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Live Picks: 3/29

Dream Theater

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Prog rock and metal. Devastating singer-songwriters. An instrumental master.

Dream Theater, Chicago Theatre

Distance Over Time, the 14th studio album from prog metal legends Dream Theater, was written in 18 days. Does that mean it’s focused? Of course not. The band is, as usual, instrumentally proficient and thematically all over the place. Opener “Untethered Angel” is a hard-charging rocker about a person trying to regain lost hope. “S2N”’s impressively complex time signatures is taken a bit too seriously when the band deliver obvious lyrics about social ills. Don’t get me wrong: the band’s heart is in the right place, “At Wit’s End” decrying the abuse of women. But some of them are plain lazy, “Barstool Warrior” juxtaposing the stories of such women and a man’s existential crisis as two sides of the same despair coin.

Listening to the moments of Distance Over Time that do work, you realize Dream Theater should have played it a bit more safe. “Paralyzed” is the catchy, short, effective rock song of the bunch. “Fall into the Light” is the quintessential cheesy new age enlightenment song, but it’s Ride the Lightning-level heavy. Perhaps the best on the record is the closer “Pale Blue Dot”, or how Carl Sagan referred to Earth from space. The most stadium-sized song on the record, it shows the band challenging the idea that we should feel small. If only on the rest of the album they didn’t get in the way of themselves.

5.9/10

Tonight at the Chicago Theatre, Dream Theater celebrate both Distance Over Time and the 20th anniversary of Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, starting sets with new material and then playing the latter in full.

Thou & Emma Ruth Rundle, Subterranean

Baton Rouge metal monsters Thou’s latest release is Magus, a collection of the band’s typical sludgy, slow, doom metal instrumentation juxtaposed with Bryan Funck’s icy vocals. But it’s uncharacteristically hopeful. “We refuse to exist in our despair,” they sing on “In the Kingdom of Meaning”, one of many songs on the album that starts with more gentle, echoing instrumentation before delving into its usual sorcery. “We are the sages, reincarnated, up to our old tricks again,” sing a chorus of women on the witchy “Divine Will”. This isn’t to say the band have gone soft. They’re truly menacing on “Greater Invocation of Disgust”, and Funck truly inhabits the dogmatic hedonists he criticizes on “The Changeling Prince”. Live, the band should play heavily from the record, though they’re certainly known for grunge and 90′s indie rock covers.

We previewed Emma Ruth Rundle’s set at Empty Bottle last year:

“Singer-songwriter, guitarist, and visual artist Emma Ruth Rundle has released her opus. On Dark Horses, inspired by her move to Louisville and musical and life partnership with Evan Patterson of Young Widows/Jaye Jayle (who we profiled earlier this year), is about anxiety, dealing with pain, and escaping trauma, but it’s also about being enveloped by love. Its songs are sludgy and slow-burning, anthemic and emotional all at once. The verses chug and the choruses crash, the core band of Patterson on guitar and piano, Todd Cook on bass, and Dylan Nadon on drums providing tension between darkness and light. At the center of it all is Rundle’s weary, empathetic voice, addressing a loved one’s trauma on 'You Don’t Have To Cry', the perfect complement to Patterson’s baritone on love duet “Light Song”.”

Damiana, the collaborative project of local experimental artists TALsounds and Matchess, opens.

Cat Power, United Center

We previewed Cat Power’s set at Thalia Hall late last year:

“At this year’s Riot Fest, Chan Marshall played only the short title track from the not-yet-released Wanderer, what would end up being her first album in 6 years and first not on Matador (who rejected her album because they wanted her to sound more like Adele). Appropriately, Marshall signed with Domino for the album whose title references her very nomadic nature, whether personally or stylistically, and added the track 'Woman' featuring megastar Lana Del Rey that she claims is not a slight on Matador but we all know really is. Marshall 1, everyone else, 0.

Wanderer is quintessential Cat Power for better and for worse. Impressively vocal-forward, minimal, and slinky but also a little dragging, the self-produced record espouses a gentle anger. 'If I had a dime for every time / Tell me I’m not what you need / If I had a quarter, I would pull it together / And I would take it to the bank and then leave,' Marshall sings on the intro to 'Woman' before she and Del Rey harmonize over a 'Breakdown' beat. Even if she is firing shots, she’s also feeling empowered with Del Rey at her side. 'Black' is the story of someone who saved her during her mid-2000s time of addiction, guitars and layered vocals providing more strength in numbers. As with other Cat Power records, there’s a song or two with experimentation–like the auto-tuned vocals on 'Horizon'–but the album is mostly stark and concentrated on Marshall’s silky, warm voice. She notably covers Rihanna’s 'Stay', contextualized by a legendary story involving ex-lovers, broken hearts, and singing the song at a karaoke bar 16 times. But Marshall makes it her own.”

Massively popular folk band Mumford & Sons headline.

Bill MacKay, Hideout

Tonight at the Hideout is the record release for Fountain Fire, the latest album from local guitar hero Bill MacKay. As with other albums he’s made, the new record is incredibly varied. He layers acoustic, distorted electric, and slide guitars on standouts “Pre-California” and “The Movie House”, instrumentals that sound like they could back a lost country classic but live on their own just as well. And the requinto playing that pervaded SpiderBeetleBee’s “I Heard Them Singing” shows up again on “Man & His Panic”. But MacKay brings a couple new tricks, too. The fuzzed out playing on “Arcadia”, enveloping itself, becomes a noise track. On the other end of the spectrum, MacKay reveals something truly lovely: his singing voice, specifically on “Birds of May” and “Try It On”, weathered and emotive like the best of his forebears.

Forest Management, the solo project of local experimental artist John Daniel, & Miranda Winters (of Melkbelly) open. DJ Mariapaz Camargo spins before, between, and after sets.