On Warmer Music's Spring 2014 Mix

via Chicago Colors

By this point in the year, most of my friends are pretty sick of me but this year, I'm starting to fear for my safety. As you might remember, I'm one of the few Chicagoans who is an unapologetic fan of winter. Far from a popular position in an average year, this year it was the kind of thing that had visions of torches and pitchforks dancing in Chiberians frostbitten heads.

But even after a winter as historically bleak as this one I will still defend my love of true winter because it makes the spring all that much sweeter. This morning I smiled because it was raining. Rather than snowing. In late March. Only someone whose dealt with freezer burn on their lungs could find happiness in a drippy, 40 degree day.

Indeed spring in the midwest is a brief and flighty thing that exists for, at most, six non-consecutive weeks between March and early June but it's no less glorious because of it. A long-time spring fever sufferer, I still dream every year of the utterly giddy feeling I got in college when the season's first day over 50 when I could get away with skipping an afternoon class, throwing together a mixtape and go tooling down country roads to find a place to walk amidst woods and birds.

Don't get me wrong, as a whole, spring 'round these parts is perhaps the least satisfying season. But like that girl/boy/other you always had a crush on growing up, the brief moments when the light shines on you are unbelievably heady in a ways a solid. steady relationship/season (OK, this metaphor is getting out of hand) never quite could.

Vinyl Vacation: L.A.M.F. Revisited - The Heartbreakers

Doesn't the world of pop music ever seem hopelessly expansive to anyone else? And by "hopelessly", I of course mean "thrillingly"... unless it's the first one.

The thing about being an intellectually inquisitive (at times veering dangerously towards acquisitive) person, especially in the 21st century is that there will always be infinitely more stuff to know than anyone, even one guided by supposedly impeccably high standards of taste could possibly hope to take in. So even as someone who's spent far more time than most reasonably socialized people diving into snobby depths of various strands of pop, punk, hip-hop, R&B, folk, indie and whatever else meets my very high and somewhat arbitrary standards of worthy music, I still have more glaring gaps in my knowledge than I like having to admit.

Just as declaring oneself a history major makes one keenly self-aware of the vast amount of recorded humanity of which you have only the very faintest hints of knowledge, writing semi-seriously about music will drive the self-aggrandizing intellectual into spasms of guilt over their own shortcomings.

Concert Review & Pictures: Ex Hex & Priests at Schubas, March 18, 2014

All Photos Courtesy of Matt Conzen

Humans are bad time-keepers. For example, it seems like just last year that I was rocking out to Wild Flag at the Empty Bottle while it seems like forever since Matt Conzen starting shooting shows with me. And yet both of those events were, in fact, two-and-a-half years ago - go figure. Now Wild Flag is no more, Mary Timony is rolling through Chicago with her new project, Ex Hex and, fortunately, Matt Conzen is still snapping away with me.

Last Tuesday's show was an all-ages special, which despite all the griping that usually accompanies such a designation, I was excited for. Generally I enjoy high schoolers getting their first taste of the endorphin rush of live music and God knows in this case I felt that no teen in Chicago wouldn't benefit from seeing the ass-kicking, no-names-taking bill being presented this night.

Concert Review & Pictures: Ice Balloons, Kyp Malone & Coins at The Empty Bottle, March 10, 2014

All Photos Courtesy of Matt Conzen

Having a big name member can be a blessing or a curse for a new band. On the one hand, they'll help you garner attention but, on the other, a lot of that attention is going to come with some strong expectations that have nothing to do with you. It was precisely this tension between expectations and reality that made Monday night's show at the Empty Bottle so exhilarating.

It was a free show and most of the advertising focused on Kyp Malone, of TV On The Radio fame, who was playing a solo set sandwiched in between local duo Coins and another project in which he plays, Ice Balloons. Given the attendance pattern, it was clear that most of the night's attendees were TVOTR fans interested in seeing their idol. I would wager that fewer than a quarter of the audience had any familiarity with Malone's solo work (released under the name Rain Machine), never mind that of the other bands, but here they were anyway. It was, a relatively full house of people excited to hear... something.

Concert Review - Empty Bottle Winter Block Party, March 1, 2014

Courtesy of Matt Conzen's phone.

At this point, all we can do in Chicago is lean into the winter. I mean, it's made it clear that it's not going anywhere so all we can do is wear our #Chiberia hashtags like a badge of pride. Besides, harsh winters have always been a part of Chicago's DNA. Even as it's become "international city", Chicago has never been a gathering place for celebrities either entertainment (LA), literary/business (NYC) or political (DC) and it's easy to see why - for at least five months of the year, you to have some starch in your shirt and iron in your spine to enjoy life in the city by the lake ice cube.

So a block party in the snow seemed like the perfect way to close out (or at least begin to close out) this 3rd coldest winter in our city's recorded history. The wonderful people at the Empty Bottle were behind this endeavor, which could not have been more fitting. Their scruffy, eclectic but still-discerning approach to music was note-perfect (if you will) for this kind of patently ridiculous celebration. In fact, the perfect distillation of the event's spirit came earlier in the afternoon when an Empty Bottle employee asked everyone in the crowd to look up towards a second floor window where the owner was snapping photos of the crowd. Per their instructions we all looked up, smiled and gave the camera the traditional one-finger salute.