Monday February 3 * doors at 7, show at 7:30 * $13 advance, $15 day of show * TICKETS

Accessory is the solo project of Dehd songwriter and guitarist Jason Balla. With the moniker Balla explores darker waters and more dissonant soundscapes in a unique brand of post-punk americana. On stage he’s tapped a who’s who of the Chicago music scene (members of Deeper, ULNA, Desert Liminal, Meat Wave and TV Buddha) to bring life to these more minimalist songs with dense arrangements, feedback and elements of improvisation. 

with Kiss Kiss (mem Clear Channel and Bottled Up, first show)

and Skate Stance

Aunt Katrina

Polarview

Roxy 2

at Ottobar

7pm

all ages

Thou

Young Widows

Null

& Lathe

Doors at 7pm, all ages

$15/$20

Thou is a metal band from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Though oftentimes misread as “post rock” or “hipster doom” or lumped in with the Southern sludge, Black Sabbath-worship of New Orleans, Metairie, and Houma bands like Eyehategod, Crowbar, or Acid Bath—they share a more spiritual kinship with 90s proto grunge bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, or Soundgarden and the aesthetic and political impulses of obscure 90s diy Ebullition Vermiform hardcore punk. Since its inception in 2004, the band has released five full length albums, seven EPs (some bordering on full lengths), two collaboration records with The Body, two collaboration records with Emma Ruth Rundle, and enough material spread out over splits to make up another four or five full lengths.

Andy Gibbs, Matthew Thudium, Mitch Wells, KC Stafford, Tyler Coburn, Bryan Funck.

Lutalo’s highly visceral folk goes electric on The Academy, the Vermont multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer’s debut LP. Recorded in January 2024 at the storied Sonic Ranch and co-produced alongside Jake Aron (Snail Mail, Protomartyr, L’Rain), The Academy feels like watching the best underground film you’ve seen in years; establishing Lutalo as a singular voice of this generation of indie rock. Lutalo describes The Academy as their “first chapter” – a time capsule of the lessons they’ve learned in their 20-something years of life. “This record is exactly that: a ‘record’ of my early life,” they say of their debut album, out via Winspear. “The experiences, thoughts and feelings I was holding at those times and am currently processing. To me, this is the first big stamp of my existence I’m sharing.” While Lutalo’s 2022 EP Once Now, Then Again introduced them as a lo-fi acoustic guitar wunderkind, The Academy is bigger and bolder without compromising Lutalo’s inviting sense of emotional intimacy, inspired by alt-rock veterans like Thom Yorke and Rob Crow as well as electronic greats like Aphex Twin and Bowery Electric. The Academy’s grander arrangements are heard in the biting adrenaline rush of “Ocean Swallows Him Whole,” or the anti-war jangle of album closer “The Bed.” Their lyrics are often deeply intuitive, flowing as a stream of consciousness, albeit with weighty meanings. With their unique baritone and finesse for lyrical world building, Lutalo cuts to the bone–while only just beginning to reveal the depth of their artistry and vision.

Chanel Beads

with More Eaze

doors at 7pm, all ages

Chanel Beads — the project of New York-based musician Shane Lavers — announces his debut album, Your Day Will Come. Your Day Will Come marks Lavers’ arrival as a new force in experimental music. Throughout the album, Lavers captures the many contradictions of modern existence and the strange infiniteness of the digital world. Though he incorporates the scrappy sonics of post-punk, the gripping sentimentality of pop tunes, and the spectral artifice of electronic music, he blurs lines through unconventional song structures that build into transcendental climaxes. As he intentionally prints his songs down to embed fried artifacts and ghostly remains, the resulting songs have a time-collapsing quality, both transitory and timeless.

Like the night sky itself, the world of My Light, My Destroyer is always expanding. Cassandra Jenkins' third full-length cracks open the promise of reaching the edge of the new, with a wider sonic palette than ever before — encompassing guitar-driven indie rock, new age, sophistipop, and jazz. At the center of it all is Jenkins' curiosity towards the quarks and quasars that make up her universe, as she blends field recordings with poetic lyricism that is at turns allusive, humorous, devastating and confessional — an alchemical gesture that further deepens the richness of My Light, My Destroyer's 13 songs.

Jenkins suffuses My Light, My Destroyer with an easy confidence, which betrays the simple truth that the road here was not without difficulty. Referring to the 2021 breakout An Overview on Phenomenal Nature as her "intended swan song," she explains that she was prepared to hang it up when it came to touring and releasing her own music. "I was channeling what I knew in that moment — feeling lost," Jenkins recalls. "When that record came out, and people started to respond to what I had written, my plans to quit were foiled in the most unexpected, heartening, and generous way. Ready or not, it reinvigorated me."

Immediately upon finishing two years of touring An Overview, Jenkins approached recording a follow-up, only to find that capturing the creative spark while "running on fumes" was tough. "I was coming from a place of burn out and depletion, and in the months following the session, I struggled to accept that I didn't like the record I had just made. It felt uninspired," she confesses, "so I started over." With her closest musical co-conspirators reassembled, and producer, engineer, and mixer Andrew Lappin (L'Rain, Slauson Malone 1) behind the board, Jenkins set the prior sessions aside and began constructing My Light, My Destroyer from its ashes: "When we listened back in the control room that first day, I could see a space on my record shelf start to open up, because the songs were finding their home in real time. That spark informed the blueprint for the rest of the album, and its completion was propelled by a newfound momentum."

Freak Slug

with Huron John

Doors at 7pm, all ages

Freak Slug- A visual artist and painter as well as an unconventional, self-taught songwriter and musician, everything that fuels the creative output of Manchester’s Xenya Genovese, AKA Freak Slug, is about raw, authentic, sometimes weird but always totally true self-expression. She’s not one to sugar coat things; “I’m a lot, so it’s a lot to show who I am because some people might not like it,” she accepts. But in amongst the mix of an introverted extrovert, self described “avoidant” Leo rising, lives the sort of musician who can do nostalgic, ‘90s influenced and dreamy as well as eccentric and experimental. Down there, picking through the curious mix of sounds and feelings, lives Freak Slug.

Huron John evolves. A 24-year-old multimedia artist from Chicago, Illinois now based in Nashville, Tennessee, Huron provides a new layer of definition to the “do-it-yourself” indie standard. Entirely producing, writing, and engineering a now multi-album discography, the project’s genre-defying sounds proudly shapeshift into a rainbow-spectrum of moods and flavors. Using a wholesomely grassroots approach to independently amass over 35 million listens worldwide, they have carefully supplemented album rollouts with a multimedia angle including physical art books, interactive experiences, and most recently a full-length film premiered in theaters across select cities. Utilizing a ‘mystery-ridden online persona’ (-MTV) and a ‘day-tripper sound that delivers glitch juxtaposed with groove’ (-Ones To Watch), a mesmerizing melting-pot of alternative, electronic & sound-collage are delivered with ease.