Photo credit: Daniel Ojeda
As half of the Chicago-based brother-sister duo The Fiery Furnaces, Eleanor Friedberger co-masterminded some of the strangest music to come out of the indie-rock boom of the new millennium, a baroque, esoteric concoction that somehow slipped, however modestly, into the mainstream. This is an act that, between quirky, catchy Eno-esque deconstructions, often raised the bar when it came to high-concept projects, as with 2005’s particularly eccentric Rehearsing My Choir, which featured their 83-year-old grandmother on vocals, or Silent Record, an album exclusively available in the form of sheet music. Since the band announced an indefinite hiatus in 2011, however, her solo outings have switched gears to a far more accessible, albeit idiosyncratic pop style, one that may be less challenging, but no less enjoyable.
Warming up Colectivo’s Back Room this Thursday evening was reliable local act Greatest Lakes who, while seemingly a little distracted by the outcome of the Brewers game, still managed to pull out an entertaining set. Their brand of radio-friendly alt-rock, filtering classic jangle-pop harmonies through the stomp-clap rhythms of modern indie rock, may not be the most original thing in the world, but it comes with a passion that manages to put it all across, one that’s highly evident on their brand new album, Divisions. However polished and professional, though, their performance was disrupted somewhat by the fact that they apparently had to cut songs on the fly to keep everything on schedule, despite the show starting more or less when it was supposed to.
While the time crunch would cause some problems later on, it left Pill’s set unaffected in any noticeable way, likely because it was so lean and mean to begin with. Featuring Andrew Savage of Parquet Courts and trafficking in a kind of timeless high-tension, bass-heavy post-punk, the Brooklyn band quickly stole the show with an energetic, unpredictable performance. After the opening assault of “Vagabond,” they burned through a number of impressive tracks, including the melodic “Midtown,” one of the lead-off singles from their new album Soft Hell. While every member of the quartet is clearly an inventive musician, perhaps the most fun to watch live was saxophonist Benjamin Jaffe, who when not blowing his horn tortured squalls of feedback out of it with a microphone.
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Following Pill’s set, their was a slight urgency to the usual gear hauling along with a distinct lack of chatter as Friedberger took the stage with her band and broke quickly into “My Jesus Phase,” the first track off her brand-new record Rebound, but nothing the small yet passionate audience likely would have noticed. It wasn’t until a few songs in that she awkwardly revealed they were racing against a strict curfew, and to Friedberger’s credit they enthusiastically made the most of it, squeezing in tune after tune of summery, cleverly constructed pop, all laced with her trademark style of literate, enigmatic lyrics. After about an hour however, the clock inevitably caught up with them and just like that everyone involved was left wanting more.
