Robyn: After releasing a trilogy of “Body Talk” albums in 2010 that put a fresh spin on dance pop, the Swedish singer should be in a celebratory mood, 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Riviera, 4746 N. Racine, $25; etix.com. Update: Robyn show has been postponed due to illness, according to the singer's record label. Promoter Jam Productions announced Friday that the show has been rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Riviera.
Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt: Two ace songwriters with sly deliveries make this a double-bill not to be missed; they’ll be performing acoustically, swapping songs and singing back-up on each other’s songs, 8 p.m. Friday at Rialto Square Theatre, 102 N. Chicago, Joliet, Ill., $65 and $49.50; ticketmaster.com.
1. Janelle Monae, “The ArchAndroid” (Bad Boy): The Atlanta singer’s boundary-busting debut album has ambition to burn. It’s a self-empowerment manifesto couched inside a futuristic “emotion-picture” about an android’s battle to overcome oppression – got all that? The music is equally adventurous, touching on everything from lounge jazz to hard funk. A star is born.
2. The Besnard Lakes, “The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night” (Jagjaguwar): The Montreal band perfects its marriage of Brian Wilson-like melodic splendor and My Bloody Valentine-worthy guitar roar. While the lyrics are a bonfire of earthly espionage and anxiety, the music shoots for the heavens.
The singer Robyn, born Robin Miriam Carlsson in Sweden 31 years ago, grew up loving pop music from America. She heard not just joy and release, great dance beats and escapism, but art and experimentation, passion and vulnerability. For her, pop represented limitless possibility, the promise that music could communicate on several levels at once.
Over the last decade she’s lived up to that promise on a string of releases, culminating this year with a three-part series of extraordinary “Body Talk” albums.
“From the beginning, I always thought pop and substance were not mutually exclusive,” she says in an interview before beginning her latest tour of America, which brings her to Metro on Saturday for a sold-out concert. “I grew up with parents who were doing experimental theater, so I gravitated toward artistic expression, pop music on a weird, arty tip, but mixed with club culture, lounge music, dance beats. That shaped the way I wanted to be, and it stimulated me as an artist. When I started (as a teenager) I expected to do that, but it wasn’t my time. That way of looking at pop was not widely accepted, especially when I was starting out. So I had to wait.”
Jack Black, circa “School of Rock,” would’ve appreciated this face-melter. The Pitchfork Music Festival got underway Friday in Union Park with enough heat and humidity to prompt promoters to cut the price of bottled water in half to $1 for the rest of the weekend. Pitchfork, we salute you. And festivalgoers (all 54,000 of you by the end of the three-day festival), make sure to hydrate and apply sunscreen liberally.
As for the music, my overall impression of Day One was that we were off to a slow start, with a few exceptions.
The big winners: Sharon Van Etten, Broken Social Scene’s Chicago-centric set, and aerobics instructor/Euro-pop anti-diva Robyn.
The big outrage: Headliners Modest Mouse didn’t perform their biggest hit, “Float On.” I’m guessing their relationship to that 2003 breakthrough song is similar to what Warren Zevon’s was to “Werewolves of London” or Radiohead’s to “Creep” — it’s a once-popular song the artist who wrote it no longer loves. So are they obligated to play it? Me, I want to see a band play songs it is still emotionally invested in, no matter what the setting. If Modest Mouse is going to go through the motions performing “Float On” (much the way Van Morrison does when he phones in “Brown Eyed Girl”), I’ll pass. What’s your take? Let me know in the comments below.
I’m betting that Saturday is going to be just fine with much-anticipated sets by Gary, Ind., MC Freddie Gibbs, the Smith Westerns, and especially LCD Soundsystem. And Sunday should save the best for last with a murderer’s row of St. Vincent, Pavement, Big Boi, etc.
But let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of Friday. Below you’ll find an hour-by-hour account, with entries from yours truly, Greg Kot (GK), and my ever-enthusiastic colleagues Andy Downing (AD) and Kevin Pang (KP):
3:30 p.m. Sharon Van Etten could be forgiven for just wanting to run and hide as she takes the stage shielded from the Sun only by a veil of bangs. She is alone except for her electric guitar and she looks tiny amid the vast setting. She glances at the big screen flanking the stage and says, “There’s a bigger version of me over there,” as if she’d like to trade places with her video image. But, wow, what songs. Her butterfly voice floats over — take your pick — hypnotic/repetitive/trancy guitar strumming. She’s not attempting more than a few chords per song. But the effect is mesmerizing. She writes about broken relationships – an old, perhaps hackneyed subject — with switchblade insight. “Don’t you think I know you’re only trying to save yourself/You’re just like everyone else.” In the space of those two lines she moves from empathy to disappointment. Great stuff. The voice is direct, unvarnished, the sound of truth. “First day, first act, oh, my God … I feel like I have something to prove,” she says with disarming frankness. Mission accomplished. (GK)
4:10 p.m. From a spot near the soundboard, the Tallest Man on Earth appears to stand only about 5-foot-8. Kristian Mattson, the Swedish singer-songwriter who performs under the moniker, openly struggles with both the heat and a bad case of jet lag: “I haven't slept in two days,” he announces from the stage. Not surprisingly, his voice — clear, if somewhat nasal on record — seems to sport three-days growth. There's definitely more than a touch of Dylan in acoustic numbers like “Wild Hunt” and a particularly strong “King of Spain,” which finds the troubadour strumming his acoustic as though he wants to reduce the instrument to kindling. With the sun shining and clear blue skies overhead, it's fitting that so many tunes touch on the natural world; Mattson fills his songs with references to floating bluebirds, sunning lizards and flower-dotted meadows. Heck, even relationships sound more like big game hunts when filtered through Mattson's worldview. “If I don't get you in the morning,” he sings over dancing guitar on “Thousand Ways,” “By the evening I sure will.” (AD)
Clicking on the green links will direct you to a third-party Web site. Bloggers and staff writers are in no way affiliated with these links that are placed by an e-commerce specialist only after stories and posts have been published.