credit: Outer Minds’ Facebook (Dan’s lovin’ it!)

I’ve only ever seen Outer Minds play at the Empty Bottle, and I think that kind of consistency brings with it considerable advantage.

For one it’s the Empty Bottle, far and away the best space to see live music in the city — I think Township, maybe The Hideout round it out. And two, that the setting has remained the same gives me the kind of wiggle room to step back and judge their progression from set to set to set.

That I’ve seen them pre- and post-Pitchfork swoop in is huge, as the kind of growth exhibited Thursday — even from their (pre-Pitchfork) totally fantastic record release about a month and a half earlier — is noticeable. Let me expound some.

Essentially, Outer Minds displayed more confidence than the pair of shows I’ve seen them play earlier in the year. They were sharp; they were tight. I think by now they recognize that they must brave a certain kind of fandom that they, as a band, have not had to confront with in the past. It all seems rather new to most of them. And I like that.

And yet there’s a kind of name recognition now. A number of people I bumped into Thursday said they came out to see, principally, Outer Minds –  not headliner Mark Sultan. That’s giant, folks, as it seems it isn’t uncommon for people to disregard even top bills they’re familiar with. Chicagoans, me included, came out Thursday for Outer Minds.

The bands remains, still, fabulously approachable. They’re kicking around before their set, and they stick around through the end of the night. They haven’t let the Pitchfork thing get to their heads, and how mature of them to do so. I don’t know for certain, but I’ll go ahead and assume that their set at Pitchfork’s music festival in July will be their biggest show, as Outer Minds, to date. What a tremendous thing to have weighing on their shoulders, as they so kindly open for Mark Sultan on a Thursday eve in Chicago.

I will say, though, that their set missed the kind of energy I remember from their February and April shows. Still fun? Oh, toooootally. But instruments like tambourine, keyboards, drums; they need to — I think — be pounded upon by now. They need to be clobbered because they’re physical instruments that buzz when struck. Three of their five instruments are this way, and all the more reason to do so.

It seems, due to festival restrictions, that this might be the final Outer Minds show before the Pitchfork set in July. I sincerely wish ‘em the best. Do Chicago proud, Outer Minds!

Get familiar:

credit: Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside’s Facebook

You know, when Chicago Tunes got up and going in August 2010, I about gave equal time to bands based in Chicago and those not based in Chicago. I also had a good amount of people writing with me from then to late fall/early winter. So between the multiple perspectives and our independent tastes, the page covered all sorts of things, really.

The next year was interesting. I broke away in hiatus for some time, and when I returned I brought with me some renewed kind of focus to what I was doing with this thing. By then nearly all the writers had left, and no more than a few weeks after that, probably, they’d all left.

I think there’s something serendipitous to that. By paring down its voices to one — however undesigned — Chicago Tunes started to become the kind of thing I think I envisioned from the beginning: That is, a Chicago-based blog about Chicago-based music.

From then on, or thereabouts, my attention diverted damn near exclusively to Chicago-based music. So much so that when I pick through Early Warnings in The Reader’s B Side anymore, I at times feel pretty out of touch. The hot bands of a year or two or more that are touring around I might recognize; those newer than that? Well, I dunno.

Such is the fallout of being so completely obsessed with the good people creating great things in and around the city. After awhile it becomes all you know, really, which I’m apparently totally OK with. Of course, that also means I’m finding out about bands like Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside a bit later than I should.

Sallie dropped into The Hideout Tuesday night, my first evening there in some time, and I must say I feel so totally fortunate to have friends with their ears still so firmly planted to the ground below to have known this. Else wise, an invite to Sallie’s show would not have come, and I would not have listened to their album, Dirty Radio, as much as I did today.

Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside is the kind of band that just takes you back — whatever that might mean to you. For me they’re like a kind of ’60s pop band with bumped step.

Their front woman is bouncy and carefree, a crown of curls boppin’ around, big thick specs, warm smiles and laughter. Her siren of a voice just punctured the room with a kind of gusto. Tuesday night Sallie wore a spectacular form-fitted dress that so fitted the kind of early rock atmosphere a Sallie Ford live show evokes.

Have at the track, “I Swear,” that leads off Dirty Radio:

Extras:

• The Portland-based Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside is Sallie Ford, Tyler Tornfelt, Ford Tennis and Jeff Munger. | Facebook
• Their album, Dirty Radio, is available for purchase in a few different ways! | Partisan Records

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The happy byproduct of seeing an Elsinore live show like I did Friday is coming away with a great new band to track. Like you get your fill on Elsinore, and then you get to delightfully stash another band under your shirt sleeves.

The first time I saw Chicago Tunes’ favored sons of Champaign was about two years ago when they were traveling around in support of Yes Yes Yes. That show’s byproduct: The Bears of Blue River. About a year later at Subterranean — now promoting Life Inside an Elephant — I left with Minor Characters.

This strange thing, but again a thing I’ve finally recognized as a thing, happened a third time this weekend. One of their openers, the Chicago-based Caught in Your Pockets, totally rocked me with their spin on ’80s-flared noise.

I’ve said this a lot this year, but again I’ve fallen for another group with a significant dependance on keys. Like The Runnies, actually, Caught in Your Pockets is keys, drums and guitar. But the marked difference between the two is that Caught in Your Pockets uses bass guitar in lieu of electric. The thing that results is a smoother sound. Less dirt and mud than The Runnies, and increased eagerness.

I picked up Caught in Your Pockets’ album released earlier in the year and it, essentially, soundtracked my Saturday. “The Scene,” in particular, was more or less my morning. And then I started tossing in “Stay” and then, finally, I basically set Lose Your Cool on loop.

You know, the keys situation is something I’ve found I can’t ignore anymore. I don’t think it’s just me; I truly think that the instrument has caught the kind of wave that ushered in all those violins a handful or so years ago. I addressed this idea with Elsinore’s keyboardist, and he seemed to agree there’s been an obvious upswing in keyboard splendor. He took the idea one step further, though, and said it might have to do with artists performing these days who were so influenced by ’80s music in their youths.

I think Mark is wonderfully spot on. Go on and give Caught in Your Pockets a test drive, and you might agree that underneath all those happy layers of sound is a group that bleeds ’80s. Much of the time, their Lose Your Cool feels like a modern sort of commentary on that decade of yore.

What’s omitted from the record out of default, however, is the hard pulses of energy you can only get from a Caught in Your Pockets live show. With two of their three instruments — keys and drums — needing to be physically pounded upon in order to sing, it takes that visual of Brynn smacking her keys and Moo (yes, Moo Haygood) on drums to truly capture their shine. All the more reason to go out and see ‘em, yeah?

Give these folks an honest listen. I think they’re fantastic.

“The Scene”:

“Stay”:

Extras:

• The Chicago-based Caught in Your Pockets is Brynn Bixby (keyboards/vocals), Moo Haygood (percussion) and Alex Beach (bass). | Facebook
• Stream (and then buy) Lose Your Cool. Seven bucks. | Bandcamp
• Caught in Your Pockets next plays Subterranean on June 7. Come on out! Ten bucks. | Event Info

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credit: Tyler Jon Tyler’s Facebook

I revisited Tyler Jon Tyler for only a teensy bit last night — honestly, a taste of a session — and so, for a good chunk of the day, today, I’ve had Tyler Jon Tyler on the brain. Particularly: “New England Street.” Gosh, what an exuberant tune.

I checked ‘em out for the first time, actually, on Valentine’s Day. They, Nones and The Runnies collected themselves at the Empty Bottle for what was an evening of nowdy madness. As you might know, The Runnies have since been worshiped like heroes around here.

What’s most excellent about Tyler Jon Tyler is their lively brand of youthful vigor. When they’re on and loud, I feel I can totally escape my place and profession and the rest of it, really, because they seem to slip me back to times of eased responsibilities.

I don’t know what triggered Tyler Jon Tyler this week. I probably just want to see them play again. Only engagement I see is a show next weekend in Dekalb. Poops. STRIKE THAT: Per TJT, they’ve got a 6/9 show at Ball Hall and a 6/30 record release (7″) at Cole’s!

Go on and adore “New England Street.” It’s aged a handful of years already, I know. But if you haven’t already done so, it’ll get you in the spirit for the Chicago summer for sure.

Extras:

• The Chicago-based Tyler Jon Tyler is Rebecca Flores, Nathan Jerde and Tom Cassling. | Facebook
• Download “New England Street” and three more for free. | Soundcloud

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For many weeks, I’ve grappled with what to say, exactly, about Many Places. More to the point, the “how” of their music — how it’s ingested, that is — seemed to so starkly contrast with the way I usually listen to new work.

Only upon realizing that idea, that shift — however subtle — could I finally begin appreciating what they were doing for me, and probably listeners like me, on Another Oath.

Readers of this page may know that most of what I write here largely comes from me repurposing music on the go. That is, I take it with me on an inbound train to the city, or up and down the ped path hugging Lake Michigan, and so on. Evening runs, come to think, are the where and when of a good amount of my prep and research. What, with room to roam and just one album pumping in and around my system, it’s been the kind of setting where I can enjoy and concentrate on the music at hand — regardless of the fact that I’m exhausting quite a bit of energy running down a path hastily populated by persons of all types.

Many Places stubbornly rejects this. However attentive I might be in such setting — and I think I am. I’m heading nowhere in particular, and music totally envelops at least one of my five senses — I realized that that kind of devotion wasn’t enough for a band like Many Places.

The challenge in a band like Many Places is, I’ve found, that they’re fully appreciated at night, in a bed or something comparably comfortable, at a time completely devoid of distraction. Only then can the listener pick up on the blips and gurgles and other imperfections (some intentioned, probably) that make their debut LP so pleasing.

Forwarded to me by the folks at Tandem Shop, Many Places isn’t portable, then, but a placated band that challenges its listeners to keep stationary; at rest. To do different might totally bastardize what they’d set out to make.

Perhaps the finest example is in “Blankenship,” an entirely instrumental piece that combines gentle guitar with any number of common sounds — heels clicking down a hallway, chirping birds, chairs scraping against tile… a tea kettle? — into a thing of remarkable beauty. But such small bits might go totally unrecognized, maybe, without mindful attention.

The album’s first single, “Helmut Hug,” below:

Extras:

• The Chicago-based Many Places is Kevin Rieg, Matt Hennessey, Nick Godden and Marcus Maloney. | Facebook
• Many Places will formally release Another Oath at The Whistler on June 10. Support: Zapruder Point. Free. | Event Info

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credit: Post Honeymoon’s Facebook

Whereas “Unraveling Mr. Murphy” was the tune I linked y’all to the last time I wrote about Post Honeymoon here, I now want to direct your precious attentions to “The Yellow Leaf.” It’s been so firmly stuck in my brain this week, apparently, that I was moved enough to say so publicly. I’ve looped it a fair amount since about Sunday.

Together “Unraveling Mr. Murphy” and “The Yellow Leaf” make up a pair of songs Post Honeymoon posted to the internet, I presume, late last year. “The Yellow Leaf” seems darker of the two, and I think the fixed drum beats and saucy electric guitar get it there. Rachel’s vocals, too, are so discomforting for me sometimes — and I mean that positively — breaking a path for Post Honeymoon to roll through with, quite unnaturally, its peppy doom.

That’s what this group is for me on “The Yellow Leaf.” Dour, but with step.

Have at it:

Extras:

• The Chicago-based Post Honeymoon is Rachel Shindelman Kraska and Nick Kraska. | Facebook
• Pay what you want for “The Yellow Leaf” and “Unraveling Mr. Murphy.” | Bandcamp

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As sensational as it might seem, I’ll nonetheless lead off with this nugget: I listened to My Life is Easy straight through the work day today. No joke.

There are a handful of albums that made a good run at it in recent memory — among them: Apteka’s Gargoyle Days and Grandeurs’ self-titled — but even those had me tapping out by lunch. After awhile, I peeled away their spells by introducing some diversity, you know?

Not so with My Life is Easy. It, Cains & Abels’ second full-length and first new batch of music from the guys since their 2011 EP, The Price is Right, would sit atop my list of favorite releases of the year if I had such a list.

To piece a framework here, I’ll admit I’m super new to Cains & Abels. I saw them play for the first time about two weeks ago at Saki’s Record Store Day in-store. Consider it a show by happenstance, really, as I biked over for Bare Mutants, who played in the slot prior to Cains & Abels.

Cains & Abels is a name I’ve recognized far longer than that, though. A name, then, I had scanned in the Reader from time to time, but for whatever reason went mostly unchecked by me until about now. I might have kickstarted my passivity, perhaps, had their show at S.P.A.C.E. — opening for their fantastic Whistler Records label mates, In Tall Buildings — gone on as planned in mid to late February.

To prep some for that show, I downloaded Cains’ EP, The Price is Right, and realized I could like them. On record, David Sampson had one of the prettiest voices I’d heard in awhile — maybe since Ryan Groff of the Champaign-based Elsinore. And there was real distinction in his storytelling — a good sense of obscurity, to be sure — that I was entertained with intrigue. Yet not enough, apparently, to write about their new one on or around release day.

My Life is Easy’s outro, “Grow Me Home,” is on a shortlist — again, if such a list existed — of best songs I’ve heard this year. Unfortunately, I do not have the kind of pull that might warrant a free download or stream of it here — I tried! — but nevertheless I do want to make it known that those who fork over money for the album (see Extras below) get many of their greenbacks, I think, returned on “Grow Me Home” alone.

“Grow Me Home,” essentially, is a tune that’s breathtakingly cathartic. It’s dynamic and it moves. I came to that, actually, while reflecting on another album I liked this year, Grandeurs’ self-titled, that, oddly, is anything but.

About that album I’d said:

So much of the album — practically all of it — seems built on the climb, but then gives — plateaus — before reaching summit. I should hate that about Grandeurs, but I absolutely don’t. It has the opposite effect in me than I think it should, and I don’t know that I’ve figured out why yet.

On My Life is Easy, Cains & Abels is the reverse of this, and yet both bands, their respective sounds, work profoundly well for me. I’d rather a band be cathartic, honestly, because it generally leads to tunes assembled the way “Grow Me Home” is. You know, a humble beginning followed by several explosions as it gets going. Drums and guitars pounding into the sky.

Flipping to the album’s official starting point, now, “Run Run Run” makes for elegant atmosphere. Like an intentional signal on behalf of the band to advise the masses that, yes, My Life is Easy is markedly different from what’s come before. As much as I like David on mic, and I do, it seems like he occupies every inch of The Price is Right. Everything else in the production, then, isn’t given the room to catch itself, to breathe, because there he is again.

He seems to have learned this on My Life is Easy, and you get a strong sense of it on “Run Run Run.” David still commands huge presence, but his vocals work in accordance with the other instruments. No, he’s not chanting by now, but he’s absolutely emphasizing particular syllables; letting his voice carry on at the end of a phrase. It just sails away with the waves of sound. So pleasing.

While on the topic of voice, what I find remarkable about these guys is that however clear David’s voice might seem — i.e. discerning what’s said, the words, is rather easy — I have not a clue in the world, really, about what any of it means.

“You Know Which One” might be the most cryptic of the bunch. Just tremendously ambiguous all around.

These are lifted out of their contexts, of course, but here’s what we’re working with:

If there was one that I could take out, you know which one. You know which one, you know which one.

And:

An untouched paper and pen, a sander on the floorboards, leave a bone to dry.

And:

This grass is growing again, a tiny egg begins to quiver, leave a bone to dry.

The music is so gorgeous, though, that the confusion doesn’t seem to matter. It actually makes for a kind of endearing hilarity when you’ve got David breaking to say something like “even through the skin between us, you know which one” and then — pow! — the Cains & Abels jam train again rolls through.

I’m kicking myself for missing their Hideout release show.

Extras:

• The Chicago-based Cains & Abels is David Sampson, Joshua Ippel and Jamie Mcgaw. | Facebook
• Whistler Records is selling My Life is Easy on vinyl for $12. | Whistler Records
• Pay What You Want for Cains & Abels’ 2011 EP, The Price is Right. | Bandcamp

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credit: Mawrcrest’s Facebook

A few weeks ago, Mawrcrest posted a new one — “No Way to Tell” — on their Soundcloud, and I wanted to steer y’all to it for two reasons, really: 1) “No Way to Tell” is a kick-ass tune, and 2) Mawrcrest is a kick-ass band.

Just, you know, general Mawrcrest kick-assery at work here. As they do.

I’d bet money they played “No Way to Tell” for me and the room at Cole’s in early April, because that guitar riff striking again and again and again is way too familiar to have been learned from a few Soundcloud spins.

Not long ago, Mawrcrest amended its name from Whisker Music to Mawrcrest. The switch signaled more than a change in appellation, and you get that from “No Way to Tell.” If Whisker Music was as its name might imply — cute and cuddlesome — then Mawcrest is its matured, much rougher cousin.

I’m digging the new stuff.

Here she is:

Extras:

• The Chicago-based Mawrcrest is awesome. | Facebook
• They’re playing Thursday night at Grace Street Tap with Deadlands. 3759 N Western Ave.

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It seems the stuff of When Clouds Attack was more affecting than I’d thought. That Chicago-based band’s debut album, Young Blood, was discussed here earlier in the month and might have been the first album of its kind to be featured in these pages.

As I put it then: “I’ve listened to [When Clouds Attack's] Young Blood often, and I’ve swung around to embrace that I am, I guess, so taken by a troupe so dependent on electronic buzzes.”

Only a few weeks have passed since that review, and again I am, I guess, so taken by a troupe so dependent on electronic buzzes.

I don’t think I’m as enthusiastic about Kodacrome’s Perla than I had been for When Clouds Attack’s Young Blood, but the EP’s lead-off, “The Bug,” seemed like it deserved a shot of attention, at least. It and “Robbery” are the only tracks I’ve repeatedly listened to, really.

So what about “The Bug”? It’s a kick up from the soothers on Young Blood, but staves off the kind of aggressive hop you’d probably expect from the creatives experimenting in electronics. (Sidebar: I dislike “electronic” as a genre about as much as I do “garage.” I won’t use it again in this post).

“The Bug” is a tune with delicate turns, and delicate transitions into those turns, thereby bunny hugging with a kind of calm in lieu of rocketing off into the rowdier places that synths sometimes takes us to.

I’m responding to “The Bug,” I think, because it doesn’t overwhelm.

“Robbery” was mentioned, too. Lively finale:

Extras:

• The New York-based Kodacrome is Elissa Pociask (vocals, synth), Ryan Casey (synth, drums, vocals) and Phil DaRosa (guitar, vocals).
• Pay what you want for the Perla EP. | Bandcamp

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credit: Grandkids’ Facebook

About 10 or so mixtapes ago, Chicago Mixtape introduced my iPod to Grandkids, a Champaign-Urbana-based foursome that I guess sleeps close enough to the city to be a considered entry for Chicago Mixtape.

As it happened with the mixtape featuring Grandkids — as it happens with nearly all the mixtapes I’ve hoarded, come to think — I downloaded the files to my player and then promptly forgot about them.

Through a fit of random chance — iPod, forever a sage, deemed it “time” — my ears connected to Grandkids not long after the Archie Powell review published Sunday, and you know, I’ve been listening to them almost exclusively since.

When I realized I liked quite a bit the only tune I owned by them, “Ethylene,” I researched them fools some and swiftly discovered that the band’s frontwoman was a familiar face: Vivian McConnell, sister to Stan and one-fifth of another Champaign-(now Chicago)-based band, Santah.

There’s a familiar sense of jar, surely, when finding out an artist is not of one band, but several. Yet Vivian’s face plastered in any number of Grandkids’ publicity photos seemed more unpredictable than usual. In Santah, Vivian strokes bass and often backs up her brother on mic. In Grandkids, Vivian is Grandkids. She’s lead guitar and lead vocals. Lead vocals!

A few spins deep in “Ethylene,” and I’d figured it out: Grandkids reminded me of You Can Be a Wesley, a Boston-based band that, until that moment of intellect, I hadn’t listened to in at least a year and a half. I’m regrettably behind on them. Apparently they released an EP in the fall.

Grandkids is way mellower than the pair of tunes I’m about to share with you. Well, about half of Grandkids’ Bandcamp is an EP stocked with unhurried cadence — save for “Geese” — so I suspect them to be a drowsy people, but I could be wrong.

“Ethylene” because that’s what started it all, and then “Crunch City” for being the schizophrenic oddball that it is.

“Ethylene”

“Crunch City”

This one’s by You Can Be A Wesley. Go on and appraise how I did at the “hey, that sounds like…” game.

Extras:

• The Champaign-Urbana-based Grandkids is: Vivian McConnell (vocals, guitar), Evan Metz (guitar), Adam Gorcowski (cello) and Phil Sudderberg (drums). | Facebook
• A good amount of Grandkids music is either free or extremely cheap. | Bandcamp

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