Best Tracks 1/28/2022

Amber Mark – “Bliss”

It feels like Mark has been teasing these songs and the sheer idea of her debut for almost six years. While the wait isn’t exactly justified, Three Dimensions Deep arrives fully formed, mixing together all that’s captivating about Mark; the bops, the romanticism, the sly eroticism, and the warm, familiarity. “Bliss” works so well, not just because of how it ties all those disparate themes together but because of its simplicity. The lyrics can be clunky, stringing together cosmic meditations on meaningful love and sex in equal measure, but Mark sells it all, finding the one spot on the album to celebrate the catharsis the long roll-out warranted.

Anaïs Mitchell – "Watershed"

Coming off 2020’s great collaboration with Eric Johnson and Josh Kaufman, Bonny Light Horseman; Mitchell’s newest album is noticeably more typical of her whispered, emotive folk. Certainly, it’s not as good, but as with many of her albums, she finds no need to improve upon the formula. To be fair it’s not really a formula to begin with, Mitchell’s songs uncurl as if there being written in real-time and the best songs leap above the rest like measured spotlights. “Watershed” finds just the right note for its stream-of-conscious lyrics, never coming off as pretentious or tossed-off, just laying its imagery down as a required byproduct.

Modern Nature – “Brigade”

Jack Cooper’s stints with Mazes and Ultimate Painting have developed their own little middle-aged birdwatcher following but his most recent work with Modern Nature has been notably overlooked. Island of Noise hones Cooper’s spacier side, providing more lavish instrumentation over surprisingly short run-times. “Brigade” sounds like a track destined for live improvisation, but at least in its studio form Cooper anchors it to two and a half minutes. He doesn’t lose any of the sprawling bombast though and given the structure of the album, these short bursts of jazzy indulgments could easily have stretched to two LPs. In a post Scorpion world, keeping it down is a nice little trick.

St. Paul & The Broken Bones – "Love Letter from a Red Roof Inn"

A real mess of an album from a band that should have gone mainstream before getting this messy. On the few tracks where Paul isn’t ruffling through the Sound and Color playbook, he manages to capture slight glimmers of the humble revivalism of the band’s debut. The highlight is by far the closer “Love Letter from a Red Roof Inn”, whose innate simplicity lends the perfect vehicle for the vocals and instrumentation that drives the band. The song is a cliché but at least he admits it.

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Concert Review: Wilco at The Riviera Theatre, – 3/26/23

Wilco at The Riviera Theatre, – 3/26/23 Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood was once the center of the city’s booming entertainment district. Located at what had initially been the end of the L Train system, The Aragon Ballroom, Green Mill Jazz Club, and long-defunct Uptown Theatre quickly defined the corners of Broadway and Lawrence Avenue as the designated area for Chicagoans to congregate for the arts. As the area’s zeitgeist waivered though, the theatres grew into a weekend oasis of vibrancy amongst an otherwise casual and sleepy north-side neighborhood. Given Wilco’s consistent championing of Chicago’s local institutions, and another Uptown landmark Carol’s Pub in particular, The Rivera Theater seems like exactly the kind of venue for the band to host their latest three-night run and the start of their spring tour. Jeff Tweedy and company know the former movie palace well, playing there many times over the years and even using it as the base for a five-night series of performances b...

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain (2023)

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain Big Thief, one of the best and most adept bands of the 21 st century, has done more in six short years than most bands can squeeze out of an entire catalog. Each of their five studio albums has managed to expand their signature homespun charm into exciting, self-contained albums. The sound always moves forward but with distinct detours projecting their country-folk and singer-songwriter tendencies over disparate palates. The band’s prolificity extends to their solo catalog as well, the most notable inclusions naturally coming from lead singer and principal songwriter Adrianne Lenker. But behind her eclipsing generational talent, is guitarist Buck Meek, an artist who could easily shepherd his own headlining band if he needed to. Aside from some early, Big Thief-adjacent work, Meek’s true breakout was with 2021’s Two Saviors , a beautiful, alt-country collection of songs, most of which approached the quality, if not the scale of his mother band’s...

Beach Fossils – Bunny (2023)

Beach Fossils – Bunny Give Beach Fossils credit, despite longtime comparisons to Wild Nothing, DIIV, and Real Estate, Dustin Payseur has always done a better job navigating the restraints of his sound. Beach Fossil’s debut is bright and lo-fi jangle rock, Clash the Truth brings a slightly harder and wispy, post-punk edge, and the underrated Somersault glistens in the sheen of a would-be major label debut. Each album is distinctly Beach Fossils though, the guitars and reverb-soaked vocals determined to reap the nostalgia of both fleeting, youthful summers, and the band’s own back catalog. Bunny comes six years after Somersault , a gap that saw the band celebrating the anniversary of their debut through live performances with label mate Wild Nothing as well as the release of an album of piano renditions of the group’s past work. The pandemic could partly be blamed for the long wait time, but regardless Bunny still holds a lot of expectations, and when the band’s last album landed...

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