Molly Nilsson

 There is a lot to work backwards from 20/20. I wanted to take home what I saw her play, what I saw her dance to. The bubble I live in, the Bauhaus black tinted glasses has me thinking how goth and casual dark she is.  While stumbling through a YouTube hole after hearing Lebanon Hanover, enter Molly Nilsson with I Hope You Die.  She has a cold casual delivery in her voice. There's a sincerity to it.  It's Vulcan, romantic, dark electronic dance.  The lyrics of that track are sweet, believable and clever.  I'm the hooligan of your heart...that's fucking funny.
 
  She is one of those discoveries that end up playing Empty Bottle soon after learning of them.  So remote in the beginning. Far enough away that, I don't have to think about the money I gotta save to see her yet. Next video after Zanias....1995. Then Ugly Girl. Part of what gets my interest in a song is how urgent does it feel. Urgency can be felt regardless of pace. With Molly Nilsson pace is mostly mid-tempo casual, with some uptempo surprises like Mountain Time.  The video for it was fascinating in that it could have been any Quinceniera ranging from close relatives and spiraling out from there. It felt authentic, right down to the faces of the attendees. She could have used all the pretty people from the novellas, but you can't tell those mother fuckers from a common American sitcom. So the video for it was nice, it felt like into she sneaked into a real moment....she would really stick out like a radio active gringa in the quince. She would silence everyone into respect if she can dance to cumbia, old school mambo or anything from Hector Lavoe.....wow. That thread just took off on me.
  Just as I was comfortable with her mid-tempo pace, she jets forward with Mountain Time and from The Travels Dear Life. I notice all music she has out already, going as far back as 2010. Eventually my interests steers me towards other bands. Ms Molly has a great catalogue of music to OD on, I gotta take my time on her. So I did not hardcore research into 20/20 going into this concert.
  This Wednesday I was finally able to go. The universe was bringing her again. Can't turn that down.  I was half wanting a few of the same goth crowd as with Be Forest the night before. I mean she is fucking goth candy.  The Be Forest show had an identifiable half goth/shoegaze crowd. This Molly Nilsson had what appeared to be a normal cool Empty Bottle crowd. It did not matter either way. I like to paint a picture when writing down this moment, and the audience is a tremendous tell on all levels. You miss that and that is a blind spot in the moment...well if you give a shit.
  Three shows in a row does ....seem to ask the question what festival are you celebrating in your German Expressionist fevered mind. Ellis on Monday, Be Forest on Tuesday, Molly Nilsson on Wednesday. What the fuck! So back to this....she was fun to watch. Ms Molly was dancing. These pictures suggest a cold indifferent dancer, but she was smiling. I wanted to take home what she had this enthusiasm for.

One person that was impressive enough that I took home his CD Choose Life was Apostille. Weirdly resonant electronic one-man act. This was truly a surprise. I was into it. And then Ms Molly played. The crowd was heavy for her and seemed to know her music, and would react to certain songs and that fed back to her.  Her enthusiasm slightly more unguarded. This was my first show of Ms Molly.  I knew she came to Empty Bottle before and I just assumed most of the audience were music snobs that have seen her before, and I'm just starting in this school in the middle of the semester out of nowhere with braces that can barely hold back these horse teeth. It feels differently when you know you are seeing an artist well into the middle of their performing life, catching their tour.  You are seeing a polished, seasoned artist.  It's like starting Star Wars from Empire....well, alright, not the right metaphor. 20/20 is the latest and her work and her back catalogue goes back as far as 2010.  I need to take my time with her music, but I am glad I went and took something home. I took more pictures than this, I am saving them to post with thoughts on 20/20.

Zig

Esben And The Witch/No Dog,The Jungle

     When you count the years by how old your nieces are then or who had an accident that year, that's  when events start taking on the weight of those years, that's when time feels long.  2011 feels like a long time when I first saw them.  I would see them again at Empy Bottle for their next album Wash the Sins Not Only the Face. Their music is stirring.  Lights the fire in the blood. It helped in holding myself together, and stronger. Have you seen the video for Marching Song? Its fucking rage inducing! Rachel Davies is a troubadour that induces you into steeling yourself for the fight. Both those shows were so intense and I barely had enough for their CDs.  Time passes. I don't see them a third time. I don't know if they toured Chicago again but I did not see them.  The music I got from them take on roots.....Despair, Yellow Wood, Deathwaltz.  Different fucking roller coasters, all of them.  When I look them up again it was two songs that hooked me all over again, The Jungle, and No Dog. While Marching Song simmers and burns to it's climax, No Dog rages from the very beginning. When it slows down, only then calmly at first but that calm is brief and a spark in a cloud of kindling leads to a full blown guitar, bass and drum rage and it is fabulous! And they can hold you by a tense thread when they slow down. I overindulged and bought from them online on white fucking vinyl Live At Roadburn.

  The Jungle is over 13 minutes long.  It was a fucking wonder I listened at all. Normally, I'll give up 13 minutes easy if it's Nooran Sisters, or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, sure.....yes I actually do listen to them. So, even as you are capable of a long listen, do you even want to. Will your attention trail off in 3 minutes with 10 more to go? They retain a a razor sharp tension at all times like a trapeze wire. It keeps you in the moment hanging on to her words. I was hooked on The Jungle and then I read the lyrics....wow a second time!
  It has a beginning, middle and final boss....just like in the fucking video games. It's like an overture in classical music for me. It has that kind of storied impact. It has that structure for me. Overtures tell you what's to come, like dramatic trailers.  It reaches a peak and the descent downwards is fast and that has pulses and steps in this descending sprint. It's like you're in a car with no brakes going downhill. This is why this song can hold your attention for all that time.  There are pulses of speed within the ascending first and descending second hmm movement.  Dividing this into two parts, the jungle is both ravaged pristine innocent wilderness and merciless, living, collective eating machine that just about eats you alive until the savage in you fights and chops a way out.  There are many levels to see this. In the beginning I could not  help but to see this as a metaphorical colonizer chopping a path through this sweet innocent forest....."....cleave I will split the tender stems of virgin trees"....then the jungle starts fighting back nearly devouring the one in the jungle....that person fights and chops it's way out!  So the jungle in this song is ravaged yes but not without it's teeth. And only when the jungle within the girl fighting back, roaring back, does she get out.  The jungle can be a metaphor for the world in general....and not the New World.  Any way....The Jungle....wow what a fucking awesome track! All 13 minutes!

  So just like that, I am a fan all over again.  Some of their song are long, but give them that time and you will come out feeling empowered, perhaps.
Zig

Be Forest /Lightfoils

  Hearing some of these tracks truly bring tears to my eyes they are so fucking beautiful.....I'll be ok.  This show was a fucking mission. I bought my ticket early. A lot was riding on this show.  Hmm, I can say that about every show I see. But Lightfoils was on this one! Be Forest is from Italy.  Earthbeat was released in 2014 and that is what sold me to them. They played Empty Bottle where they played Airwaves. The sound was clean. The memory is distant enough for it to be enshrined by my German Expressionist archivist mind. It was my first time seeing HIDE as well. It was an interesting bill.
 I was so happy to see Lightfoils support the Chicago end of this 2019 Be Forest tour.  They got a new LP, Chambers.  This Time Is Up comes out confident and sunny with an urgent pace. The drummer John with a fire lit under him, that means everyone is feeling it. It wakes everyone up like it's their first Red Bull ever! I like how the drums brings that illusion of stumbling downhill in a drug infused stupor.  The guitars too, have this twang to them that further sells it. Then right in the middle, a wave of chill hits from around the corner.  It washes over as you walk it off. Summer Nights starts off without a care in the world, then picks up. It was a real blessed thrill to see these two bands in the same night.
  I arrived on time to catch some of the opening act I think they were called Blue Unit and they were great as well. I was riding a good feeling that took the edge of the shyness away.  I said hi  to a combination of goth and shoegaze friends. It was friends from two scenes... What is the difference? Hmm, goth friends and I dress in black deliberately, nearly fucking always. In the shoegaze scene, music did not take on a fashion to distinguish itself.  So as I drifted about I genuinely saw friends from different ends of a continuum. Vantablack on one end and fade into come-as-you-is on the other. I feel like I must paint a detailed....baroque....well. I wanna remember this for who observed it with me. This show was before a moment anticipated from afar now in past tense. I want to remember more of this than Coleridge did Kubla Khan. The memory not being a dream is grounded in fact. It happened, I was there with other friends. Details fade, smeared over time. So let us make this dye darker still. Philly I think was the DJ for the night. Yeah I remember him playing Walking Bicycles in between the bands. He played from them their newest song.

 By now, I have already heard songs from Chambers. Its comfort music at this point, but its not taking their presence for granted. The familiarity needs to sustain itself and so I go see them even if I have seen them already. With Be Forest it was the one show, the CD, then YouTube videos. The....familiarity is met differently. The biggest difference being with Be Forest it may only be this one other time to see them....actually see them. Italy seems to be a long fucking way after all. I've been all over Earthbeat and I'm barely listening to more of the first LP Cold beyond Florence. Perhaps it was laziness, but I did not look up Knocturne before going to Empty Bottle. Tech just spoiled us so fucking much that we can dismiss it.  I could have YouTubed it.....but I could not be bothered. So whatever was going to hit me, it was going to be a deer in the headlights type. I just trusted that it was going to be the best. And fucking hell was it ever.
  Bengala has the crisp deep rolling drums with the bass and spacey guitar. Costanza's chill breathy voice calmly telling us ....mercy and decline, that is all we will find. That is bleak.  The whole album is full of these phrases that hit you with the impact of stepping into a mine field. Gemini compresses into a few minutes the dramatic atmosphere of Wuthering Heights into a rolling avalanche.  Atto I an instrumental seems to me to have whispers of the songs to come.  It's sweetened darkness with a pensive beginning.  For me its a tell that the drums are going to be raw, or at least different when the drummer is standing.  I am not coming from this Kubla Khan without souvenirs, the intangible and fucking merch. The better for me to remember. I can't believe I almost did not buy the shirt. It's a medium that actually I like how it fits....wow.  There has got to be a reason I am willing to hold onto relics that take up space, wear it even. The music is cool, bouncy aggressive and still thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Zig 

Eve Black /Into The Nothing

  I must not have paid that much attention to this song after I downloaded the whole Into The Nothing EP.  Eve Black opened with Dancing With The Green Faire and it hit me as if it was a new song. It did not register as something I've heard before.  I made a note to ask Rani if that first song was new and lo and behold I already had it downloaded! This show was at Livewire Lounge, this dive bar way up on Milwaukee Ave past Belmont. I was trying to avoid calling it a dive bar, but yeah. The washrooms lean on the nasty side.
  It is profoundly therapeutic to have these small gigs to go. It is self-exploration.  These artists, they create the work that kind of holds us up. Individual songs on the EP are carving their space in memory, and some wait for the moment for it to feel like the first time.  And each song that hits when it does, renews the whole album for me. The shirt too is so beautiful, and understated, plain. So Green Faire is I was told is about absinthe.  I remember going to Whitby I would hear a lot about absinthe and all the history with it.  By the time you try it, you already have had so much better over the years. It's a cassette without the download code. Anyway, that is not about the song. When I see Rani, I cannot help but see the continuum of performances from the one Girl Detective show I saw through her Dream House days and now in Eve Black. If I mention bands that are at least 10 years old and beyond in comparison I think it is because they got some dark staying power. Mephisto Waltz, Changelings, The Shroud....Swarf. These bands were our contemporaries. Or at least......No longer were we appreciating from our high school years but well into our adult years. Those are the bands that come to mind when I think of Eve Black.  
  Marci and I are friends with the band. It's so unique to have this with the music you listen to. When it's small, support carries a different meaning. Some things are magnified as they are small, because you as a fan are small as well. There is uniqueness that comes with small. It's not saying you lose it by the time you are supporting fucking Mode on their North American leg of a world tour.  Fuck...where did I park the car again?  Right...so, we walk in just before they set up. There is this sloppy drunk couple stumbling about.  I know it's a dive bar, but let's not get taken by that. They must have gone into them nasty bathrooms twice to have sex  like they was in Shameless. It was amazing they were not kicked out. They were mostly behind me but you could not truly ignore them.  At first it seemed as if it was the guy held it together for both of them. By the time Eve Black was on that was not the case. Anyway. The pictures I got were all on my ipod and I am having trouble uploading them on my aging mac. So here are some pictures from the one show at Martyrs I think. I really had to hall ass to this Martyrs show.  It was after seeing Fauvely somewhere else and then Eve Black.  I really liked how great the band sounded live.  Songs that I did not notice before, they put right in front and made me a fan all over again. It did not just happen with Green Faire. It's three dimensions once you have a live drummer....Hi Rick!! Yeah, I believe I was dancing to this. It was a good time after the show as well.  Going to these events is a necessary thing to do, or all these negative news cycles combined with one's own negative ruminations can take over the space and time you give them. I think it's important to recognize the Emily Dickinson's early, in their lifetime and not all late about it. In recognizing something you help it survive. We see ourselves in this music and so these mirrors must continue. The culture we collect with our time and memory we seek to archive and continue it.
Zig
 

Claude/Fran

  This I saw almost last minute at Empty Bottle on a Free Monday 4 February. Sometimes I look the Empty Bottle website. I did this half-ass search, not really wanting to find something to go, but kind of knowing I may find something that will sting if I miss it.  Oh look, Fran is playing. So I go. I saw her last I think a year ago at East Room with Staring Problem. She even remembered me when I walked over to buy the Fran shirt. I'm jumping ahead.  Claude was playing last. Fran was cool without effort, kinda under the radar sweetened cool.  The song that got me into her is Desert Wanderer.  Yeah, put that one in for Audrey from Twin Peaks to dance to. Her voice reminds me of Karen Carpenter/Aimee Mann. Yeah, I think Fran is kind of Twin Peaks cool.  And while we are at it. So is Ms Claude. She sold me when I heard Screen. Her voice is velvety chalk sidewalk art. Damn....now I gotta get off my ass and shower.
 
  Off I go. As the process of me getting ready continues. The laziness wears off and now I really want to see this.  I search the memories now to connect this story. The casual pace that compelled me to see this was from deeper with more authority. Some things are gonna hit later. Your appreciation will be light at first but it will deepen. Desert Wanderer from Fran got me because I stayed still long enough while waiting for Staring Problem. And now Fran got me to stay and now I like Claude. The Fran Goes South tour was kicked off at Empty Bottle. I wonder how the stages look like as she plays Desert Wanderer. Songs like that can capture moments without apparent effort beyond just being cool. Hmm... I can have this same curiosity with every band I see....yeah I do.  Claude, then let's say...when she's playing Enactor, Screen.  Someone put that on YouTube.
  Claude had enthusiastic fans there at Empty Bottle. One girl I think wore the long sleeve white shirt. The artwork on it was nice.  Enactor is the 6 track EP released on cassette with a download code via Just For You Records from Indianapolis. Claude is Claudia Ferme....from Chicago. I had to space that out. You try saying that fast. Anyway this is ethereal dream pop similar to Fauvely's Watch Me Overcomplicate This. Only Claude does not seem sad so much as numb and distant. I'm just enactor she breathes. There is a fascinating video for it.  Claude has this gothic casual tai chi dance style, and it's not just because she wears black in parts of the video.  Her moves can be included if not partly take the piss out of Angela Benedict's how to dance like a 90's goth. How she dances triggers memories of going to pre Covenant/VNV Nocturna and Neo.  The dance styles varied so widely because the pace was mid tempo mostly. Regular goths betrayed movements unique to them. Anyway, damn....this tangent made me forget where I parked the car. I'm just taking the scenic route in saying I like how Ms Claude dances. Anyway, I'm glad I caught the show. Claude without effort made me a fan.
Zig

Walking Bicycles

  The Walking Bicycles discography that I have is greatly treasured. I feel very privileged to have it down and swirling about in my head. They play relatively rare. It gives time for one to explore more deeply the music that is out now.  The time you would spend listening to what is new from them instead is spent longer on their present work.  Every show I see is a mission accomplished and forever remembered.  I hear it in the right moment, its empowering. There is a reason why the word "punk" is always in their description.  It is music for underdogs by those who lived as such. There is this park near where I live they got these elliptical machines. On the ipod they randomly played and I worked out to the entire To Him That Wills The Way LP. Other tracks find their way into daily mental soundtrack or randomly on the ipod. There is this .....maturity that stretches into their earliest works.

  Perhaps it's the 70's inspired artwork that came with the two newest releases, but there is that cool dark 70's vibe....the way movies now like to portray them.   70's noir...John Wick's muscle car .......driving to Walgreens to pick up mom's meds.  Damn, I need to stop mercilessly drowning my own metaphors in the bathtub like that.  It was a bubble. No 70's muscle car all in Bauhaus black....puuf! Just me in mum's van picking up her meds listening to Walking Bicycles along the way. I am rabidly getting into Fat Cat and ESP. These last few gigs I saw they were playing more and more of their new music. Hellz yeah I was into it.  It is perhaps ESP that I recall telling Julius in some long winded way how awesome it is. I throw that word a lot but I mean it always.  ESP was a further refinement, smooth and still intense.  And I know this is just subjective speculation, I hear traces of GO? in this one song. (I tried to look for the upside down question mark on my keyboard, really I did.)The path that was suggested in GO? is bulldozed, plowed and paved in ESP. It's refined, smooth and still powerful. Its a path finally taken and owned. Fat Cat reminds me of To Him That Wills.  I place it comfortably among my favorites of the band.  And these impressions so crudely expressed are but placeholders. Early chances at reaching wider audiences they turned down. And I can see why. They were not for those audiences. Theirs is for an older wiser.....cooler crowd even back then. An innate maturity comes with their punk. They have been tested by the hardest times. Defiance from a place of experience is scarier, tougher. There is a reason why my mind drifts to playing their music. In all scenarios it's light in the dark with the burn power of a laser, a burning simmering ember with a promise to burn it all down. I cam down from that elliptical machine feeling like that forward burning wick, but I was going to shower first.
Zig

Zanias/ Into The All

  Cold Wave seems to be on goth's foggy grey border.   Its hard to find sometimes. The GPS often fucks up and leads me well into Industrial country and I gotta ask for directions.  The Hideout audience when hosting Zanias, Fee Lion, and Visceral Anatomy did not look all that different from Burlington the night after for Cruz de Navajas.  These labels are elusive as magnetic north. Goth is like a shot gun blast that scares the wildlife away like the tiniest whisper of a camera click taking your soul instead of your picture.  Y'all need to relax. Sometimes you use such a term as a way to not use the g word. So we define around it.  I'm comfortable calling Alison Lewis/ Zanias  cold wave.   Dark, electronic and detached, longing for homes that are far far away......Australia, Berlin, Malaysia specifically.  Just pondering the miles between those names is intimidating.  Even during my travels to Whitby Gothic Weekend, the worry for home was a potent wire not to cross. The pigeons would remind me of the pet dove I left behind.  There is an awareness of the distance and a longing for human contact.  The first time seeing her in the first band Linea Aspera I can remember feeling so remote from the music of this artist, feeling like I'm seeing a star as close as this telescope....ehm...YouTube video can get me. There was so much work this artist put out.  Since Linea Aspera all her projects were each bands I would listen to separately forever, and still so remote.  The relationship with the music started with wonder, and built into it is this vast distance that you are aware. This is someone I may never see live.
  Let me go to this specific Tuesday night at Danny's in Wicker Park. I go with Marci. I believe Grun Wasser played that night. There was a long line to get in, but eventually we did. After the front room, all the back rooms seem intimate. Your natural inclination is to follow the hallway until the end. There are rooms on each side of the hallway, its almost like a private home and some eccentric fuck  has this party at his place. Anyway, so we go all the way to where the hallway leads and the very last end was everyone I saw the Friday before at Hideout.  Zanias, Fee Lion, Visceral Anatomy. That train that was so far over the horizon that I was longing for it.... I forgot that I was standing right in the middle of the tracks. I was suddenly the third grader in the teachers lounge....I was awestruck by a fucking bullet train.  This is so Frank Lloyd wrong!  This is either so fucking far and away that you want to see it, or a fly in their soup/windshield, depending on which metaphor.  My own social awkwardness kicked in.  I was wearing my newly bought Zanias shirt that I got from her  previous tour. I did not want her to see me with it and think I wanted undue attention. This twisted shyness just fucking grips you like its Carrie's mom screaming "They are all gonna laugh at you!" The music suddenly is so close, like I'm a fly doin' the backstroke in their soup.  I was just feeling that way, and was looking for a graceful quick exit before I feel too awkward. But you know, its nice to see her stay longer in Chicago.
  If you are already a fan of her, then  Aletheia and Idoru.... you just become a fan of her and everything that lead up to those songs. Its like stumbling into Unity Temple after walking out of a gas station designed by the same guy.  You recognized what little that you got to know was the tip to this beautiful ice berg palace.  So this will sweep up the first time fan as well. I see beautifully the delicate intangible tether that leads from Linea Aspera to the newest Into The All. What does it mean to mention Frank Llloyd Wright and his fucking filling station? It means even that was a palace. It means nothing was small or insignificant. Everything he built was grand, big or small.  I can see the consistent continuum with Zanias. I am into it all. So I treasure my small collection of her work like a collector of ancient and rare books.  Alison Lewis has been busy since at least 2011 with Linea Aspera. Dark, sleek and cold. She credits Dead Can Dance, Coil as a major influences, observing closely how  Lisa Gerrard sings. I think having produced her music within a span of less than and within a decade it can define that decade. It can be what we are nostalgic for in 20 or 30 years, and it can be what inspires another girl studying science to be a musician.
Zig    

Anika/ Exploded View

    Gritty urban, noir with roots in Bristol trip hop.  In 2010 Anika a dark spot within dark hmm adjacent music released her self-titled LP of mostly covers. I saw her play Empty Bottle the fall of 2011.  This artist was originally a political journalist and poet who spent her time between Bristol England, and Berlin.  Hmm, Bristol....home of trip hop, Massive Attack....Portishead.  Its making sense. Bristol is the right breeding ground. The right climate, soil, etc. I saw her at Empty Bottle three times. Her covers are so unrecognizable to me. Really turns things into hers. Roughly its as if Portishead covered the music with Anika's deep otherworldly voice. She did work with members from that band for this LP, so that is not a surprise. I really thought Masters Of War was hers and not Bob Dylan's.  In The City by Chromatics originally, gets the Anika muscle car custom makeover you did not know it needed.  All y'all  who like  Suicide Commando's BTK I just caught dancing to He Hit Me.  That's Anika's cover from 2013 single. And don't make me bust out the R Kelly karaoke bar footage. Yeah....more of y'all than I thought....how embarrassing.  Another noteworthy cover Sadness Hides The Sun originally from Greta Ann. Is this one bleak. The original brings with it the outdoor scent and chill of a scary campfire story.  Ms Anika channels her inner Ian Curtis to adapt it's darkness to an urban space. You dance to this with the same abandon as a Joy Division track. I was so close to assuming it was not a cover.
  Music that is formulaic does not ever hit the spot it intends. Anika for me is not, even when she performs covers. She has a recognizable signature that she imposes and also creates with her own original tracks. The bass is fat, aggressive and hits your urge to dance like its a gag reflex. It's sleek urban noir that makes you want to move, and its amazing that she is not....taken by her own music. This I say about her work with Exploded View as well. It feels like a natural extension. I took home two releases under Sacred Bones Records when she played Empty Bottle November 2018, the latest Obey(2018) and the self-titled debut recorded in 2015.  For these projects she went all the way to Mexico City. It amazes me the international path this artist with her music has forged. I mean fucking wow girl!  Noteworthy for me are Disco Glove, No More Parties In The Attic, Orlando...let the others from the debut sink slowly, they are worth it. Dark Stains, and Letting Go Of Childhood Dreams on Obey are excellent as well.     
  She is very stoic when performing, fascinating.......she stands there like a vulcan Saul Goodman announcing bingo numbers.  Its not a complaint. How she performs makes her so mysterious. And just as this part of her image begins to solidify, the substance of this image shifts. Her eyes widen...tiny movements that express so much.  Then she gets off stage, walks around the audience as she performs!  These visuals spark and sustain the moment for the audience.  I think she even performed some of her poetry, with her music playing behind her. It seemed that way.  She did this the last two visits to Chicago. Spellbinding and unexpected.
      We have packed dog years of crazy since 2011. And let's not talk about what hit the fan since 2016. We know. That makes that first performance, a different...even a slightly more innocent world away. The other two gigs I went to see Anika was within these last 6 months.  In November 2018 she came with her fellow bandmates of Exploded View.  And she came back by herself January 2019. Iconic shows for me, concert therapy. How else are you going to fight the sadness that hides the sun than by dancing to a fucking song about it.
Zig  

Solemn Meant Walks

  I'm so fucking happy to call these guys friends of mine. Fondest memories of fall and winter drives through picturesque La Grange Rd emerge when listening to Solemn Meant Walks. I think I know why. Their video for  Highway is about Resurrection Mary, and where they filmed it is part of where I drive when I'm on La Grange Rd. Willow Springs is part of forever home of Ms Mary's ghost.  Archer Avenue crosses straight through Willow Springs.  There is so much ghost history in this place it might as well be fucking Twin Peaks.  They even have a haunted coffee shop, Ashbary Coffee House, right next to the forest preserve. More cemeteries than you can trip over, that's Willow Springs. And it has some weird and interesting homes.  Willow Springs, a south west suburb is where they filmed Highway. It so looks like it should be haunted, that it actually is. For ghosts, this is their Wilmette. The best fucking real estate. Rez Mary is like their celebrity ghost.  So anyway, the song Highway, about her, video filmed on location, for me this forever attaches the band to her history, Solemn Meant Walks. So, they got a CD release party coming up with Eve Black at Underground Lounge, Friday 18 January. It is so perfect that these two bands play together the same gig. Everyone knows each other, has history. It has been a long journey that I have no idea. SMW is Ami's passion project. Andrew is the drummer. He's done drums for the band Conflict and he teaches drums. Some of his students have become successful in their bands. The videos for her song Said The Night she has directed. They filmed it guerilla style at House On The Rock. Their video adds to the trippy wonder of the place. Its very interesting how they filmed it. It's an acid trip/tour and Ami is your tour guide.  The BTS would be an interesting story indeed, and its something only they can really say. Indeed let them tell you the story behind Highway.....they are the coolest people.  I would say their music is at the pace but more guitar leaning than Switchblade Symphony. They are lie comfortably between Breath Of Life and Collection d'Arnell-Andrea. Its exactly the shit I would like to dance to...in some fantasy metaphorical dark gothic dance floor. They are coming out with new music along with Eve Black and its something I would like people to go see.
Zig

The Bad Signs

I maybe caught like the last 3 songs and then I bought the CD Black Magic Moments. Its 9 tracks of fucking wow! The Bad Signs came with Ringo Deathstarr. Lightfoils opened the show at Chop Shop. They are from Nashville. They have already been featured in Noisy.  They were founded by members of the punk band the Blacklist Royals and fronted by country singer Samantha Harlow.  All the crayons that I was going to use on my coloring book of original and spot on descriptions are pretty much used. The store shelves are empty but everything but the most generic black. All the brands with references to Tarantino, Nick Cave, and I think David Lynch were used to describing The Bad Signs. Hmm, so I guess here I can chew on why. They are the three fucking kings of cool...with very different signatures of it that are present in the music of The Bad Signs. Its no accident that two of these names are film directors. The songs are perfect for storytelling, being in a soundtrack for some kind of Nick Cage cult movie. It was a matter of seconds that while reading and researching for this great band that I saw all three of these names used to describe them. And I absolutely agree.  I'm suddenly wanting to see Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet in one end of the spectrum and Pulp Fiction, True Romance and Death Proof. There may not ever be films with music from this band, I mean what are the odds. Imagine discovering the soundtrack to Grease without ever seeing the movie, or knowing there was a movie with it. Such is

that noir gravitational pull. Immediately they evoke in strong American noir colors, they paint you the picture you want to be in. They paint for you in sound the sequence of your best moments. They romanticize without being sappy. You want to be Fonz, but not when he jumped the shark. They are the Fonz after the show was picked up by HBO. When I researched them before seeing them my impression was indifferent to warm. It was actually unfair of me. I was just checking fast enough to dismiss them. That half-ass impression made me just on time to when I was fully ready. Now I can't get enough and marvel that the universe almost let me miss them. Almost....
Zig

Eve Black, Fauvely, Hobbyist...and then Shimmer

 
 I planned it like this.......yet even in this plan you must accept that it can all go south. Go to Tonic Room early enough to see Fauvely and then from there go see Rani's new band Eve Black at Martyrs, and then from there bask and finish the night at Shimmer. The venues were a short drive away in the same fucking North side. Seeing Hobbyist in between them was completely accidental.  And I need time with them....but wow were they crazy! As soon as Fauvely was done and I can say hi and talk with them, then I would be on my marry fucking way to see Eve Black.  And so it almost happened.
  Second Tuesday means Philly and Sarah have their monthly shoegaze night. This was ambitious and fun thing to try, seeing all these shows and finishing the night dancing to shoegaze. Shimmer is this comfortable space. I understand Slippery Slope reverts to it's natural state on other days but when its Shimmer, its for me.  Its special and it would feel way more coming in from all them shows.
  To my warped German Expressionist memory I was going dump all these fucking events and make sense.....    Yeah...that Rani.....from Resistor... Dream House...Girl Detective. I fascinates me to no fucking end that I can call Rani and Sophie friends. Seriously? Let me just stay in this fucking universe as a stray black cat.  And in this German Expressionist world of course Rani and Sophie are friends.  Let me tell you how small the fucking world is.  Its gonna shrink to a familiar neighborhood.  Resistor's last performance was Fauvely with Dorsia!
  Eve Black is her new band...Rani's. I've been a Siouxsie fan since high school, but I was not familiar with all her music. I did not explore any further than what I knew and was familiar with. I was not into seeing cover bands. In comes Rani, she starts Dream House and it was impacting. I had to confront this dislike for Cover bands.  I mean here comes this friend, I'm a fan of ......hers and she's crossing all these wires that I kept apart, and its fascinating...... I was reintroduced to Siouxsie and all her music that I knew and did not know as much about. It was fascinating because her own voice for Girl Detective is different from her Siouxsie voice and yet they are both authentically hers.
  Girl Detective sounds to me.....like Mono, remember Mono? They got that one song into the Great Expectations soundtrack, Life In Mono. Then add to that, Mira, this Projekt band from around 2005. Sorry, trying to genuinely pin down how Rani sounded with her old band. I was angry at myself for missing so many Girl Detective shows and Solemn Meant Walks shows.....that becomes relevant...this is how I tie it in. SMW is my friend Ami's band. And she played guitar for these Siouxsie gigs. I went to a number of them. I got to see and I got to know these friends.  I missed their shows, but now they are friends and that is way cool. The mystery remains for me...where the fuck was I when they was playin'......
  Fauvely has been getting written about a lot....and I fucking love that. I am curious as to what the wider world thinks of this band I like. It's a window out of my own bubble....alright, a filtered window.  Its great to see others give this band that attention. "oh really,  you like Fauvely"....do fucking tell, please. Fauvely  showed there is real strength in being vulnerable, self critical...even sad with their first EP Watch Me Over Complicate This. The live gigs were great because they were so different from each other, revealing living sides to each song. The band was still figuring itself out. If the music that you chose to listen to as the soundtrack of your best moments then surely it must matter this.........There was an evolution that I observed with each show.  I have seen Sophie's Fauvely in small venues like DC Torium and at Empty Bottle.  Most recently, just casually in the space under Subt's. I think I have seen more than a few at Empty Bottle.  She has played a lot lately because she is promoting her newest 8 track Tides, and wow! She is also playing new songs I think that have yet to be recorded.  I gotta say, I am into this! Tides is bold, dramatic.  It takes off sprinting uphill on rough country.  Its way different from Watch Me. But...it is not unrecognizable from it. It's still Fauvely.  As much as Tides is about her roots in Savannah. Fauvely still had to be a Chicago creation and I am fucking cool with that.  

  So these two band are playing the same night, but at different times.  Eve Black will play last at Martyrs which means Fauvely will play before somewhere.  I walked in time to catch some of the set of Fauvely. Hi, Sophie! You know this song.......you know I must come off like a trekkie nerd....you know, Jon Lovitz with the ears...trying to talk to William Shatner. I always feel on the edge of making it awkward.  The other side of that is I do feel at relative ease around them, they are all cool people. Hi, Scott! It felt good to have the time in between shows. I was not intending to even stay for the next band, but I knew for sure that I would not be into what was before Rani so I dragged my feet. It just seemed weird to not stay so soon after seeing Fauvely. Still I remember stepping out. Then, I wandered back in...I mean yeah....take a piss, tie your shoes, soak the place in. The stage of Tonic Room is weird...it just is. It was my first time at the place.  This foggy German Expressionist memory has me sitting next to Sophie when Hobbyist begin their set.  Originally I was just coming back in to take a piss, kill time, but certainly not intending to stay and see who is next....and she tells me to sit down, and I do like a good little Zig. And then now...Hobbyist drops a brick wall of awesome...we're not at Eve Black yet. I'm listening to Soulless Lies now and I need a fucking moment.  That is just one song from their self-titled 2013 release.  In seeing this and while seeing this, I had to step back and see how fulfilled was the night already, how abundant it was with these wonderful moments. These are not artists I get to see from a distance. Their struggle to exist as such is like salmon swimming against the current. So Hobbyist has to have their own post. Here I have them as my first time seeing them. And I saw them by accident after Fauvely. So now I say bye to my friends for real this time. It turns out, Rani knows Hobbyist, had them at Resistor.

Martyrs is a venue I rarely see myself go. Its not deliberate. I actually don't know why. Its way up there on Lincoln Ave. There is a band still playing before Rani. Damn, I was real lucky to stay at Tonic. So now I actually have time to wander around... hi, Rani! Guess who else I just saw.....and now finally.....wait, washroom first. Alright now, we are ready for Eve Black.

They keep reminding me of This Ascension, goth rock/ethereal. Also, Autumn, Changelings....Solemn Meant Walks . They are also goth rock with a heavy ethereal presence. This is kind of where Eve Black sounds to me. I like the two downloadable songs The New Horizon, To Breathe Again.  I was genuinely into every song they played. They have a show coming up 18 January, a Friday with Solemn Meant Walks at Underground Lounge!! Martyrs is more of a regular place. Its around the same size as Empty Bottle.  This was a long time coming, Eve Black, Rani's new band. You get hints of how great it will be, little confirmations that present themselves along the way. I was already into Girl Detective. Naturally I'm at least curious, if not inclined.  So when it does come around, on a Shimmer Tuesday, with Fauvely and Hobbyist....this is a constellation of starry moments that I shall put together as something to remember.
Zig  

Spaces Of Disappearance

  Elaine from Spaces of Disappearance sang as Courtney Love to cover some songs from Hole. This cover band included Adele from Axons and I could be wrong but I think Danielle from Impulsive Hearts was in the band as well but she could have been just in the audience. I forgot the name of the place. This night, near Halloween in this fucking place I forgot....bands get to do covers. Before Elaine belted out her best Courtney. It was a real effort for her I think she said, to have to do that vocal range all the time.  Her regular singing voice is smooth and clear.  I only had a casual awareness of Courtney Love, never really dug into her music. It's not because I would not like it. I knew I would. The hype around her felt like familiarity. That makes you not get around it until some friend of yours dress up like her and cover some songs with her friends.     There was a band covering Portishead. They were fucking good.  Elaine had her Courtney Love look down. I saw more than a touch of Daisy Chain Saw era Katie Jane, but that would have to be intentional on Elaine's part therefore I was over thinking her effortless costume. This Halloween themed event was supposed to be at The Mutiny, but they are unfortunately closing. So they moved it to some place on Fullerton way west, just past Pulaski I think. I forgot the name of the place, but it seemed to have a space for the locals and a back room for the shows. The building itself was old as shit. Was once owned by a burlesque star, I think. The place has history. I wasn't knowing this when I was walking in. Adele's husband told me. He's cool too. He was there this night. In shows I would go to see anywhere in Chicago, if I saw Elaine, there was Danielle and Adele somewhere around. They all got their own bands. I see all three of them hanging around together all the time during shows. This is what my German Expressionist memory can narrative down. Frontwoman Fest was on them. And through that funnel I saw so fucking much. I think that was how I saw Impulsive Hearts the first time. Elaine would play a few of these. Elaine's Spaces has crisp original yet resonant beats and synth. I would place her in the company of Fee Lion, Pixel Grip, Sexy Fights. They are very original and resonant in what they do. And this is what Elaine is as well with her band Spaces. She weaves a clear texture of sound even when the beat alone is slow. The texture holds you down and has you follow willingly. I call it a texture....I have no better word for how she puts it all together, but there it is. The common thing with all her music is that it hits that urge to dance like it's a gag reflex. Each song...hits...that...spot differently.
  Where ever she goes, her music will carve her out a welcomed home. These friends of mine, I am lucky to have. So is you is telling me these here three are my friends....shut up and don't fuck this up....that is a choral chant that is on mesmerizing repeat whenever my radar scans them together. Adele, Danielle and Elaine. So here we were in that venue that replaced The Mutiny.  There was an urgency to go see this show because I saw a FB post with a picture of all three. They were posting a picture of them after band practice. I thought it was the actual show, and I thought I missed it. I go to this one with greater urgency thinking it was a second gig. But I made it.....yay!! These friends of mine are musicians and I think their music should be known. Its culture they create that make where they live an awesome place to go. They create and they help others do the same....and then they let me hang around them like some lucky stray cat. That such people exist, yeah that part is easy to believe. They let me hang around them, that there is the incredible part.
Zig