Friday 1
FU MANCHU, ROLLING BLACKOUTS Stoner-rock mainstays Fu Manchu bring a streak of slick metallic alloy to their new Start the Machine (DRT), and on their Web site they seem more excited about contributing music to a Discovery Channel documentary on motorcycles–a parking-lot burnout’s dream of flame-painted glory–than anything else. California’s Rolling Blackouts, recently kicked off the Warped tour for inappropriate urination, pursue a crude banging-your-head-against-the-wall repetitiveness on their 60s-influenced garage distillation Black Is Beautiful (Record Collection), like a band that loves the Stooges but can’t master the riffs. 11:30 PM, Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace, 773-478-4408 or 866-777-8932, $15, 18+. –Monica Kendrick
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TAKING BACK SUNDAY, FALL OUT BOY Taking Back Sunday have dispelled rumors of their demise with a new album on Victory, Where You Want to Be. It’s better than the last one: the band strikes an almost perfect balance between naked passion and coy shoegazing, threatening repeatedly to bust out with Jam-like schoolboy candor only to run hiding each time into a fog of instrumental flourishes and pools of gloomy melody. Rolling Stone and MTV buzz band Fall Out Boy (who have already been tapped for next year’s Warped tour) are about as exciting as last night’s pasta. Matchbox Romance and A Thorn for Every Heart open. 7 PM, Congress Theater, 2135 N. Milwaukee, 312-923-2000 or 312-559-1212, sold-out. All-ages. –Monica Kendrick
SKY SAXON & THE SEEDS, BLACK LIPS Original Seeds lineup? Of course not. New album? Uh, no, though comps and collections abound, and leader Saxon has never completely stopped recording. But so what? The point is that those joyously monotonous garage riffs of old–precursor to everything from Deep Purple to the Ramones to the White Stripes–are a powerful form of hypnotherapy well worth a donation to the Sky Saxon Aging Musicians Fund. Playing second are the Black Lips, a young and greasy Atlanta barbecue-garage outfit whose stabs at trippiness are almost as freewheelingly crude as the Seeds’ were, back in the day that neither the Lips nor Saxon are (for very different reasons) able to remember. Plastic Crimewave Sound opens. 9 PM, Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, 773-489-3160 or 312-559-1212, $10. –Monica Kendrick
NATURAL HISTORY This trio (two of whom are brothers) approach pop like the Upper Manhattanites they are–arch but helplessly infatuated. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing–the same slumming sensibility shows up everywhere in classic Britpop. It’s just unusual to hear it coming from a bunch of Yanks, devoted as we are to a studied obliviousness to such indelicate subjects as class. On their debut LP, Beat Beat Heartbeat (Startime International) these boys dive into their greasy-spoon riffs and naked hooks with eager recklessness, reacquainting rock with its old sense of fear and desire. The M’s and Dead Science open. 9:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 800-594-8499, $10. –Monica Kendrick
