My goal is to see one show per week. Yes, I might be that annoying friend that just has to tell you about the thing you missed, but I’m also catching every great show in the city of Chicago–with plenty more ahead of me. Welcome to the Chicago Concert Dispatch.
At the time of this show, it is 7 weeks into the year, and I have seen 21 shows.
It started with a rush as I walked in and God Awful Small Affairs was already in full swing. “Crash Course” was a bar burner, going from arrestingly soft to bowling us over with their full strength. Missy Preston’s songwriting is crafted around their vocal style. A velvety timbre with a ton of personality. Their range was expansive. They rounded the notes up into a squeeky peak before coming back to the purring mellow tones. Dipping into deep rumbling depths. Their tone and patter has a 90’s to 00’s sound that feels, if not fresh, definitely unique in the current landscape. Their acoustic guitar provided gentle picking or driving strumming and you could feel the rest of the band building their sound around them. The band felt like a music fam, embraced and supported to form a more powerful expression together. As they closed the show with “Teenage Love Song” that final refrain of “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” struck home.
Wilde captured my heart from that driving drum build and drop “ah-ha-ah-ha-ah-ha” in the opening number “Spill the Beans.” Rhythm was at the heart of their music. From the slapping bass to the driving drums and wailing guitar, every element was in service of making the audience move. Lead vocalist, Paul Palos, had moves that showed us he had love in his body. He drove home their rhythmic prowess and cast a witchy spell over us. The strut. The shimmy. The kick. Every move reached out and demanded we join their celebration. Wilde tapped into that primal and cathartic power of music. I let myself get lost in their music, dancing with true abandon, and I felt the stress of the week and month fall off my shoulders. Wilde reminded me why I come back to shows over and over. Music cleanses my soul.
The heightened sense of celebration led us to our headliner North by North’s record release performance for Get Weird. They’re a Chicago band that’s taken on an endless tour mindset. Supporting themselves by performing upwards of 220 shows in 2019. They are an impressively tight duo as a result. Kendra Blank kept the rhythm and music driving at a rockin’ pace. Nate Girard’s vocals and guitars seemed to echo each other with a perfectly old school bluesy rock. Soaring and diving wails. This was lo-fi at its most efficient, delivered with a swaying strut. The title track, “Get Weird” blazed up the Bottle stage. The music felt anthemic. They were celebrating what makes us unique and contrary to the status quo, using a genre that harkens back to the roots on which all other rock/pop music was built. I couldn’t help but thinking about how rejecting the mainstream felt in sync with the way they are living their life. Their performance was a self-portrait. A perfect expression of their philosophy of life. Just as they professed on stage, they will spend their life having a really good time. Until they die. And then they will have a “Rock & Roll Funeral.”
God Awful Small Affairs Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
Wilde Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
North by North Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
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