Yr. (Late!) Weekend, Pt. 1: Sleepy Sun + True Widow + TV Buddhas + Giant Battle Monster + Fiskadoro + Free Music Agreement + More

Crap, crap, crap, crap — late as hell again, I’m afraid. On the off chance that you & yours aren’t already out the door to see some cool band somewhere, though, here’s what I think sounds good for tonight, Fri., September 17th (and yes, some of ’em haven’t actually started yet, so they’re still worth a shot):

Sleepy Sun/True Widow @ The Orange Show
Argh. Out of everything going on tonight, this is the one that really, truly kills me to miss, both in terms of posting about it beforehand and seeing the damn thing myself. Californians Sleepy Sun bowled me over last year with Embrace, which turned out to be this awesome, epic, overfuzzed blast of psych-rock stomp that makes you smile serenely while compelling you to bang your head (see the review over here). I’ve been meaning to check out the followup, Fever, for quite a while now, but it keeps slipping off the top of the pile, so… Basically, I suck. sigh.

Heaping shame upon shame is the fact that I have heard True Widow‘s self-titled debut and was pretty damn impressed with the band’s slow-moving, kinda gloomy, Silkworm-ish murk-groove. The fact that the band’s ex-members of Slowride and Mag Seven doesn’t help my cringing conscience, either. If you can get up to The Orange Show, seriously, you need to do it.

TV Buddhas/Mad Happy/The Drafted @ Super Happy Fun Land
Mentioned headliners TV Buddhas a while back, but I figured the Israeli/Berliner crew were worth a second thumbs-up; fans of the MC5 or old-school New York proto-punk will be amazed, I swear. I dunno Mad Happy at all, sorry, but what I’ve heard of local punks {The Drafted} ain’t bad, either…

Giant Battle Monster/Ghormeh Sabzi/Joe Mathlete @ Dean’s Credit Clothing
Said it before, and I’ll say it again: {Giant Battle Monster} are a sight to behold. Just the pedals these guys use are insane, and then there’s the music, which sounds at first so freaking spastic that there’s no way the band could actually be playing a real-live “song”…except that then they all shift on a dime and do something completely, bizarrely different that still manages to sound badass. Holy wow. Think Mr. Bungle covering Between the Buried and Me, and you might be in the neighborhood.

And hey, Joe Mathlete is playing! Not sure what all songs he’s doing (er, has done, at this point…double sigh), but the guy’s a master at writing songs that are simultaneously nerdy, sweet, bitter, thoughtful, and just plain silly, and making them actually work when they really shouldn’t.

Fiskadoro/Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except/The Delta Block/We Repel Each Other @ Notsuoh (9PM; free!)
Haven’t heard most of the bands on here, unfortunately, but I dig the {Fiskadoro} folks, who’re oddballs in the best possible way, playing this strange, somewhat menacing music that’s drone-y and tribal, with clicking/clanking (yet often still danceable) rhythms, muttered vocals, and scraping/stabbing guitars; at times they make me think of a crossbreed between Gang of Four and Underworld, and that’s no bad thing.

On a side note, I’m not sure Chicago’s We Repel Each Other is actually playing — they list the show at Notsuoh on the same night, but the Fiskadoro folks seemed in the dark about it. Hopefully there wasn’t some kind of scheduling screwup.

Acuerdo de Música Libre/Free Music Agreement: a Festival of Improvised Music, featuring Remi Alvarez, Chris Cogburn, David Dove, Lucas Gorham, Milo Tamez, jAWWAAD Taylor, Fernando Vigueras, & Juan Pablo Villa @ El Dorado Ballroom (2312 Elgin; 8PM)
Night #1 of what sounds like a cool cross-national music festival put on by the {Nameless Sound} folks (and others on the Mexico side, I’m sure, but I’m not sure who, sorry). Improvised music-makers from two countries, coming together with music as their shared language; tugs at the heartstrings, don’t it?

The Dan Band @ House of Blues
Remember the godawful, raunchy, utterly over-the-top band playing at the wedding at the end of The Hangover? Yeah, well, this is them. And yeah, I’m guessing being egomaniacal, bad-music-playing asshats is pretty much their shtick live, too. Could be entertaining…

Runners-Up:
I am Mesmer/Kelly Doyle/Hilary Sloan @ Rudyard’s
Friends Are Electric Party, featuring Glasnost, Young Girls, & more @ Groundhall (formerly known as The Engine Room)
KISS/The Academy Is…/The Envy @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Texas Johnny Brown @ The Big Easy
Antagonist/The Breathing Process/Wretched/Diskreet/The Nephilim Terror/The Circadian Effect/Gods @ Shadowplay Lounge (The Woodlands)

The next update’ll be a bit more timely, honest. (No, really.)