The Treatment
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CHICAGO READER | APRIL 21, 2006 | SECTION THREE 5 [email protected] The Meter www.chicagoreader.com/TheMeter The Treatment A day-by-day guide to our Just Right Critic’s Choices and other previews friday 21 After a series of musical matchups that didn’t quite fit, EEF BARZELAY Debut solo albums tend three childhood pals put together their dream band, the 1900s. c toward the personal and/or confessional, so it was reasonable to expect that the songs on Eef Barzelay’s Bitter By Bob Mehr Honey (Spinart) would be more autobiographical than the ones he writes and sings for Brooklyn indie rockers Clem Snide. But he quashes that preconception with the disc’s opening line: “That was my ass you saw bouncing next to Ludacris.” Said ass belongs not to Barzelay but to a hip-hop video vixen who’s a nursing-school dropout and the daughter of a cleaning woman; on “Ballad of Bitter Honey” she explains how and why she manipulates men. Barzelay gifts her with just enough self-consciousness to lock her insights between wisdom and rationalization, his empathy never waning. Bitter Honey is just Barzelay and his acoustic guitar, which means his vocals are even more of a take-it-or-leave-it proposition than usual. Me, I say his affectations are more supple, and the tension between his nerdy nasality and confi- dent projection lends pathos to lines like “You looks so pretty when you have been drinking.” Prior to last year’s rocking and restless End of Love, Clem Snide had been growing qui- eter and more acoustic with each release, with Barzelay’s lyrics growing sunnier and less incisive. Bitter Honey is qui- eter than any Clem Snide album, but it’s less sunny too—the closing “Joy to the World” notwithstanding. The City on Film opens. a 10 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525- 2508, $10. —Keith Harris Y JIM NEWBERR From left: Mike Jasinski, Charlie Ransford, Tim Minnick, Caroline Donovan, Jeanine O’Toole. In front: Edward Anderson. he 1900s have only been playing Anderson became friends with that they began work on Plume Delivery , T live shows since September, and band’s bassist, Charlie Ransford. which kicks off with O’Toole singing their debut EP, Plume Delivery, “I’d run into Ed at shows and we’d the pulsing, organ-driven “Bring the doesn’t come out until May 30. But hang out,” says Ransford. “And he always Good Boys Home” and closes with the they’ve led a charmed existence so far. talked about doing something together. jangly miniature “Heart Props.” They They landed a deal with Parasol Records He had these ideas kicking around. We’d recorded the EP over a series of week- shortly after their first gig, the EP’s all been in situations musically where it ends at a studio at the University of enjoying positive advance notices on wasn’t exactly what we wanted. So final- Illinois at Chicago, where Minnick indie-rock tip sheets and MP3 blogs, ly we thought, ‘Let’s do a band, but let’s works as a Web programmer for a and they sold out a recent headlining gig do it right.’” bioterrorism-preparedness program at the Hideout. “We didn’t quite form the band out in the school’s department of public The band’s sweet, keyboard-swathed of desperation—it wasn’t like it was our health. “After 9/11, as part of Bush’s Eef Barzelay pop shows a strong 60s influence and last hope or anything,” says Anderson, plan to fund bioterrorism-protection puts coed vocals front and center, a for- who’s 27. “But I don’t want to be a rock efforts, they built this big studio to mula that’s worked for bands like the star at 40. It was more like, ‘Let’s take record lectures and do webcasts,” HAPTIC Haptic is a spin-off of the Dropp Ensemble, New Pornographers, Belle & Sebastian, everything we’ve learned and all get Minnick says. “It’s federally funded, whose 2003 CD, The Empire Builders, is the best piece of and Broken Social Scene. But, guitarist together and do it the right way.’” so it’s a really nice setup.” drone music to come out of Chicago since Jim O’Rourke left and singer Edward Anderson argues, In the spring of 2004 Anderson, The band handed the tracks to engi- town. Both groups feature Joseph Mills and Adam the band also works because it’s a group Jasinski, Ransford, and Minnick neer Graeme Gibson for mixing in Sonderberg playing electronic and acoustic instruments with of “friends, lovers, and ex-lovers.” Most began playing together, bonding over September, the same month they played percussionist Steven Hess, and both groups make layered, of its six members—Anderson, drum- their mutual obsessions—which their very first gig, opening for Bobby richly textured music that evolves at a glacial pace. But while mer Tim Minnick, bassist Charlie included Velvet Underground bootlegs Conn at the student union at the the Dropp Ensemble is generally studio-bound, relying on Ransford, multi-instrumentalist Mike and Daft Punk singles—at Anderson’s University of Illinois at Urbana- material mailed to them by contributors and heavy postpro- Jasinski, and vocalists Jeanine O’Toole home studio in Logan Square. Their Champaign. The show was sparsely duction, Haptic is a live unit. They’ve played five concerts in and Caroline Donovan—have known long late-night jam sessions led to a attended, but one of the folks in the just over a year, and even their recordings—a track on the each other since childhood. O’Toole and three-song demo of Anderson’s finely crowd was Geoff Merritt, owner of Two Million Tongues compilation and a forthcoming album, Ransford once dated, and Anderson and etched pop songs. Urbana-based Parasol Records. O’Toole, The Medium—are drawn from live performances. Haptic Donovan are still an item. But the band wanted to fill out the who worked at Parasol when she was liv- recruits a different guest musician for each show; Greg Growing up in the southwest suburb tracks some more, adding strings and ing in Champaign, had sent him a copy Hamilton, who has played with numerous local classical, of Palos Park, Anderson took an early female vocals in particular. “We had just of the demo, but Merritt says it was the free-improv, and rock combos, joins the group here, testing interest in making music: when he was been imagining these parts for months show that sold him. “Usually, first shows out his Morton Feldman chops on piano. A duo featuring 11 he and a few neighbors started when it was just the four of us,” says are fun but sloppy, especially with a band cellist Sarah Biber and bassoonist Katherine Young, both of messing around with a crude home- Minnick. “We knew the band had to that has seven members,” Merritt says. “I the chamber music collective Till by Turning, opens. a 9:30 recording setup. “It was like a really add something else.” Through mutual just kept thinking of Roxy Music, where PM, Elastic, 2830 N. Milwaukee, 773-862-3616, $7 sug- old drum machine and some acoustic friends, Anderson met Jeanine O’Toole they practiced for ages before they went gested donation. A —Bill Meyer guitars and a tape deck,” he says. “One and Caroline Donovan, roommates out and played. It seemed like these guys guy would write lyrics and we’d just who’d grown up together in the had done the same thing.” Less than a improvise whole albums on the spot.” south-side neighborhood of Mount month later, the 1900s had signed a deal Anderson was classmates with Tim Greenwood singing in Catholic church with the label. Since then Dutton’s left to Minnick, who got into music while play- choirs and high school musicals. devote herself to her other projects, and ing percussion in the school band. In Anderson approached the two about the band’s brought in two adjunct mem- high school the two formed a noisy joining the 1900s shortly after the bers, viola player Whitney Johnson and experimental outfit called M.O.P. (short demos were finished in the summer of violinist Andra Kulans. for Minotaurs of P) that included anoth- 2004. “I remember we spent a long time The 1900s are set to begin recording er classmate, Mike Jasinski, on guitar. on the deck at this dinner party talking a full-length with Gibson this summer. But after graduating in the mid-90s the about music and what the band would “We’re planning on making it more of a three friends went separate ways: be,” says O’Toole. Neither she nor big production, so it probably won’t be Minnick to art school in England, Donovan had been in a group, but both coming out until next spring,” Anderson Jasinski to Carbondale to study record- were sold after hearing the demo tracks. says. In the meantime, the band will be ing and composition at SIU, and “I totally loved it,” says O’Toole. “I playing various gigs to promote Plume Anderson to the University of Oregon to remember telling Caroline, ‘This is a Delivery, including a guest spot in I.O.’s study anthropology and folklore. band I would totally listen to.’” Late Night Late Show on April 29, a In 2001 Anderson returned to Soon after, Anderson brought the show at Metro on May 12 opening for Chicago, where Minnick was playing two into his home studio and asked Brad Peterson and the Bon Mots, and Hem with the eclectic local roots-rockers Forty them to improvise their vocal parts.