A week after issuing its ninth record, the Windy City's worldly indie-pop quartet The Sea and Cake performs at Turner Hall Ballroom.
"The Moonlight Butterfly" is being called a mini-album, but it clocks in at 33 minutes and thus, in the old days wouldn't have needed the "mini-" qualifier. But with tunes so jaunty and jangly you'd swear the band was from Sweden rather than Chicago, like the single, "Up On the North Shore," sharing space with analog synth-fueled instrumental sections, the half-hour certainly flies by.
As always the stars are the interplay between the guitars of Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt and Prekop's intimate, but understatedly urgent, vocal style.
Prekop, Prewitt, bassist Eric Claridge and drummer John McEntire are reportedly already working on a new full-length disc, due out either later this year or early next. Last year The Sea and Cake spent a month touring with Broken Social Scene and the two bands split a 7", too.
They take a break, however, to hit the road and perform Thursday, May 19 at Turner Hall Ballroom at 8 p.m.
Admission is $10. At press time an opener was planned but not yet announced by the venue. So, check the Web site before you head out. Or just go and be surprised.
Some other gigs this week include:
British '70s rockers UFO play at Shank Hall on Wednesday, May 18 at 8 p.m., bringing Brazilian hardcore outfit MindFlow along for the ride. Tickets are $30.
A pair of Atlanta-based bands, The Booze – which plays R&B-flavored Britpop a la The Who and The Stones – and The Biters, whose tastes lean later, to bands like T-Rex, Big Star and Cheap Trick, play together at Quarter's Rock & Roll Palace, 900 E. Center St., on Friday, May 20.
Art of Dying, which plays at The Rave on May 21, was just at the venue in late March with Stone Sour, Theory of a Deadman, Skillet and Halestorm, as the bands kicked of the Avalanche Tour here in Milwaukee.
This time AoD returns with Disturbed, which signed AoD to its own Intoxication Records imprint of Warner Brothers Records. Nonpoint also plays the 8 p.m. gig.
Psychedelic San Fran funk rockers Antioquia play with Undercover Organism on Saturday, May 21 at the Miramar Theatre on Oakland and Locust. Antioquia also interpolates traditional South American and West African styles into its wide-ranging music, as is evidenced by its disc, "My Piano At the Front Page of the San Francisco Chronicle." Showtime is 9 p.m.
Please remember that the weekend's Timber Timbre show at the Cactus Club has been canceled.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
