Latest news with #Bloodless
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Live music for summer 2025: 10 must-see concerts in Chicago beyond the fests and arena shows
This summer's concert slate points to a transition that continues to slowly unfold locally and around the country. Shying away from big festivals, artists are opting for standalone tours or participating in smaller, manageable package bills. That's welcome news for music lovers who prefer the equivalent of a savory main course to a prix-fixe buffet. And great for anyone looking to catch performers in more intimate environments where headliners can stretch out with a dedicated show. In the next few months, Chicagoans have no shortage of first-rate options in smaller venues purpose-built for music — and, in most cases, at prices that remain below the three-figure threshold. Here are 10 such stops that should be on your shortlist: Samia: 'I wanna be untouchable,' Samia sings in the first verse of the opening cut of her third LP, 'Bloodless. 'I wanna be impossible,' she wishes two stanzas later. The Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter doesn't hurt for confidence, though she has plenty of doubts, regrets and misgivings. Plenty of 20-something indie-pop tunesmiths fit that mold. Yet few possess the imagination to loosely base a record around the bizarre concept of bovine excision and leverage it as a metaphor for reconciling one's prior relationships with and senses of the opposite sex. Melodic, rich, bittersweet, hushed, intimate, albeit insistent: Samia's voice offers another reason to lean into the narratives. Album art and merch that evoke the dark designs preferred by Norwegian black metal bands lend further credence to her ideation. Alison Krauss & Union Station: The last several times Alison Krauss came through Chicago, she partnered with Robert Plant in support of the duo's surprise second duet record. Though the possibility of a third go-round with the former Led Zeppelin legend cannot be dismissed, the Illinois native recently reconvened with her longtime ensemble Union Station for their first LP ('Arcadia') in 14 years. The songs' myth-busting notion that hardship riddled the 'good ol' days' carries weight in our current age. For the group's first tour in a decade, dobro and lap-steel virtuoso Jerry Douglas receives deserved co-billing with the headliner. And newcomer Russell Moore steps in on co-lead vocals and guitar for former stalwart Dan Tyminski. You won't find a better excuse to connect with the premier purveyors of bluegrass. Kathleen Edwards: Sometimes, you need to follow your heart, not what other people want or expect you to do. Kathleen Edwards quickly established herself as one of the wittiest, spunkiest and craftiest singer-songwriters during the early 2000s. She issued four acclaimed albums that culminated with an effort ('Voyageur') spearheaded by Bon Iver leader Justin Vernon. Then, just like that, she dropped out. Or rather, she opened the cleverly named Quitters, a coffee shop outside of her hometown of Ottawa, Ontario. The Canadian operated the cafe as she slowly returned to music, releasing 'Total Freedom' (2020) and a covers EP this spring. Edwards also sold Quitters, remarried and started writing again. All positive developments for anyone drawn to smart, crackling country-rock and incisive, self-assured narratives. MJ Lenderman: Current indie-rock darling MJ Lenderman used a childhood fascination with the game Guitar Hero as a springboard to learn about predecessors who influenced his own work, which he started documenting on a laptop in fifth grade. After paying his dues in the North Carolina club circuits, Lenderman soon gained a wider following in 2022 after making his first properly recorded album ('Boat Songs'). The ascendency of the shambolic collective Wednesday, which Lenderman joins in the studio, and the fact that he unleashes memorably ragged, go-for-broke guitar solos further raised his profile. Last fall's 'Manning Fireworks,' brimming with penetrating character studies, exquisite detail and barbed humor, signaled the 26-year-old Lenderman had officially arrived. Obligatory magazine profiles, best-of-year nods, meme posts and a sold-out tour provided confirmation. FKA Twigs: FKA Twigs began dancing professionally as a 'tween, advanced to performing for global stars like Kylie Minogue and Jessie J, and got her solo break after playing at a party connected to a fetishwear company. Unsurprisingly, body language, fashion and sensuality serve as principal impetus behind everything the British multi-instrumentalist/singer touches. Especially the club music on 'Eusexua,' an electronically sculpted journey that spotlights her finessed vocals, reveals introspective lyrics and rearranges house, ambient, techno, dubstep and synthpop motifs at will. Built for headphones, FKA Twigs' textured sonic portraits transform into ethereal and empowering physical experiences when the singer gets to act them out onstage. Alabama Shakes: For reasons nobody can explain, promising rock bands that form in the 21st century inevitably have short lifespans. Alabama Shakes count themselves among those ranks. Led by vocal dynamo Brittany Howard, the quartet electrified crowds and won over audiences with two studio albums, particularly the aptly titled 'Sound & Color.' Then, just as the group appeared to leap from mid-sized hall to arena status, it went on hiatus. Howard busied herself with a solo career. Circumstances turned bleaker for former drummer Steve Johnson. Now operating as a trio, Alabama Shakes seek to rekindle their old spark on their first tour in more than eight years — one they hint will involve old and new material. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: If you were fortunate to catch Yeah Yeah Yeahs in their prime at Metro way back in April 2003, you witnessed the band's dervish of a singer, Karen O, attack with a blend of grit, humor, brazenness and New York City-style cool that felt too real and spontaneous to be anything else. Don't bet on the vocalist summoning the ghosts of her younger self here. Instead, the edgy trio plans a tactic that on the surface sounds like the exact opposite: reconceptualizing favorites and deep cuts with piano, strings and acoustic guitars. An arty retort to carefree nostalgia, or the next logical step for a group that seldom adheres to convention and values surprise? Yeah Yeah Yeahs' penchant for unpredictability says all bets are off until the shows happen. Pelican: In its most basic form, Pelican is a rock band that doesn't use a vocalist. Beyond that, the quartet endures as one of the most dynamic, diverse representatives of this city's creative climes. Cheekily characterized as 'Post-Emo Stoner Deathgaze' on its Facebook page, Pelican skirts simple description. Having evolved beyond the churning metal of its early era and even dared to adopt classically inspired motifs, Pelican functions as a two-way bridge to Chicago's hard-nosed noise-rock of the late '80s and anything-goes Fireside Bowl scenes of the mid/late '90s. Melodic devices and mysterious intrigue augment the quartet's palette. Another reason to cheer on the local heroes? The release of 'Flickering Resonance,' its first record with original guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec since 2009. 100 concerts for Chicago summer 2025 — starting with music this weekendKing Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: Depending on the source, lo-fi cult favorites Guided by Voices have released somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 studio LPs, 20 EPs, four box sets and dozens of singles during an on-again, off-again legacy that stretched to the early '80s. Which means at the rate they're going, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard will lap their prolific forebearers in roughly five years, all the while adding chapters to their 'Gizzverse,' a fascinating galaxy with recurring characters, stories and themes. The forthcoming 'Phantom Island' marks the enviro-conscious sextet's 27th album since 2010 and witnesses the shape-shifting Australians lean in symphonic directions. At this ambitious outing, the Chicago Philharmonic helps the collective bring it to life. Expect fireworks without the boom. Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Elder statesmen Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore make up in pedigree what they lack in mainstream-name recognition. Alvin's sparkling resume includes a stretch co-leading the seminal roots-rock outfit Blasters; stints in the Los Angeles punk collective the Flesh Eaters; and having songs from his deep solo catalog hand-picked for revered television series such as 'The Sopranos.' The 80-year-old Gilmore counts membership in 'alt-country' forefathers the Flatlanders; Grammy-nominated records that double as middle fingers to the Nashville establishment; and a memorable acting turn in 'The Big Lebowski' among his achievements. Together, the explorers channel the aura of the lonely highways, high plains dustiness and bordertown barrooms that populate their bluesy folk and cosmic country.
The Independent
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Samia on appeasing men and trying to be the perfect idea of a woman
Do you know about the strange phenomenon of bovine excision, Samia Finnerty asks. I've never heard of it, I tell her. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter's eyes light up because she's the first person to tell me about the weird extended metaphor she's used for her third album under the artist name Samia, Bloodless. Farmers since the 1970s have found their cattle completely drained of blood, their mouths and genitals removed with surgical precision and the appearance of bioluminescence under their skin. 'Read about it, you totally should,' she encourages me. 'Some of it has been disproven but there are inexplicable elements to it that I felt was a perfect representation of my experience of womanhood.' These emptied-out cattle sound like a macabre way to explain how as a woman she has embodied something both untouchable, distant and laid out for wondrous display. But it's par for the course for an artist who, since the release of her cult debut album The Baby in 2020, is frequently compared to emotionally deep articulators Mitski and Phoebe Bridgers, the latter of whom she supported on tour back in 2021. In a world oversaturated with guitar-based indie-rock ballads, her distinctively warm and raspy voice stands out. The diaristic metaphors and sunny sonics collide with sombre explorations of heartbreak, personal growth, and everyday healing. Maybe it's simply that she does it better than most; watch her stripped-back Tiny Desk performance for evidence of the bare-bones of quality songwriting. Today, Finnerty is video-calling from her sofa in Minneapolis where she has recently moved to be closer to friends. Those co-conspirators were not in LA or in Nashville, two cities she spent the last handful of years trying to make home, forcing to make feel right. 'I'm relatively shy and it takes me a moment to make friends,' she says, fully off-duty, barefaced, wearing a brown jumper and dark hair pulled back. 'I just decided this move would increase the quality of my life.' Finnerty spent her childhood years in Los Angeles and her teenage years in New York, following the careers of her parents: actress Kathy Najimy and actor, comedian and musician Dan Finnerty. She's been disparagingly mentioned as a nepo baby, something she has openly discussed in the past. 'I had the incredible privilege of seeing a lot of people strive for and sacrifice a lot for something that ended up hurting them,' she says of fame. 'If I hadn't gotten to see fame up close, I probably would have really wanted it. It has allowed me to really be surgical about arranging my priorities and deciding what I do want: community, the ability to make the art that I want to make and hopefully share that with like-minded people.' It has also provided material for her music. On one of her earliest tracks, the sad and thoughtful 'Is There Something in the Movies?,' she analyses the showbiz industries at a remove, singing, 'Everyone dies/ But they shouldn't die young/ Anyway, you're invited to set.' Remember that scene in The Hangover when the wedding singer performs a smooth rendition of 50 Cent's 'Candy Shop'? That was her father. 'I always wanted to be like my dad,' she smiles before describing the musical theatre community in which she was brought up, where everyone was always performing. Then she was introduced to the work of poets like Maya Angelou and Anne Sexton in sixth grade, which changed her life. 'I was trying to marry my upbringing with the jazz hands with poetry, which was my true love, and that's being a singer-songwriter.' Blend a mix of influences that include darker indie rock like Elliott Smith, The National, Daniel Johnson and Nirvana and you'll get something like the cathartic vocals and sarcastically happy indie-rock of The Baby. It was a popular coming-of-age statement but her second album, Honey, took a more polished turn and positioned Samia as a pop star, as much as a rock star. Was that an odd transition to make? 'Totally and I didn't expect to be perceived for some reason. I didn't expect for it to say something about my identity or what I like,' she says. 'I was just trying shit out. It was a facet of me, what I did there, and it's absolutely a true facet of me, but with The Baby, it was more representative of what I was listening to and the culture I was immersed in.' Honey was quickly created and released amid a flurry of opportunities as the world opened up post-pandemic. Finnerty was on tour constantly, supporting artists like boygenius member Lucy Dacus and folk-pop TikTok sensation Noah Kahan. For the latest LP, she wanted to take her time and consider every choice carefully. 'I knew what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it and I wanted to be fastidious in the craftsmanship of it,' she says. 'There was a real north star with this third record and my first record that there wasn't with the second.' With Bloodless, the north star was basically: men. Finnerty was thinking about how she appears to men and how she's self-edited her personality to suit their projections. 'It's easier to be an idea than a person. In my relationships, when I've felt small and human, that's when I've been disappointing,' she explains. But in longer-term relationships, I say, isn't intimacy impossible without allowing yourself to be known? 'Knowing is supposed to beget connection, which is what we all want – or at least it's what I've always wanted,' she replies. 'I have a desperation to be known but being truly known has caused me to struggle. When you're no longer an idea [to men], you're not in the driver's seat any more. What sacrifices do you have to actually make to be known? What kind of relationship does that actually breed?' These are the questions asked across the album, where she – the female speaker – keeps appearing like a cipher to be interpreted by the men she sings about. She carves out lyrical silhouettes of herself in a void space: she's dancing like a dead-eyed girl on the title track, then passed out naked in the pool on 'Sacred'. As an idea, it's easy to be adored and abhorred, the album suggests ('You never loved me like you hate me now,' she sings sunnily on 'Sacred'). It's hard to pinpoint why but it feels as though God is implicit across the tracks, which is intentional. 'From a young age I have built my identity and my personality around a set of criteria that I believed – whether through empirical evidence or hearsay or just my own imagination – men would like,' Finnerty explains. 'The way people worship God, I worshipped this deified patchwork imaginary conglomerate man who had basically dictated who I would become as a person.' While working on Bloodless she was reading work by the gender studies scholar Judith Butler, and was particularly taken with the idea that there is no version of the self that can stand apart from social conditioning. Finnerty is careful how she says this, pausing to get the words right. 'The need to appease boys and men became something essential to my survival really young. Writing this album gave me an acceptance of how I created myself for this conglomerate deity of a man. It helped me forgive myself for that necessity.' Butler's ideas were a comfort too, since she was giving herself a hard time for not being her real self. 'It suddenly didn't seem like such a project to get back to that pure self that doesn't exist,' she says, audibly relieved at the thought. 'Your social conditioning is part of who you are, it's inextricable from who you are and that's fine.' It's heavy stuff. She doesn't hesitate to speak about it, offering her thoughts openly, but it's clear from the way the ideas develop in conversation that these concepts continue to evolve in real life, an ongoing work in progress. Maybe this move to live near her friends in Minneapolis will serve the larger project of letting herself be vulnerable and known. She agrees, and describes her quiet life there. She has a yard to keep her dog in (a yard is now affordable, which was not the case in LA or Nashville) and her best friend lives across the street. 'I just bop over there and we watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer together and make dinner,' she laughs. While she's not chasing fame anytime soon, she does dream of working with FKA twigs and Father John Misty; it's indie renegade Fiona Apple's successful anti-career that she wants. 'Fiona Apple carved an entirely unique path of bravery that set up so many opportunities for artists like me to say whatever I wanted and for it to be acceptable,' Finnerty says. There's one part of the full, hilariously long Fiona Apple album title of When the Pawn... that she thinks about a lot. Finnerty recites it to me with reverence like it's a prayer: 'Remember that depth is the greatest of heights and if you know where you stand then you know where to land. If you fall it won't matter 'cause you'll know that you're right.' 'That is the bible to me, as an artist,' she says wisely, having fully left the knotty conceptual part of our conversation for something she's sure about. 'What I'm reaching for is self-certainty. If you can attain self-certainty, then you have the greatest gift. You've made it.'
