Sunday evening at the renovated and refreshed epicenter of Chicago punk in the 1990s, The Fireside Bowl, come by for a salacious spread of good times in celebration of Mr. Plastic Crimewave's Birthday with three bands you can really warm up to, if you're in the right state of consciousness. By now you may have heard the name Shopping mentioned around Chicago's underground music circles, and despite their evocatively stark and uninviting name, they continue to bloom and flourish as one of the best new bands in the city that needs much more exposure. With a versatility sorely lacking in pop, and style that confounds post-punk pigeon-holing, they create some of the most unique new unruly sounds you're likely to hear this side of the new noise revolution, and Shopping keep it interesting as the Saints-slurred vocals mesh perfectly with their ramshackle rhythms guaranteed to knock over anything valuable in the near vicinity. As of the moment, they only have their debut single and their side of a split 7" EP with friends the Mannequin Men (both available HERE via their own label Do The Math), but both come highly recommended to check out, especially if you're growing tired of the same old routines, and if your sense of adventure is peaking like ours. Shopping's ability to remain outside scene circles is always commendable, and their show Sunday night should be a spectacular mess of controlled catastrophe, somehow held together with a surprising pop-edge that you need to witness firsthand if you haven't yet been exposed, so get there early.
Warhammer 48k are a heavy-as-lead and intricate-as-hell Chicago force of nature that has been garnering attention from the stoner-rock minions for a few years now, and with their new LP on Permanent Records (also a new Chicago record store worth checking out HERE) as testament to their pummeling prowess, they crawl deep inside the cerebral cortex to create waves of distinction and leave you withered and useless, so you might want to wear protective armor for best results. And if heaviness is your bag, headlining the Sunday line up is none other than Chicago's acid-punk leaders of the new dawn, Plastic Crimewave Sound, who have in the past few years honed their sonorous rat's nest of a performance into a fine point of psychedelic precision. Like our own local version of Hawkwind, PCWS nestle themselves deep into the heady sounds of space rock, tweaked to it's inevitable extremities, and simultaneously exasperating into a mutation of everything that has come before or since. To see and hear Plastic Crimewave Sound at the Fireside is always going to blow minds, as the wideness of the room, combined with the acoustically advantageous bowling alley layout will align to amass such a powerful display of resonance that some might have to take a step back. Their third full-length album is due out on Eclipse later this year, and look for a 7" on HoZac Records in the near future that's guaranteed to melt the paint off your walls, so get over to the Fireside Sunday and let your mind split open like a ripe cantaloupe, just like the kind sold out of the back of a pickup truck around the corner.
check out Plastic Crimewave Sound performing "Punch In The Face" in Toronto right here...
