen countries and will likely specialize in sours, mainly of the Belgian variety. Everyone has a record collection, am I right? Why not impress (or confound) friends with a sour-beer collection instead?
Blum and Harvey (The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History) talk about The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America.
Writer-activist Tim Wise (White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son et al) delivers the annual lecture.