Tomorrow Never Knows Festival, Athenaeum Theatre, Metro, and Schuba's, Chicago, Illinois

Thursday, Kishi Bashi String Quartet, Athenaeum Theatre

2015 would mark my second year of attending the Tomorrow Never Knows Festival, a music festival hosted by various local venues in the Lincoln Park area. It was however my first year attending multiple nights of the festival, four in a row, after only attending a single night the previous year. It would also be my second time seeing violinist Kishi Bashi in the past year, though this experience at the Athenaeum Theatre would be a bit different as it was billed as the Kishi Bashi String Quartet.

We arrived at the theater shortly before his set, sliding into our seats in the back corner of the orchestra. As the theatre is quite small, we could still see and hear quite well even in the back row. Kishi and his quartet utilized a simple set up, just four chairs with the members of the quartet, including three violins/violas and a cellist. This was in addition to Kishi, standing house right of them, who conducted the group, baton and all, as well as split his time between vocals and the violin as in his regular shows.

The set began with string versions of his songs. However, over the course of the show, the tempo picked up a bit and electronic elements seeped into his music, especially when banjoist Mike Savino also joined them on stage. By this point, Kishi was also including synth sounds, loops, and a bit of beatboxing. The quartet even left the stage for a while. As I was only expecting the string quartet, I was a bit surprised with these more upbeat elements. While the show was very enjoyable, I’d prefer his regular show, especially if you only have the opportunity to see him once. However, this is probably also due to my personal preference for general admission shows at clubs like Metro instead of seated venues like the Athenaeum Theatre. He certainly didn't go crowd surfing with a selfie-stick. People sat through most of this show excepted when he requested the audience come to its feet for “Bright Whites” to end his main set. The setlist included five songs each from 151a (2012) and Lighght (2014) and four from Philosophize! Chemicalize! EP (2013). Following the show, we saw him and his band at Lincoln Tap room around the corner.

Setlist:
Manchester
I Am the Antichrist to You
Atticus, in the Desert
Carry on Phenomenon
Bittersweet Genesis for Him AND Her
In Fantasia
Evalyn, Summer Has Arrived
A Sunday Smile [Beirut cover]
This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) [Talking Heads cover]
Conversations at the End of the World
Bright Whites
Encore:
It All Began With a Burst
Q&A
Philosophize in It! Chemicalize with It!
The Ballad of Mr. Steak

Friday, Zola Jesus, Athenaeum Theatre

Though the show for Zola Jesus was previously listed as sold out, I checked for tickets a couple days before the show to a find that a few more had been released, including a single tix right up front. I grabbed a ticket for the second row on the inside aisle, a fantastic find.

I arrived a few minutes before Zola Jesus, the moniker of American experimental pop singer Nika Roza Danilova took the stage. She only had a microphone in her hand but was accompanied by three other musicians – a drummer and a pair of keyboardists (one of whom also occasionally played the trombone). Nonetheless, it was her performance. She wore a black flowing dress with metal armbands, as if she had just stepped out of an ancient Roman temple. Around the stage were craggy plastic or cloth decorations, making the stage appear like it was nestled in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. The front area of the stage was bare, providing her ample space to move around. A bit of lighting and lots of billowing smoke covered the stage, such that the stage was usually shrouded in a dimly lit cloud.

Everyone sat through her hour long set which combined elements of electronic, industrial, goth, and rock. On many songs, her own loops provided the backing vocals. She spent a lot of the show pacing from one side of the stage to the other – dancing, gyrating, and wiggling. This would also include moments where she would writhe around on the floor, though more like a holy roller than an erotic dancer.

She also did the intro to one of her songs a cappella and unplugged. For another song, she waded through the audience. She pulled most of her set from Tiaga (2014), her most recent album, and fifth overall in about as many years. She only performed a pair of songs each from two of her previous two albums, Conatus (2011) and Versions (2013). The guy sitting next to me, Marek, sat dead still for the entire set, watching the performance through the screen of his phone. The efforts of which can be viewed here.

Setlist:
Taiga
Dangerous Days
Dust
In Your Nature
Hunger
Go (Blank Sea)
Sea Talk
Lawless
Nail
Long Way Down
Hollow
Night
Encore:
Skin
Vessel

Saturday, Jukebox the Ghost and Twin Forks, Metro

Twin Forks is the most recent project of Chris Carrabba, the former lead singer of the acoustic emo band Dashboard Confessional. We arrived as they were beginning their set at 7:30pm, which struck me as quite early in the evening. We slid into a decent spot on the left side of the stage. We didn’t have a great view but could hear very well.

Though a number of other performers are listed as band members on their wiki page, only four showed up for their performance that evening, including Chris on guitar, a bassist, mandolinist, and another female singer and occasional tambourine player. They were excellent for an opening act and quite a bonus for the evening, playing a full hour set. We heard a good mix of Twin Forks songs, several Dashboard Confessional songs, plus a few other covers.

After a short break, Jukebox the Ghost took the stage. Though just three band members, including guitar, piano, and drums, they brought a ton of power pop energy with them. Though I didn’t know the names of any of their songs, I certainly recognized many of the catchy melodies following just a few spins on my iPod in the weeks preceding the show. The lead singer did a few solo songs between the main set and the encore. Including an almost nonexistent encore break, their set lasted about eighty minutes.

Jukebox the Ghost Setlist:
Postcard
Made for an Ending
Victoria
Girl
Hold It In
The Stars
When the Nights Get Long
My Heart's the Same/Lighting Myself on Fire
Long Way Home
Sound of a Broken Heart
Schizophrenia
Hollywood
Somebody
Static to the Heart
Don't Stop Me Now [Queen cover]
Undeniable you
Show me where it hurts
The Great Unknown
Walk Like an Egyptian [Bengals cover]

Sunday, The Family Crest, Schuba's

Though I’ve seen many ads for it in my email inbox over the past couple of years, Sunday night would be my first visit to Schuba's, Lincoln Hall’s little sister. San Francisco-based The Family Crest would close down Tomorrow Never Knows 2015. The band started as a musical project by frontman Liam McCormick and co-founder John Seeterlin, aimed at incorporating many people into a single musical endeavor. After recording over a hundred people in a project, they decided to reformulate it as a live band, which has since released a pair of albums and a handful of EPs.

The pair seemed to have maintained their penchant large musical collaborations though, squeezing eight musicians onto Schuba’s tiny stage. In addition to McCormick (lead vocals, guitar) and Seeterlin (bass, vocals), the band consists of Charlie Giesige (drums), Laura Bergmann (flute, percussion, vocals), George Samaan (tenor trombone) Owen Sutter (violin, percussion), and Charly Akert (cello, percussion, vocals). I’m apparently missing the name of their extra percussionist. McCormick has a great, sometimes haunting voice, which sounded even better live than on their recordings. With so many musicians on stage, they’ve really figured out how to properly take advantage of their size, crafting a layered, orchestral sound.

However, the tiny stage could barely hold them all. Furthermore, the stage sits on the far end of the venue, without an adjacent back stage area, meaning that the band has to wade through the audience to get to the stage and huddle on the side before the start of their set. It also makes for an even sillier than normal encore break, with the band just standing only slightly off to the side, still in full view of the audience. They acknowledged the awkward moment and retook the stage quickly. They all looked like they were just as excited to return to the stage as we were. The whole band just looked so happy to be there. When you’re playing such a small venue and you bring eight people, you can’t be in it for the money. Their set included many songs from Beneath the Brine (2014), the only album of theirs that I know, including the title track, “Beneath the Brine,” as well as “The World,” “Howl,” “Love Don't Go” and “Make Me a Boat.”