Show review: Chelsea Wolfe at Aragon Ballroom, 5/5/14

By Sarah Rosenfeld

Chelsea Wolfe // via chelseawolfe.net

Gothic-folk L.A. singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe brought her ghostly harmonics and haunting vocals to the Aragon Ballroom on Monday night opening for heavy rock hitters Queens of the Stone Age.  The Monday show was added after this Friday's show sold out almost immediately after going on sale.  Playing to a mostly packed room, Chelsea Wolfe came out on stage to Feral Love (see video below), a song from her newest album Pain is Beauty and also used in one of HBO's Game of Thrones season 4 trailers.  In a nice little nod to the city, she wore a lovely billowy black dress by Chicago designer Hogan McLaughlin.  Mostly playing songs from her latest album, Chelsea and her band warmed up the mostly there-to-see-QOTSA crowd with her ethereal sounds, as she switched back and forth between playing guitar and just singing.  The three guys in her band were a high energy yin to her slow, swaying yang as they brought to life the dark moods created by her songs with droning drums and sludgy distortion on the guitars.  Although it was a short set at just under 30 minutes and Chelsea apologized to the crowd at the end for some "technical difficulties," it sounded as though she made a few new fans in the audience.  Considering that this show was at the Aragon, the sound was actually really good.

Catch her again at the Aragon tomorrow 5/9 for the second sold out show with QOTSA.  Chelsea Wolfe will also be back in Chicago on May 24th at The Vic to play an acoustic set with strings, in what is sure to be a beautiful and unique show opening for the Eels.  So if you didn't manage to get tickets for tomorrow's sold out show, you can still catch her later in the month!

Show review: Telekinesis at Lincoln Hall, 5/15/13

By Quinn Donnell

Several months ago, NPR’s popular music-based podcast, All Songs Considered, aired an episode themed “Bands That Should Be Bigger.” The first artist featured on the episode was Telekinesis, whose music co-host Robin Hilton described as “perfect pop.”

The man responsible for this “perfect pop” is Michael Benjamin Lerner, whose third album, Dormarion, displays percussion-driven tunes with nostalgic lyricism and explosive transitions. In support of Dormarion, Telekinesis has been on the road for the past month, and on Wednesday, Lerner and his band made an appearance at Lincoln Hall.

Telekinesis was supported by fellow Seattleites, Deep Sea Diver, the latest musical project from Jessica Dobson, known for her work as a member of The Shins ever since the band’s lineup rearrangement before 2012’s Port of Morrow. Although Dobson’s work with The Shins best exemplifies her talent as a guitarist, her role in Deep Sea Diver demonstrates her abilities as a songwriter and a frontwoman. While a number of Deep Sea Diver’s songs involved Dobson playing her usual Fender Jaguar, others featured appearances on the keyboards, creating a sound reminiscent of Beach House’s synthesizer and vocal pairings.

After a set of material from their debut album, History Speaks, Deep Sea Diver handed the stage over to Lerner and his band composed of Say Hi’s Eric Elbogen on bass, The Globes’ Erik Walters on guitar, and Wild Flag’s Rebecca Cole on the keyboards. The supergroup’s interpretation of Telekinesis’ material resulted in unique renditions of certain songs, most notably through Walters’ crafty guitar riffs on tracks like “Dirty Thing.”

Show review: Garbage at the Riviera, 4/3/13

By Frank Krolicki

Long before the days of YouTube, Vimeo and being able to watch music videos wherever and whenever you damn well please, I remember spending quite a bit of time as a 12-year-old kid scoping out MTV, hoping certain videos would appear on the screen before I had to switch it off and go do something else. One of those videos was Garbage's "Stupid Girl." I remember being bewitched by Shirley Manson in that video, thinking she looked a bit pissed and intimidating, and finding that pretty great. That video began a long-term fascination with Garbage--a fascination that somehow never involved me seeing them live. Until this week. After many years and many missed opportunities, Garbage's Wednesday night show at the Riviera--their second Chicago show in support of their 2012 album Not Your Kind of People in one year--finally found me catching one of the select few bands I've been following ever since I was just an awkward, moody adolescent.

Before Garbage would hit the stage, though, I'd have to sit through L.A.-formed shoegaze act IO Echo. I hadn't heard anything from the band before, and when that's the case I go in with expectations relatively low. Surprise, surprise--they turned out to be pretty excellent. In fact, they had my undivided attention throughout their entire set, which featured a mix of both slow-burning and punchy fuzzed-out confections, made to sparkle by the spritely voice and presence of frontwoman Ioanna Gika, who danced around the dimly-lit stage in a kimono while she sang. They had me so sold that I even bought their new record, Ministry of Love, after the show.

As for Garbage, I decided to go into the show without looking up the setlists they've been playing on this tour so that I could be surprised. And I was, when the band came out and kicked into the full-on guitar crunch of "Bad Boyfriend," a non-single from one of their most under the radar albums, 2005's Bleed Like Me. Opening with that song signaled that it wouldn't be a predictable show, and it wasn't. Not only was it an unexpected surprise to hear other deeper cuts from the G catalog such as "Cup of Coffee" from 2001's beautifulgarbage and "As Heaven Is Wide" from the 1995 self-titled debut album (a song Shirley mentioned they haven't played since the '90s), but having been a newbie to their live show I also wasn't expecting Shirley to be as animated as a front person as she was. She danced with purpose through every song that was danceable--at times like a woman possessed--and even dropped down to do a few push-ups at one point. She's also very casually funny; near the end of the night I'm pretty sure she informed us, through her pronounced Scottish accent, of a throat lozenge stuck in her teeth.