The Spiritual Bat

So last week. A friend of mine told me that she was having over in her place this band from Italy called Spiritual Bat. They were to perform at Nightlight Cafe Friday 18 September and Darkroom on the 20th. It's fun when you go only on the word of a friend (thank you Michelle) that you will like a certain band and that you can come and meet them. Just like that. When you get included you just go 'cause I'm a fucking moth. I can't tell the flame from the moon light. Off I go to risk the difference, and sure enough there they are on Michelle's couch, this lovely Italian couple Rosetta and Dario who were 24 hours away from making a fan out of me. They were being interviewed, and I listened, because I wanted clues as to what I would eventually listen to live the next night. Rosetta's hair was loosely dreadlocked. It worked very well for her. It felt as if I was the only one in the room that has not done his homework on them. And to a degree it was deliberate. I wanted the live Spiritual Bat experience to overwhelm me. It was very curious to see everyone around me taking pictures with the band and having their CD's signed and all that. If I wait until after I hear them, this moment behind the scenes will have passed and so I had to take it blind. Happy I am now to have done so. When a band or anyone for that matter travels far and wide and includes you in their journey it makes one feel special. This I feel regardless of what I think of the music they play. I'm still very grateful for being included in the journey, and Spiritual Bat came all the way from Italy to do gigs in the States. They are far from home, and so I deeply appreciate their trip to see us here. Before I show the concert pictures, I want to show the ones before the performance.

Labor Day Monday

This was a Scary Lady Sarah event held at The Abbey Pub. It was to be bliss.city.east's last performance in Chicago before moving to Atlanta, and also the second time I see Renee-Louise Carafice. For me a convergence of moments that will never repeat. This fed the urgency to go see them. My first time seeing bliss.city, the lead singer was barely visibly pregnant, I remember this shirt with an ultra-sound picture of a baby in the womb giving the middle finger. The coolest pregnant shirt. Alright, now the music. It's fairly aggressive shoe gaze, and they don't hide from wanting to make you dance. I did when I was not taking pictures. I 've been using this shoegaze crayon a lot, still it's just a crayon, and I do eventually use the others, like black. I suppose shoegaze is a way that I hold on to the goth and....back to bliss.city.east They can sound more giddy than School of Seven Bells, and casual like Panda Riot. They have their faster, harder songs. Perry B.C.E's guitarist goes off, keeps your short attention span from wandering. There were a lot of guitars on that stage but they haze of them don't go off on tangents. Juno would not call this "noise". Bliss.City.East, I will miss them, and I hope the band prospers in their new home of Atlanta.....is that right?

So I've wanted to see Ms Renee' -Louise again ever since Beat Kitchen, about a year ago. I was quite impressed with her then but she had no CD's with her so I don't remember what I liked about her, only that I really did. She's from New Zealand and now she lives here, in Chicago. Her music.....It's just how her myspace page describes her. She's folk, glam, experimental, she owns all these notes. The folk part for me makes everything feel closer, the experimental less remote. Her other-worldly voice captures attention like an elder telling you a story in a camp fire straight out of magical realism. OK, so she's not remotely related to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But there is this other-worldly thing to her that still feels familiar enough to this world. Like a Vulcan raised by Manchester punks, urban/folk, not mediaeval folk. She seems to know this urban world you live in better than you, in ways you're glad you don't. I listen to the cd "Tells You To Fight", and putting a side for a moment what she says in her songs. I like how she says it. The voice makes whatever meaning I get out of the songs compelling enough. It's the wonder of the how, before the meaning settles, before words settle into meaning, they are instruments that leave you with wonder, I was sold..... and then she named a song after Emily Dickenson.

Literate and street wise. That song, "To Run", I've been listening to it a lot. There is a video on it, and some explanation about the song, yeah, Wuthering Heights fucked with me too. That was a significant novel for me.... Reading about the origins about the song makes me appreciate the artist more, she's described here as "dark-folk pop songstress...Carafice sings with an alarming openness about desperation, love, loss, homelessness and longing, all the while maintaining a sense of glorious hope at the end of the road". I had to quote it direct. I could not say it any better.

Anyway, I ran to The Abbey and made it on time, it was Renee Louise first. She was probably on her second song, and she had a full band this time, her vulcan-punk hair under this aviator hat, only for a moment. The intangible reasons I liked this artist to begin with came back. It's like you're enjoying the memory of the first performance, as well as the one before you, and now I have the CD to take home.

The Ettes at Sub T's

I go see The Ettes 28 August, a Friday. I was really anticipating it. White Mystery played before them. It was something to go on time to. I still missed the opening act Tiger Spirit. They got them out of the way far too early. Their CD was just two dollars so I took my chances. White Mystery I've known about for a while but this was my first time seeing them. I liked them, enough to wish their CD wasn't sold out. The Ettes I've only known about since June I think. They have been to Chicago at least 3 times before. Where the fuck have I been? I liked this band so much I wished I was there those previous 3. The brief research I did made me want to go see them. The individual members all come from the east coast, but they all met in L.A. Indeed the band formed there around 2004, and now I think they moved again, to Tennessee where it's a far cheaper cost of living. They have traveled and called many places home, I imagine. The lead singer Coco, .......I love that name, she looks latina to me. Anyway, that Friday she was all in black and mod. This was one of those performances when it is a struggle between wanting to dance and wanting to take pictures and video. And perhaps that betrays the mood of the crowd. A lot of people danced. The crowd was way into them. It really is something when they are beautiful and fem and still have this naturally dominant authority come out of the music, like a muscle car that they fixed themselves. And they are all drivers. Their second CD will come out on 29th September. I love the EP and the previous full length, I'm glad they will be back with Juliet Lewis on Friday 2 Oct. This time I'll get the shirt.