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Chicago Tribune
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Alabama Shakes is back, reuniting for a Chicago audience outdoors at Salt Shed
Why rush the pace on a warm, humid evening? Alabama Shakes eased into its first scheduled show in eight years Tuesday at the outside Fairgrounds at Salt Shed. Performing the opening of a two-night stand and their first local gig since 2016, the reunited rock 'n' roll band received a warm welcome from a packed crowd. It returned the favor throughout a 90-minute concert that contained a few surprises sprinkled amid the familiar. In news that will shock no one, vocalist-guitarist Brittany Howard led the way. Wearing a smart pair of glasses and a hybrid overalls-dress ensemble, she flashed an ear-to-ear smile and openly channeled enthusiasm. And while the 36-year-old belter largely skipped the banter, she expressed gratitude in multiple ways, from blowing kisses to taking formal bows. Happy to be playing with her old friends, she evoked a small-town native who, after moving to the big city for a stretch as a young adult, gladly returned home to comfortable surroundings. While she's been receiving critical acclaim for her solo excursions, Howard looked jazzed to re-engage with her former mates and resurrect long-dormant songs. Save for a surprise one-off event in Alabama last December, the group has been on indefinite hiatus since early 2018. During the break, the two other current permanent members maintained a low profile. But former drummer Steve Johnson dealt with domestic violence issues and was arrested for suspicion of child abuse, a charge subsequently dropped. He's no longer with the band. Alabama Shakes keeps picking Chicago for key stops. During a spring 2015 tour well in advance of its sophomore 'Sound & Color' LP, the band previewed all the album's songs in a Chicago Theatre show for an audience unacquainted with the material. Months later, the group upped the ante with a celebrated set at Lollapalooza. Howard later chose the city to launch her 2024 tour at Thalia Hall with a pair of winter concerts that preceded the release of her most recent effort, the Grammy-nominated 'What Now.' 'What now' for Alabama Shakes is the past, and a small taste of the future. At this show, with pressure and anticipations at a peak, some spots of rust understandably emerged. Ditto a handful of pragmatic choices that can easily be amended and improved as things evolve. Namely, the flow of the set, which at times sagged, and the arrangement of the band onstage. The interplay between Howard and guitarist Heath Fogg helps separate the Alabama Shakes from many lesser bands. But by placing the primarily immobile Fogg behind and to the side of her front-and-center position, the group shut itself off from some spontaneous opportunities. Often, Alabama Shakes Version 2.0 bordered on being too cautious for a band that last issued new original music a decade ago. Chalk up the buttoned-down tactics to nerves, perhaps, or the simple desire to get their sea legs back. Whatever the reason, Howard and company never worked their fare into a sweaty lather or sustained any explosive energy longer than one tune. Three auxiliary instrumentalists (drummer Noah Bond, organist Ben Tanner, keyboardist Paul Horton) and a trio of backing vocalists fleshed out the arrangements, yet this inaugural showing favored restored symmetry over reignited chemistry. An abundance of diligent textures and delicate balladry, a shortage of let-it-all-hang-out looseness and fiery intensity. Of course, with Howard as the center of attention, sparks still flew. Present her a song and she'll stamp it with sincerity, personality and soul. Make that an extra helping of the latter. In complete control, Howard demonstrated a mega-watt range that veered from a quiet, ultra-high register only canines might detect to low, throaty howls that would command the respect of a street tough. She appreciated the role of subtlety, and the rule of 'less is more.' Howard preferred simmer to boil, sugar to sass, and never lacked spunk. Her alteration of one syllable in a verse or chorus usually changed the temperature of the song, and prompted the rhythms to follow suit. Bond and bassist Zac Cockrell held down the low end with workmanlike aptitude, leaving plenty of room for bluesy fills, fuzz-distortion accents and pregnant pauses to enter undetected. For all their graduate-level knowledge of roots rock, vintage R&B and Southern boogie, Alabama Shakes served notice they're just as much students of the art of the build — and of how tension inherently begets deeper grooves. Howard essentially narrated the approach on 'Hold On,' whose steady purr, knee-bending flexibility and slight funkiness contributed to its fabulous sense of restraint — to say nothing of its verbal push-pull tug between patience and pleasure, increasingly relevant in an age where instant gratification reigns supreme. Indicative of the title, 'Dunes' rose and fell akin to a coastal landscape, its ebbing melody threatening to drift away and requiring the band to reel it back as the three-piece vocal choir repeated the refrain. At other times, Howard pushed her singing until it teetered on an imaginary ledge, peering over precipices at once exhilarating and dangerous. Delivered in a scratchy tone, 'Don't Wanna Fight' strutted and swaggered even as it briefly snuck inside a disco club. Framed as a sentimental hymn, 'This Feeling' floated through static-charged air as Howard's soft, breathy shiver twined with minimalist percussion and twinkling keys. A waltzing 'Gimme All Your Love' found the singer begging and demanding, and tempos that bounced between similar extremes. The Alabama Shakes chased synesthesia on the big-sky shimmer of 'Sound & Color,' yet the brand-new 'Another Life' registered a more formidable impression. Its slinky, stacked-block architecture ultimately gave way to Howard testifying and a stomping outro. Another apparent debut, the haunted 'American Dream,' waded into psychedelic territories via dissonant elements and clashing themes. All told, a solid start to an Act 2 that needs a few tweaks — including the exchange of some mellow fare ('Someday,' 'Over My Head') for a couple of garage-rock howlers sitting on the shelf ('Heavy Chevy,' 'The Greatest'). Or an occasional stab at a rollicking cover or an attempt at a cut from Howard's side-project hardcore band, Kumite. Those shifts would grant Howard extra chances to turn her head from side to side, throw her head back and visibly vibrate with excitement. All signs of an impending eruption of uncontainable emotion and fierce determination. In the world of Alabama Shakes, that's always from the Salt Shed Fairgrounds on July 15: 'Future People' 'Don't Wanna Fight' 'I Ain't the Same' 'I Found You' 'Guess Who' 'Hang Loose' 'Hold On' 'This Feeling' 'Dunes' 'Another Life' (unreleased) 'Gimme All Your Love' 'Over My Head' 'Rise to the Sun' 'Shoegaze' 'Drive By Baby' 'Be Mine' 'American Dream' (unreleased) 'Gemini' Encore 'Sound & Color' 'Someday' 'Always Alright'
Chicago Tribune
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Neal Francis celebrates new album like a true Chicagoan — with hot dogs and a free show
Psychedelic rocker Neal Francis plans to celebrate the release of his third studio album, the funk-heavy 'Return to Zero' (ATO Records), later this week by fielding a merciless onslaught of insults courtesy of the profane cashiers at Lincoln Park staple The Wieners Circle. The Oak Park-raised piano prodigy attributes this perverse desire to his expansive love of the city and its famous encased meat. 'I'm unabashedly a fan of Chicago-style hot dogs. My fiancé is a little bit worried about my consumption, probably deservedly so,' he said over a video call from his Pilsen home, flanked by gear and musical doodads. In addition to playing an all-vinyl DJ set, the 36-year-old will 'lay my Chicago accent on really thick and just generally ham it up' while 'humbly' working the line like a regular employee. And he has the fast food bona fides to back the publicity stunt up — he used to man the register at a little grill in Diversey Harbor while parlaying the mentorship of local boogie-woogie piano legend Erwin Helfer into full-fledged gigs at blues and jazz clubs around the city. For this afternoon of returning to his day-job roots, Francis will trade in the sleek, chest-baring jumpsuit and eyeliner look from his 'Francis Comes Alive' concert film and accompanying double album — recorded in 2023 over two nights at Thalia Hall (and blessed by the father of the live album himself, Peter Frampton) — for something a little less chic. 'I have a hot dog suit that I'm going to wear during the whole thing that just came in the mail. We got it from Chicago Costume,' he said with the excitement of a kid on Halloween. Francis and his band (drummer Collin O'Brien, bassist Mike Starr and guitarist Austin Koenigstein) will preview tracks from 'Return to Zero' on the eve of the album's release for concertgoers who sign up for a chance for entry through his social media pages at Lincoln Park club aliveOne, a place the songwriter knows inside and out after playing there weekly when he fronted instrumental funksters The Heard. ('It was a very formative time in my life,' he said.) After the last year of winning over crowds at festivals such as Bonnaroo in Tennessee, New York's cavernous Carnegie Hall and a late-night spot on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!', returning to aliveOne takes on the quality of a 'This Is Your Life' TV episode. It's going to be a 'laugh riot' Francis predicted. 'It's going to be so much fun. I think I'll just feel really free in that space.' Despite having more in common sonically with New Orleans haunt Tipitina's than defunct dive bar CBGB in New York, Francis said there's a 'punk energy that I'm trying to tap into' for his upcoming 35-date spring tour. Going out there and rocking out seems like the best way to combat the rampant restlessness in the world. 'There's so much noise in the world right now — some of it is really scary for me,' Francis said. 'That's my mission — to let everybody else let go and feel something.' The disco-fringed, Dr. John-influenced 2019 album 'Changes' felt like a quintessential debut in that it encompassed the entirety of Francis' experience up to that point in his burgeoning career — years of preparation and musical calisthenics, rigorous touring with the likes of Mud Morganfield, the son of Muddy Waters, and the personal fumbles someone in his early 20s not beholden to a strict 9-to-5 schedule is apt to fall into. For 2021's dreamy, jam-heavy 'In Plain Sight,' Francis put his struggles with the isolation of the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sting of love gone wrong and the hurdle of maintaining sobriety all on tape at the former St. Peter's United Church of Christ in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood while he was also living in the congregation's parsonage. The difficult story of 'Return to Zero,' recorded mostly in Los Angeles with frequent collaborator Sergio Rios co-producing, lies within Francis' inner critic. 'I keep meeting my shortcomings on the field,' he said. 'I learned a lot of ways not to make a record on this one.' His main hangup? 'Just me,' he said. 'There's this voice inside me that's like 'You better do it perfectly.' And my whole life is built around telling that voice to chill. It's just like this competition I'm in with myself and I want to outdo myself. In trying to do that, I really didn't leave a lot of room for having fun in this endeavor.' Despite these proclamations of dread, the album slaps. 'Dirty Little Secret' bounces with a slinky Eurythmics vibe while the sashay of '150 More Times' could make Elton John sit on his hands and donate his Yamaha. 'What's Left of Me' chugs like a whimsical train on its way to the stars and if 'Back It Up' soundtracked 'Saturday Night Fever,' maybe anti-disco sentiment would have never gained traction. 'Need You Again' shoots out of a cannon with no-nonsense backing vocals courtesy of Brooklyn trio Say She She and a parade of guitar from Soulive's Eric Krasno. The lyrics recount the feeling of romanticizing a love interest to the point of addiction. Even as Francis prepares to unleash this batch of songs onto the public, his mind wanders to the next collection. 'I want to work on writing songs that aren't always autobiographical,' he said when asked if his growing success and engagement to his 'wonderful' love, Piper, will impede his muse. Then again, 'there's an infinite well of sadness to draw from,' he said. 'That was supposed to be sarcastic, but also a little bit true. I don't know where art is supposed to come from, but historically for me, it's come from suffering. I keep wondering if that's required. I hope it's not.' Janine Schaults is a freelance writer. Neal Francis on March 13 at aliveOne, 2683 N. Halsted St., doors open at 7 p.m. with Birds of Prey opening; free, reserved entry via @nealfrancismusic on Facebook and Instagram, plus limited admission at the door. Then serving hotdogs at 6 p.m. on March 14 at The Wieners Circle, 2622 N. Clark St., followed by a 7 p.m. DJ set, first 50 customers receive a free T-shirt or trucker hat.
Chicago Tribune
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: A still indie Regina Spektor revisits her album ‘Songs' at Thalia Hall
Regina Spektor thinks about words differently than most of us. That much was clear Sunday at the first of a sold-out three-night stand at Thalia Hall, where the singer-songwriter literally and figuratively explored the consequence of sounds, syllables and silences at a bare-bones show bursting with accessible eclecticism and quirky perspective. Though flawed, the solo outing possessed the courage to fail and put a refreshing spin on the tired 'album-play' concept. Looking back at her younger self while combing through songs she made before she landed a record deal, Spektor offered fans a candid view into her origins for the first hour of the 105-minute concert. The decision proved rare and unguarded. Most contemporaries either reserve proto-fare for polished, late-career archival projects or leave it locked away in a vault. Shy only in the matter of blowing her nose due to a minor cold, the 45-year-old Russian native greeted the challenge with gregarious charm, honesty and huge smiles. She appeared shocked that the audience embraced material she described as 'super weird' and never thought would be heard in her adopted hometown of New York, let alone Chicago. Spektor asked for forgiveness in advance, knowing she'd probably lose the thread at least once on tunes that stem back to her days as a teenager. Indeed, amid an age where countless musicians capitalize on nostalgia by replicating widely known albums in their entirety onstage, Spektor's deep dive felt brave and unique. On a tour that visited just three cities, she begins by playing her 'Songs' record in an order that doesn't usually mirror the original sequence. Granted access to a friend's recording studio on Christmas Day 2001, Spektor completed the album in one take. Technically released in 2002 and sold only at her shows, the self-issued effort soon faded away to become a kind of aural curio. Renowned engineer Bob Ludwig came out of retirement to master it for proper release and its streaming debut last November. Long removed from the days of hawking $10 CDs of 'Songs' out of a backpack, Spektor spent the past 20 or so years charting a course that positions her as one of the most 'indie' artists remaining on a major-label roster. Prevented from greater fame mainly because of the eccentricities that fuel her ingenuity, she exists as a throwback to when big labels would still weigh the importance of craftsmanship and originality against the desire for massive sales. Having throttled back her professional schedule over the last decade, Spektor now seems more of an outlier than ever. Her consistently strong output — including two self-released efforts, six studio records, a live outing and several contributions to high-profile soundtracks — and slowed pace suggest the approach of a musician who does things on her own terms. Wearing a shiny dress and vibrant red lipstick, and primarily seated at a grand piano, Spektor followed her own muse at the Pilsen venue. Even, at times, reluctantly, as with certain 'Songs' tracks, she regretted writing too many words and devising an abundance of chords. Off-the-cuff and borderline giddy, her self-reflections provided comedic relief and contextual background. At one point, while wrestling with her youthful compositions, Spektor acknowledged their erratic nature and joked she shouldn't have to face her past self. Witnessing the singer-pianist examine her roots without the aid of edits, accompaniment or technology was fascinating and insightful. Spektor's agile vocals and clever lyrics supplied plenty of reasons to grant her latitude. Even when she navigated songs that resembled half-finished sketches ('Lulliby'). Or recited the ingredients of a fruit jar ('Reading Time with Pickle'), made false starts ('Aching to Pupate') and furiously hunted for the right piano notes after flubbing a transition and bringing everything to a full stop ('Lacrimosa'). Could Spektor benefit from better preparation? Sure, though refinement and stuffed-shirt professionalism would've smoothed the rough edges of offbeat songs that thrived on spontaneity, uncertainty and whimsy. Working from memory, and dealing with the awkward consequences when it failed, the singer equated her vulnerable interpretations of the zig-zagging pieces to riding a roller coaster without a safety harness. Aptly, Spektor's elastic voice and tempo command supplied an endless path of twists, loops, dips, rolls, stalls, spirals and drops. She expanded traditional pop parameters with architecture that frequently changed direction without notice and, once the detours were mapped, reverted to the initial patterns just as quickly. Her malleable piano arrangements reconceptualized lullabies, ballads, shuffles and torch songs. Demonstrated on the casual 'Bobbing for Apples' and rubbery 'That Time' — examples of her flair for observation and ability to express significant themes couched in narratives that otherwise appear to address routine matters — Spektor's crude guitar strumming served as a weak substitute for her keyboard prowess. She handled basic percussion, such as whacking a drum stick against a wooden chair on the scolding 'Poor Little Rich Boy' or tapping her hand on the piano lid during a surprisingly solemn 'Better,' with more authority. Nothing outshined what Spektor accomplished with her voice. Especially evident on five songs stripped of their wider-scale pop-rock instrumentation, her varied deliveries transformed vowels, consonants, pitches and accents into a novel language. She played games of hop-scotch with pronunciation devices, stretched short phrases into lengthy passages, dangled notes akin to the way a puppeteer controls strings from above. Limited only by possibility, Spektor used her dynamic voice to mimic the tooting of car horns; soft shimmering of hi-hat cymbals; frustrations of muttered curses; rhythms of a hip-hop beat; airiness of pursed lips; praise retching of sudden nausea. Whether adhering to gentle tones, firing off sentences as rapid-fire streams, inventing mashed-up terms, rapping cadences or employing subtle shifts in volume to alter meaning, she created colorful universes stitched together by zany imagination, escapist fantasy and grown-up romanticism. May her innocent sense of child-like wonder never dim. Bob Gendron is a freelance critic. Setlist from Thalia Hall March 2: 'Prisoners' 'Reading Time with Pickle' 'Oedipus' 'Bon Idée' 'Aching to Pupate' 'Lounge' 'Daniel Cowman' 'Lacrimosa' 'Consequence of Sounds' 'Lulliby' 'Samson' 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' 'Loveology' 'Baby Jesus' 'Two Birds' 'Aquarius' 'Better' 'Bobbing for Apples' 'That Time' Encore 'Poor Little Rich Boy' 'Fidelity'
