Monday, March 24, 2014

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.




Blizzard Babies
That being said, the 7:30 start time meant that I had to rush pell-mell from my last-possible-moment primary voting, down Belmont, past the Shell station advertising for Toni Berrios (seriously Chicago?), into Schubas and still arrived a couple songs into the opening set. No matter, though, I still was treated to a half hour of thoroughly-enjoyable "feminist dark surf" (their words) from Chicago's Blizzard Babies. Though their stage banter was a little wet behind the ears, it was endearingly so. At one point the drummer gave a shout-out to one of her drum students in the audience, you can't beat that for community. And once they started playing they impressed, generating the kind of fuzzy, wall-of-sound pop tunes that go down like mother's milk.

By the time the second openers, Washington DC's Priests, took the stage, the room was

mostly full. Although I was a little disappointed to see that most of the people there looked like they remembered Helium firsthand rather than like they were sneaking out for their first taste of indie rock, I was glad to see that frontwoman Katie Alice Greer had a large audience. Featuring a severely-styled, bleached blonde haircut, long wool (maybe?) dress and chunky black boots, Greer jumped, screamed and writhed her way around the stage with the kind of eye for performance that's all-too-rare in the punk/indie world these days. Burning through a set of loud, spiky punk tunes that often featured extended spoken word interludes, watching her felt like watching Patti Smith front Fugazi. Near the end of their set she dropped the news that that tomorrow the band's debut album on Don Giovanni would be officially announced which felt like a perfect, celebratory way to end the set for a group who swept through like a breath of fresh air.


Speaking of new releases, Tuesday was also the release day of Ex Hex's debut single and their headlining set managed to top the already-strong performances preceding it. It's easy for beard-stroking rock critics like me to play "name-the-influences" and that's exactly what me and my similarly hirsute friend in the back did throughout Ex Hex's set, here's what we came up with: Thin Lizzy, the Runaways, Cheap Trick, the Ramones, etc. Whereas Wild Flag took a lot of pages from '70s AOR, Timony's new group is skewing more towards populist '70s shredders. I'd call it cock rock but, given the circumstances, perhaps pussy rock would be more appropriate? Whatever you call it, their set was ridiculously fun, culminating in covers of Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers and what I'm told was Transfixed.

I spent about 15 minutes after the show hanging around the merch table shamelessly waiting for the band's wireless credit card system to work rather than suffer an annoying ATM fee in order to purchase the first ever Ex Hex single, "Hot and Cold" (a song which, by the way, played about as strongly as any new material can onstage). Seeing Mary and Katie respectively rooting through boxes of t-shirts and 7" records was a sight to behold. I'd say that they did it with the aplomb of someone actually employed in a customer service industry but that would be selling them short - they looked like they were actually happy to be where they were. Even if that wasn't strictly true (and, honestly, after at least one sweaty hour onstage, how could it be?), it's still the kind of thing that makes crusty old(ish) rock writers like smile, if for no other reason than that they deserve to not have to deal with such things, yet they still do it with aplomb. As great as this was, it was just another night, another chance for time to keep flowing and for us to misjudge it.



Blizzard Babies
Blizzard Babies
Priests
Priests
Priests
Ex Hex
Ex Hex
Ex Hex
Ex Hex

2 comments:

  1. WILD FLAG WAS NOT TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO, I AM NOT READY TO DEAL WITH THE PASSAGE OF TIME

    Also, the toni berrios ads now just make me very, very happy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Wild Flag thing IS truly disturbing.

    ReplyDelete