It’s odd writing this review knowing that the album’s creators are merely hours away from no longer existing. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Chicago duo Puerto Muerto, consisting of Christa Meyer and Tim Kelley, are playing their last show tonight at the Empty Bottle. And it’s quite a shame seeing how their latest release, Drumming For Pistols, is an excellent excercise in painfully honest emotional salience told through a veil of midwestern blues.

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Local H frontman Scott Lucas takes a page from singer-songwriters Bob Dylan and Neil Young for his debut George Lassos the Moon with his new group the Married Men and comes out a winner.

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Do songs have temperatures? Are some albums cold, while others are warm? I think the answer is a resounding “yes”, and I’d wager I’m not alone in this. Some pieces of music just exude a certain warmth or chilliness. After two excellent albums of wintery tunes, Baltimore duo Beach House have decided to mess with the thermostat, and the result is an early candidate for album of the year, and possibly the best thing the band has released so far.

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Being that I’m not exactly the biggest jazz-head on the scene, I had some trepidation about giving a review of Boca Negra, the new Thrill Jockey album from the post-bop Chicago Underground Duo.  I know my basics when it comes to jazz – Coltrane, Miles, Bird – but I don’t venture their way that often anymore so I felt a little rusty going in.  Add “post-bop” to the mix and I had no idea what to expect.  Alas, what I found was much more “in there” than “out there” and an album that does a decent job of telling a story from beginning to end.

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Sadhu Sadhu are another solid experimental psych band in what seems an ever expanding universe oozing its way onto the Chicago music scene. More Cave than Mako Sica (to name just a couple examples), Sadhu Sadhu’s Live At The Hideout features deep bass grooves and soaring, twisting guitar lines. Although the band says they’ve been compared to Acid Mothers Temple and Can, there is more than a hint at the loopy, droney side of Yo La Tengo at play in their music as well.

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YAWN may very well be Chicago’s answer to Sigur Ros or Animal Collective. On their latest release, E.P, the group’s computerized blips, swirling vocals and bombastic drum loops often walk the line between danceable and hypnotic thanks to an extremely sleek production. And while YAWN seem to revel in creating lush soundscapes and exotic interludes, their songs offer a precise focus that often gets lost in the electro-dance-loop genre.

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Pairing hip-hop with rock and roll dates as far back at least to Run DMC and Aerosmith’s “Walk this Way” but presently the idea runs the risk of turning into something akin to the Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock school of rap-rock, which mercifully appears to have run its course in popular music. Thankfully, that’s not at all the case with Blakroc because The Black Keys truly transform into a tight, aggressive and authentic hip-hop session band rather than a rock band trying to fake its way through a forced genre shift.

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Those ready to hate Vampire Weekend’s second album, Contra, will definitely find reason to, while those ready to love it will likely do the same. The band maintains the signature sound formed on its self-titled debut, yet also expands to incorporate new arrangements, instrumentation, production, and sampling to create an album that is a little more complex, just as fun, and a little more rewarding to listen to than the first.

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