Photos: Blueheels @ Cascio Groove Garage, Summerfest

July 1, 2009

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Photos: The Paper Chase @ The Cactus Club

July 2, 2009

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Anberlin

Tonight @ U.S. Cellular Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

Although Anberlin may not be a “Christian band,” its members acknowledge that they are a band of Christians. However subtle or obvious that distinction, one thing is clear: These Floridians manage to wrap their beliefs in savvy lyrics set to intoxicating alt-rock anthems—and if their uplifting messages actually contribute to making today’s kids happier, better-adjusted and more socially conscious, more power to ’em...

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Huey Lewis and the News

Tonight @ M&I Classic Rock Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

Those that stuck around for the final credits of 2008’s Pineapple Express were rewarded with a wonderful treat – a new Huey Lewis and the News song aptly titled “Pineapple Express.” Apparently, the creative team behind the film—including lead actor Seth Rogen, producer Judd Apatow and director David Gordon Green—were all huge fans of the News, and asked Lewis to lend some of his soundtrack-making mojo to the production. The resulting track...

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The Fray w/ Jack’s Mannequin

Tonight @ Marcus Amphitheater, 7 p.m.

Don’t call The Fray a Christian band: They’re a secular band that just happens to mostly write songs about God, Jesus and Faith. One of the most prominent of the growing breed of Christian/Not Christian acts, this Denver piano-rock act has found greater success in the mainstream than they ever could have in the Christian Contemporary Music niche with their driving, soundtrack-ready ballads, most notably their inspirational “How to Save a Life,” a song that...

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Jet

Tonight @ Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

Australians snapped up by the majors at the peak of the mainstream garage-rock revival, Jet belatedly topped the American charts in 2004 with “Are You Gonna Be My Girl,” a thin rewrite of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” spiced with a hint of The Jam’s “A Town Called Malice.” Any rock band that lifts from other rock songs is begging for a critical backlash—a decade earlier Elastica had been subjected to the same uproar—but given the extent of Jet’s “borrowing,” their backlash has been particularly harsh...

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Invade Rome

Tonight @ Cascio Groove Garage, Summerfest, 9:30 p.m.

Though they began the decade as one of the city’s most popular jam bands, Freshwater Collins, the guys in Invade Rome emerged last year with a new name, a new sound and a new record, Light Eyed and Villainous, a forceful collection of burly, escapist rock ’n’ roll. Invade Rome play at 9:30 p.m. Saturday, after sets from Milwaukee’s catchiest shoegaze band, Brief Candles (8:30 p.m.), and Pezzettino (7:30 p.m.), the stage name of accordionist Margaret Stutt...

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Red, White and Pabst Blue Ribbon w/ Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks

Today @ Kinnickinnic and Potter, 1 p.m.

Last year’s Pabst Blue Ribbon block-party celebration outside of Burnhearts in Bay View was a small but pleasant affair, a day of music and cheap PBR capped by a performance from the Detroit Cobras. This year’s follow-up event promises to be a much bigger bacchanal, though, since the party’s been moved to the Fourth of July and padded with bigger headliners, including Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, the increasingly proggy band from the guitar-melting former Pavement frontman, whose following now includes Relix readers in addition to...

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Train

Tonight @ Miller Lite Oasis, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

Though its doubtful Train will ever top the commercial heights reached by their 2001 breakthrough single, “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me),” the rootsy California adult-contemporary rock band has carried on, releasing a pair of well-received follow up albums in 2003 and 2006, with a third on the way. Save Me San Francisco is scheduled for a tentative...

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Shinedown

Tonight @ U.S. Cellular Connection Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

Treading closely to Nickelback’s mix of chest-beating post-grunge and skyscraping, vaguely Christian ballads, Floridian Shinedown hard-rockers are riding high off the success of their 2008 album The Sound of Madness. That disc spawned their WWE-approved hit “Devour” and the smash power-ballad “Second Chance,” the band’s biggest...

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Duff McKagan’s Loaded

Tonight @ Potawatomi Bingo Casino Rock Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

The abrupt departure of singer Scott Weiland from Velvet Revolver last year left bassist Duff McKagan with the time to get his old band back together—not Gun’s N’ Roses, of course, since that band is a lost cause, but rather Duff McKagan’s Loaded, his party hard-rock band. The Loaded lineup is drastically different than it was when the band last played around the turn of the century, with McKagan now backed by Alien Crime Syndicate’s Mike Squires and Jess Rouse...

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Kenny Chesney w/ Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum

Tonight @ Marcus Amphitheater, 7:30 p.m.

Who is that mystery man under all those caps and hats? One look and it can only be Kenny Chesney. This 41-year-old Knoxville, Tenn. native continues to pack ’em in with songs like “Living in Fast Forward” “Beer in Mexico” and “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.” Maybe it’s his concern for his fans in these recessionary times—he’s playing different sized spaces on his 2009 Sun City Carnival tour to keep ticket prices affordable...

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Lita Ford

Tonight @ M&I Classic Rock Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been well over 30 years since Lita Ford led the seminal all-group group The Runaways. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that, after 15 years without a gig, Ford finally returned to the stage in July 2008, playing before a raucous group at Rocklahoma, in Pryor, OK. The experience seemed to re-energize Ford, as the self-proclaimed “Queen of Heavy Metal” has recently announced an extensive summer tour and...

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Local Music

Today @ Cascio Groove Garage, Summerfest

Today’s lineup at the Cascio Groove Garage, Summerfest’s all-local stage, puts the spotlight on bands that thrive in the city’s all-ages and basement show scenes, including Terrior Bute, a synth-punk trio schooled on Devo but prone to clever, noisy freakouts a la The Mae Shi, at 6:30 p.m.; the feral screamo trio Cougar Den at 7:30 p.m.; the jazz-spiked punk band Red Knife Lottery...

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The Roots

Tonight @ Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard, Summefest, 10 p.m.

It’s an unprecedented milestone in hip-hop: 10 albums. No rap act had ever recorded 10 albums—that is, 10 decent albums—until last year. That the group to first hit the 10-album mark was The Roots should be no surprise to those who had been following the Philadelphia ensemble, which for over a decade has been a testament to the artistic potential of hip-hop and refuted stereotypes...

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Three Is the Magic Number

Threesomes are a mythical beast, fantasized about by many. There are several ways to meet potential partners for a threesome: at social settings like bars, at formal sex-oriented events like swingers' parties, online, or even among your pool of friends. Before you start looking, though, it's important for you and your wife to talk through...

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Sobelman’s Best Burgers

The Paper Chase w/ Call me Lightning and Red Knife Lottery

Tonight @ The Cactus Club, 10 p.m.

John Congleton’s brooding, gut-punching production has made him an in-demand studio guru for artists like Mouse Mouse, The Thermals and The Mountain Goats, but he saves his darkest, most claustrophobic ideas for his own avant-indie ensemble, The Paper Chase. The Dallas band’s latest, Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1, is their most high-concept yet, an album themed around things that can kill you—from fire to...

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Local Music

Today @ Cascio Groove Garage, Summerfest

Thursday’s lineup at the Cascio Groove Garage, Summerfest’s all local stage, is another celebration of American music. Drawing from the spirit of Bob Dylan and altcountry pioneers like Uncle Tupelo, Sharking Hour (at 6:30 p.m.) is followed by the jam-leaning, power-blues trio Super Custom Deluxe at 7:30 p.m. and the cheeky, drunken honky-tonk of headliners Whiskey Bound at 8:30 p.m.

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Guster

Tonight @ Miller Lite Oasis, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

Following the jam-band business model even though they don’t much care for jamming, Guster has gradually built their following by encouraging tape trading and touring colleges like the one that spawned them 18 year’s ago, Tufts University. They’ve become a better pop band with each release, casting themselves as something of a small-scale Coldplay without the egos and with a friendly sense of humor (in 2005 they celebrated their Judaism with a side-project called Hanukkah Rocks). They’re working on a new CD for tentative release...

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Matisyahu

Tonight @ Briggs and Stratton Big Backyard, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

In a success story that reads like a script for a bad Ben Stiller comedy, an Orthodox Jew named Matthew Paul Miller reinvented himself as Matisyahu, a crossover reggae superstar. That this white boy with ties to the feel-good jam circuit gravitated toward rough-edged dancehall reggae over more generically feel-good roots-rock reggae is interesting in itself, but much more ink has been spilled over the incongruity between Miller’s religion...

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Femi Kuti

Tonight @ Potawatomi Bingo Casino Rock Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

Afro-beat might sound like an obscure style of music (especially for those who haven’t recently lived on college campuses, where it’s become especially popular) but it’s actually quite accessible. It’s a horn-fueled blend of African rhythms and up-tempo funk, marked by political undertones but mainly known for its party-friendly grooves. One of today’s leading Afro-beat artists is Femi Kuti, the son of the man credited for inventing the genre, Fela Kuti. The elder musician...

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Shiny Toy Guns

Tonight @ U.S. Cellular Connection Stage, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

The Shiny Toy Guns are a band of revisionists. In the past five years they have released four albums: three versions of their debut, We Are Pilots (released, re-recorded, re-released, re-recorded, and re-released again) and one version of last year’s Season of Poison. It’s a testament to the braveness of the hard-rocking electro-clash outfit that they would play their new material so many drafts away from being finished.

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Judas Priest

Tonight @ Harley-Davidson Roadhouse, Summerfest, 10 p.m.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of their seminal album British Steel, the British-based heavy metal act Judas Priest has announced that they will play the record in its entirety during all shows throughout their upcoming summer tour (the album came out in 1980, so it’s only been 29 years, but I’m not going to argue with the Priest). This is good news for metal heads in Milwaukee, as British Steel still stands as one of the best albums that the genre has ever produced. There is little filler among the record’s

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No Doubt w/ Paramore and Bedouin Soundclash

Tonight @ Marcus Amphitheater, 7 p.m.

In the video for No Doubt’s biggest hit, “Don’t Speak,” the guys in the band silently snub singer Gwen Stefani, resentful over the disproportionate attention she’s receiving from the press. If that video spoke to real tensions, it’s hard to imagine they’ve eased any during the past half decade, given how Stefani’s solo career has established her as one of the world’s biggest pop stars, yet No Doubt returned this year seemingly unchanged by Stefani’s pop successes. At recent reunion performances, Stefani’s even shelved her high-fashion...

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