Monday Afternoon Quick Fix runs every Monday afternoon to showcase the best of Chicago music news, views and stories from around the interwebs and blogosphere that we might have missed.
• Speaking of Smith Westerns, our editor, Richard Giraldi, reviewed the band’s Friday night show at Lincoln Hall for the Chicago Sun-Times. Did they live up to the hype?
Hope everyone has a fun and frightening Halloween last weekend. Now, it looks like we’re in the dog days of Autumn and the stretch run of 2010. But all that really means is it’s time to gear up for some amazing shows yet to come for the Windy City! And this weekend is no different.
Well, today the band unleashed the album’s first track, “Weekend”, onto an unsuspecting interwebs.
On first listen, “Weekend” definitely proves the band has strayed from the lo-fi sounds of their debut in favor of some very sleek production. The song also features gooey sweet fuzz-guitar riffage. While the album drops in January, maybe they should have saved it for summer as “Weekend” is definitely beach day-ready. Listen to the track below:
Also, be sure to catch the band, and most probably “Weekend”, live this Friday, November 5, at Lincoln Hall. Tickets are available right now at Lincolnhallchicago.com for $12.
Last year, The Autumn Defense founders John Stirratt and Pat Sansone – also currently members of Wilco– made a trip over to New Zealand. Of course, contrary to recent Hollywood buzz, they didn’t go to lend their indie cred in support of filming the new hobbit movies there —we had the same question.
Instead, Stirratt and Sansone were helping Neil Finn et al. record the “Seven Worlds Collide” charity record, during which both musicians reconnected with “why they do this,” [music, that is] and how much they really enjoy it. A year later, the result of this musical epiphany will be released tomorrow on North Carolina’s Yep Roc Records, The Autumn Defense’s new album titled Once Around.
Chicago’s glammy garage rockers Smith Westerns will release their sophomore effort, Dye It Blonde, on January 18.
In an interview earlier this month with Pitchfork.com, Smith Westerns front man Cullen Omori had this to say about the new record:
It’s pretty different. There’s still the whole glam thing that we incorporate in it. But the first record was made in reaction to the kind of music we were listening to at the time– the whole power-pop and glam thing. This record is a little bit more eclectic. We had more time to kind of think about what we want to make, and we also discovered a lot more music and therefore had better options as to where we could go with it. We tried to do some disco things on it. I think one of the main influences was a lot of 90s Britpop.
Smith Westerns aren’t letting their big name new label and upcoming album slow them down, however. They’re hitting the road beginning tomorrow including an opening stint for MGMT in Europe. But you can catch them before they jump the pond at Lincoln Hall on Friday, November 5. Tickets are available right now at Lincolnhallchicago.com for $12.
Check out the Dye It Blonde track list and complete Smith Westerns tour itinerary after the jump.
And now three reasons to grab your rain boots and trudge on over to Lincoln Hall tonight…
1. Headlining tonight’s show, Hailing all the way from Stockholm, Sweden, is First Aid Kit. This duo of sisters Johanna & Klara Söderberg play acoustic-heavy folk with nearly bluegrass vocals but has pop approach in the instrumentation. It’s very reminiscent of Cat Power, but their dual vocals create very nice and bright harmonies.
Last week, we informed you that Chicago’s young-gunning glam rockers 
Chicago’s glammy garage rockers 
