As 2010 winds down, we’ve still got a bunch of potentially terrific shows to look forward to, including Ludacris at the Allstate Arena (Sunday), Elvis Costello at the Chicago Theatre (Monday) and the Hold Steady at Lincoln Hall (Dec. 30), plus a gaggle of New Year’s Eve shows that we’ll preview in future columns.
But it’s also time to take stock and look back on a year of heavy-duty concert-going. Out of more than 100 shows I attended, here are my favorites from 2010:
1. Gorillaz, Oct. 16 at UIC Pavilion: The cartoon band invented by Blur’s Damon Albarn and Jamie “Tank Girl” Hewlett more than a decade ago has morphed into a real band, with more than 30 musicians and singers, including a core group built on former Clash members Mick Jones and Paul Simonon. Albarn orchestrates it all, blending hip-hop, dub reggae, Eastern music, punk, soul and myriad other genres into a soundtrack for a dying planet that doesn’t sound like a eulogy at all. Instead, it becomes one the year’s biggest dance parties.
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.
James Murphy is in many ways the antithesis of cool. A chunky guy in a checkered shirt and gym shoes with a frazzled salt-and-pepper beard, he could walk down Michigan Avenue this afternoon and melt in with the crowd just like your average, everyday video-store clerk.
But with LCD Soundsystem, he has made some of the most galvanizing club music of the last decade and he has evolved into a surprisingly dynamic front man. After a series of club singles and three superior albums, he has turned his solo studio act into a roaring live septet, shimmying at the intersection of postpunk rock and postmodern dance music.
It translated beautifully Monday at the sold-out Aragon in the first of two Chicago shows (a few tickets remain for the encore Tuesday at the Riviera). Though the ballroom’s muddy acoustics have tripped up many a band, LCD sounded remarkably clear in the vast space, and the fans to the very back of the room were in celebration mode throughout, cheering everything from cowbell solos to spinning mirror balls with an enthusiasm that was met by the band’s energetic performance.
1. ”Dance Yrself Clean” 2. “Drunk Girls” 3. “Get Innocuous!” 4. “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” 5. “I Can Change” 6. “All My Friends” 7. “You Wanted a Hit” 8. “Tribulations” 9. “Movement” 10. “Yeah” Encore 11. “Someone Great” 12. “Losing My Edge” 13. “Home”
LCD Soundsystem: James Murphy has made three of the best albums of the last decade, a near-perfect cocktail of dance beats; trancy textures; smart, witty and sometimes surprisingly poignant lyrics; and soaring melodies. On stage, his band of art-punks ratchets up the tunes to ecstatic heights, Monday with Hot Chip at the Aragon, 1106 W. Lawrence, $32.25, ticketmaster.com; and Tuesday with Hot Chip at the Riviera, 4746 N. Racine, $34; etix.com.
First prize for the day’s most grossly inappropriate outfit goes to Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion, who wore skin-tight leather pants for his late-afternoon set Saturday at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park, and soaked right through them. Now that’s either complete irrationality or complete dedication to the rock, and this day needed a lot of both to survive it. Day Two was even hotter than Day One at Pitchfork, and the heat gripped the festival like a noose in the afternoon, perhaps explaining why there were only a handful of truly standout sets. Titus Andronicus delivered monster anthems at the height of the midafternoon meltdown. Jon Spencer made it seem like 1995 all over again. And, by gosh, was LCD Soundsystem something else. If this is indeed James Murphy’s last go-round with the band, I will never forget the moment “All My Friends” rolled over me like a big wave illuminated by a crescent moon and a disco ball.
Thanks to my dedicated colleagues Bob Gendron (BG) and Andy Downing (AD) who contributed to the hour-by-hour account of the day’s events below, along with yours truly, Greg Kot (GK).
1:03 p.m. "I hear frequencies in the back of my head," proclaims Netherfriends leader Shawn Rosenblatt, whose band's reverb is up so high it seems that his vocals are completely separate from the Chicago group's ramshackle pop. The echoes provide an interesting sonic illusion, a good thing, since Rosenblatt doesn't have anything of importance say. Percussive songs randomly stop and start, and wordless vocal harmonies spring up like a Jack in the Box. At times, the psychedelic choruses resemble the singing of Whoville residents from Dr. Seuss' "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." Netherfriends score big on the cute factor but lack memorable material. The trio's set doubles as band practice in a basement where anything goes. (BG)
1:10 p.m. Philadelphia quintet Free Energy has a vintage look — think Stillwater in “Almost Famous” — and an equally vintage, if not-all-that-memorable, sound. It's clear the band members have absorbed plenty of T-Rex and Thin Lizzy, and their youthful enthusiasm fuels mindless dance-rock nuggets like “Bang Pop” and the shimmying “Free Energy.” On the latter, drummer Nick Shuminsky pounds his cowbell so hard that I half-expect Will Ferrell to dance out from the wings in his "Saturday Night Live" “more cowbell” getup. What singer Paul Spranger lacks in natural charisma (his stiff delivery on the strutting “All I Know” keeps the song grounded), he makes up for in genuine excitement. At times it sounds like the ever-grinning Spranger's stage banter has been penned by some combination of Jeff Spicoli and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: “Sweet!”; “That's so cool!”; “This totally rules!” (AD)
LCD Soundsystem: James Murphy is pretty much a one-man band in the studio, but on tour he rocks it with an energetic rhythm section. This should make for a fine warm-up to his Pitchfork Music Festival headlining show in July, 9 p.m. Wednesday at Metro, 3730 N. Clark St., $25; etix.com.
James Murphy could pass for an unshaven auto mechanic not a rock star, but there he is posing on the cover of the latest LCD Soundsystem album as a rakish Bryan Ferry, wearing a suit and tie and getting down like he was the coolest Mac Daddy to ever hit a dancefloor.
Murphy has been balancing sophisticated taste in disco and art rock with a prickly punk aesthetic for the last decade, first as producer for influential singles by the Rapture and the Juan MacLean, later as auteur of LCD Soundsystem. On the band’s third studio album, “This is Happening” (DFA), he remains in thrall to the cutting edge brand of dance music that flourished during Ferry’s Roxy Music heyday. He references David Bowie’s ‘70s work with Brian Eno (“Heroes”) and Iggy Pop (“The Idiot”). And he clearly adores Talking Heads, particularly the intricate polyrhythmic arrangements on “Fear of Music” (1979) and “Remain in Light” (1980). Though never highly original, Murphy has great taste in source material and an imaginative approach to reconfiguring it as tracks that bridge dance, rock and underground music.
At first he came across as a brilliant manipulator with a knowing, wise-guy sense of humor (as evidenced by early singles “Losing My Edge” and “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”). But on LCD Soundsystem’s second album, the 2007 release “Sound of Silver,” Murphy injected an emotional depth and tenderness that gave tracks such as “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” a resonance beyond the dancefloor.
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