Catching up...

The long holiday weekend and out-of-town guests made it difficult to post much over the last week. Aside from playing the radio show on Sunday, I made it out to a number of shows over the past few days, with Paolo and Kyle, and last night, with Isidro. On Saturday, we briefly stopped into Enemy to see the last Crippled Insectual show prior to Julia of Insect Deli's departure to the west coast and then Hawaii. Afterwards, we went to see Dead Meadow. Pinebender played before them, and while I cannot completely get into them, there is something about their style that I like when I see them live. Dead Meadow is another story. I am a total fan, and once again, they blew me away with their live show. On Monday, we were at the Empty Bottle for a while. The Magic had a really nice sound, sort of reminiscent of The Birthday Party. The Party Downers had a pretty interesting front man, and their sound was a bit "SST meets Dead Kennedys," or something... I had actually not seen Rabid Rabbit before, and their two bass + drums doomy combination mixed elements of Jucifer, Earth, Sunn O))), Thrones, etc. They ended with a heavy, droned-out piece that capped-off the night quite nicely. Last night, after Kyle and I had a fun but frustrating walk through the West Loop gallery area, which was badly timed due to numerous shows having just closed and several galleries packing up for the Miami fairs, we were back at the Empty Bottle to see Robert Lowe (Lichens, etc.) and Daniel Higgs. Robert played an intense acoustic guitar set with simple and effective resonating drone moments. It was really stripped down and in-the-moment compared to his electric Lichens sets, and it was quite beautiful to listen to. Daniel Higgs was accompanied by Chiara Giovando (who played here last June - as part of Harrius, with Jenny from Metalux - when Jason Soliday and I played with Religious Knives, Zodiac Mountain, and Locrian), and while their set was far from the usual type of thing that I seek out, they are both very compelling performers and I really enjoyed the performance.