This show will take place at the Athenaeum Theatre (2936 N. Southport).

It’s considered lazy journalism, or just plain old cliché, to say that an artist’s work gives you “the chills.” Or to describe how saltwater wells up in your jaded Internet-era eyes as you listen. But in the case of Laura Marling’s ambitious new LP Once I Was an Eagle, these things really do tend to happen. After seven years of playing music professionally, three albums, one BRIT Award (UK Grammy equivalent), two Mercury Prize nods, and one move across an ocean and a continent, the precocious and preternaturally talented British singer-songwriter has attained what sounds undeniably like vocal, emotional, and artistic maturity. It’s a record for the ages. Released at the age of 23.

Eagle is a concept album, sort of. It follows a thread of mythology, lyrically and metaphorically. An eagle and a dove, the devil, and the sea populate her cast of across he States. The loose narrative is this: A character, or perhaps alter ego, Rosie, journeys from heartbreak to defiant temptress to vulnerable lover to confident, contemplative woman. Through it all, a bird flies in and out of Rosie’s consciousness, attempting to show her the way as she grapples with her place in the world.

The songwriting process, to Marling, is less about musical conceits than about weighty life questions. “I was focusing a lot on the frustrations and the walls I was coming up against, whether I consider myself an artist,” she says. “Being an artist doesn’t necessarily mean you are aggrandizing yourself. It’s just taking what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned and translating the experience for other people to see and learn from.” The dance between independence and codependence, and issues of modern morality, were on her mind too. “I really wanted to question, in retrospect, the conventions of what it is to be alone or what it is to be in love or what it means to be a good living human person,” she says. “How do you continue to improve yourself as a human being if all you’re focusing on is not being alone?”

Appropriately enough, Marling has just decamped from East London to lush, hilly Silverlake, in Los Angeles, having fallen in love with the western U.S. on her tour. It’s that facing-the-fear thing again. She’s availing herself of the natural wonders of the West Coast—Big Sur, Joshua Tree, Sequoia National Park. Marling likes to tell a story about meeting a shaman in Oregon who directed her to the headwaters of Mount Shasta, where the water is said to have magical powers. She drove out in the pitch black, alone, and wandered into the stream, which she could sense only by its icy touch. Scared senseless, she collected a bottle full of water, and drank it. It tasted as pure and delicious as was promised, “like what regular water would taste like if you were on mushrooms, but I wasn’t, “ she says. “It’s the collection of these vulnerable experiences that allows you to have a different perspective.”

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The birth of Anamanaguchi must have taken place in the middle of mankind's greatest sugar high. Oh, there could have been 'shrooms there too, but we're betting that it had more to do with loads and loads of pure cane sugar, swallowed in liquid, cubed, granulated or processed form, in copious amounts. It was Jolt soda, cake, ice cream, candy and everything else in between. It was on the sunniest of days and all colors were vibrant and searing.

The band, an instrumental electronic band from New York, was drawn to Nintendo game consoles, arcade games and all of the plinking and high-score sounds that were coming out of them, ringing in its ears like magical coos. It immediately set out to write punishing and inspired music that would comprise a mixtape that would be the chosen composition of the sky to accompany every plane jumper, skydiver and parachuter. It's a little known fact that the second anyone takes a leap out of the open hatch of an airplane, thousands of feet above ground, for any recreational purpose whatsoever, the music of Anamanaguchi is suddenly blasting into the ears of those plummeting folks. It's louder and more exhilarating that any of us down here on the safe ground could ever imagine and it's a secret that those jumpers keep to themselves, having signed a binding Anamanguchi non-disclosure agreement before pulling the chute cord. The bronzed music was chosen for such an important placement, in part, because as those jumpers land on the run, often on a beach or an open field, the only thing they want to do is jump up and down and rage out with some freaky dance moves for 5-to-10 minutes. The music, as contractually obligated, continues on - at obscene volumes - for that amount of time and these people do their dances.

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If there is one person, who has been causing a stir on the international club circuit recently, it is Barcelona’s John Talabot. Already his debut “My Old School“ (which is meant literally by the way) on Permanent Vacation in 2009 and shortly after that the single “ Sunshine”, which he put out on his own Hivern Disc imprint, made him one of the most promising musicians of the Spanish electronic scene. And those two releases also already set the mark for John Talabot’s unparalleled music: raw, loopy, heavy on the kick drum, sample based, moderate on the tempo, distorted on the drums and light years away from the clean and ever revolving house sound of today. This unique style which also blends influences from afro beat, Detroit techno, Chicago house and cosmic disco, but also northern soul or the energy of Flamenco, immediately turned some heads around. James Murphy, Âme and Aeroplane started including Talabot music in their sets like it was the most natural thing. However – and this is quite rare – he not only gained legions of fans in the house and disco community, but also amongst the leftfield pop and indie rock followers. NME and Resident Advisor both had “Breakthrough“ features on John Talabot and he can be proud of a “Best New Music“ dubbing on Pitchfork. (Being rather elusive on showing his face in magazines or the web it also came to some funny rumors that John Talabot was the alter ego of a well-known techno producer from Detroit).

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"In a market place over saturated with corporate created talent, MER delivers a refreshing reminder that musicians with originality and heart still exist!" - CHICAGO TRIBUNE

MER teams up with Chicago's finest for another installment of MER's Music Showcase. With the huge success of the January residency at Schubas Tavern, MER brings together some of the city's finest front-men for an intimate songwriter circle. Hear the stories behind the songs and experience the music in the raw state in which they were written.

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For the uninitiated, Dead Confederate is a five-piece rock band from Athens, GA whose music runs the gamut of infectious psychedelia to a uniquely southern and ferocious dirge. Although, placing labels on a band like this is rather pointless as their sound seems a constant and fluid evolution; they never seem content with abiding by the guides of one sub-genre, so maybe it's best we just leave it at "rock" for simplicity's sake. Dead Confederate, in name and sound, formed in 2006 in Atlanta, GA before moving to Athens shortly thereafter. In these six years, the band has become one of the most revered live acts in the nation by fans and peers alike. Touring relentlessly in the US and overseas, they've been handpicked to join a number of their musical heroes on the road (REM, Dinosaur Jr, Meat Puppets... to name a few) and play some rather high- profile gigs (Bonnaroo to Bumbershoot, SXSW and CMJ, Late Night with Conan O'Brien... also to name a few). Dead Confederate has released two full-length records to-date, 2008's "Wrecking Ball" and 2010's "Sugar", as well as two EP's, a live album, and an eighteen-song compilation of home recordings. Their third full-length, "In The Marrow", will be making it's long-anticipated appearance on April 16, 2013 via Spiderbomb Records/ Redeye.

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“It’s a question of being respectful to each other,” Dom Maker says of the art of collaboration. It’s a simple ethic, but one that has yielded rich rewards. Since 2009, Maker and his partner in Mount Kimbie, Kai Campos, have played a central role in forging a new form for electronic music. Their influence stretches far beyond the tiny corner of the dance music underground that birthed them and, with the duo now signed to the legendary Warp label, it looks set to stretch further still in the coming years. Since their emergence Mount Kimbie have repeatedly confounded expectations, transforming themselves from bedroom-studio producers to creators of one of the most fully realised electronic album-length statements of recent years. This year, with the release of the duo’s second LP, the perception of what Mount Kimbie is looks set to expand again. Still, at the heart of the band’s music lies that simplest of things: the meeting of two musical minds.

Campos was raised in Cornwall, Maker in Brighton. The pair met in halls of residence while studying at London’s Southbank University and bonded over a newfound passion for electronic music - specifically the burgeoning dubstep sound. “We weren’t particularly trying to break into any kind of scene or anything like that,” says Campos. “We were just making music that we didn’t even think was that weird at the time, but when you look back on it now...” Mount Kimbie drew on their thick soup of influences to make a hybrid music that was intimate in scale but far from lacking in ambition. Back then they were oddities; nowadays the approach they pioneered is practically the norm.

The first evidence of the impact Mount Kimbie would have came with the Maybes EP, released on then-dubstep label Hotflush in 2009. The title track was a dazzling statement of intent - a melancholic anthem of sorts, combining a delicate garage shuffle with gaseous vapour trails of guitar and fragmented vocal melodies. It was swiftly followed by the more colourful Sketch On Glass EP, and within the space of a few months Campos and Maker found themselves at the forefront of a new wave of bedroom producers radically re-interpreting the dubstep template. “In the early stages of Mount Kimbie everything happened very fast,” Maker recalls. “I remember the first show we ever did - actually getting paid money to play in this church in Oslo. It was a really bizarre feeling, almost like we’d cheated the system.”

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Electro-pop from Glasgow, Scotland.

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Electro-pop from Glasgow, Scotland.

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If you’d spent the last few years of your life wrapped up in an album like Star Of Love, you’d go looking for a little respite, too. Crystal Fighters’ debut was the product of minds made manic by a deluge of fresh experience, both in the studio and on the road. It was inspired by an opera written by a man whose sanity disintegrated before he could finish it. It seemed to be influenced just as much by traditional Basque music from the 18th century as it was modern-day clubland, and contained residual traces of every genre, scene, style or party that had existed in-between.

But if album one was the sound of haywire electronic loops frantically kept spinning like plates on sticks, then album two is the story of Crystal Fighters mastering control of those rave repetitions, withdrawing from the chaos of the club to carve their music into the shape of songs.

To write the album, Crystal Fighters retreated to the Basque hills that they consider to be their spiritual home. Their music has always born traces of the local sound –traditional instruments like txalapartas and txistus vying in the mix with razor’s edge guitars and percolating techno synths – but the purpose of this mission was different. Immersed in their creative cradle, they wanted to tap into something beyond their immediate experience, to uproot themselves from temporal bounds in order to write timeless songs.

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When electro-rock sensation Lights first hit the music scene in 2008, she was just a songwriter with a synth and a dream. Her name may have been pluralized but Lights Poxleitner was a one-woman show who played and programmed her own instruments and sang her own lyrics.

This admirable self-reliance is rare in pop—in fact, Lights, signed a publishing deal at 16 and began writing songs for other artists—but after her 2008 self-titled debut EP (precocious enough to earn her a best new artist Juno) and gold-selling full-length follow-up The Listening, Lights was ready to open herself up to collaborations on her unexpectedly experimental album Siberia. And by choosing such leftfield collaborators as live electronic outfit Holy Fuck and rising rapper Shad, she also opened up her sound.

“It’s a huge step,” she readily admits. “For a year after my first record, I was confused and searching. I was writing all over the place and not finding anything that was essentially different. But after tour last year I was turned onto dubstep.” The genre’s grimy beats and sonic minimalism influenced the creation of Siberia, if not necessarily shaping the music itself (though she does pay homage with a dubstep drop on “Fourth Dimension.”)

Rather, dubstep led Lights away from the “perfection” of her past work. “Everything was tuned and timed just right. The new stuff is raw and gritty but still pop with a focus on the melodies. It’s the marriage of those two that make it really different and unlike anything I’ve ever done before.” This dirtier direction came from collaborating with Holy Fuck, a fellow Juno-winning, electronic-influenced Canadian act who she met when both played the dance stage at last year’s Reading and Leeds festivals in the UK. Impressed by their “grime and grit,” she decided to see what might happen when she infused her pop sensibilities with their experimental tendencies.

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Dan Savage, the author of the internationally syndicated sex advice column “Savage Love” and the editorial director of The Stranger, Seattle’s weekly newspaper, turns his sharp wit and keen perspective to some of the most salient issues facing the country today, including marriage equality, sex education, healthcare, gun control, and more. In addition to his frequent appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The Colbert Report, Savage is a regular contributor to NPR’s This American Life. His books include the New York Times bestseller It Gets Better, Skipping Towards Gomorrah, The Commitment, and The Kid, his award winning memoir about adoption.

Join Unabridged Bookstore at Lincoln Hall as we welcome Dan and his new book.

Unabridged Bookstore opened in its current location at 3251 N. Broadway in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood on Saturday, November 1, 1980, and while it has expanded since, the vision has remained the same: to promote and sell great books. Unabridged is known for its dedicated, knowledgeable staff, (and their hand-written personal recommendations) an unparalleled sale book section, and an award-winning children's section. It's safe to say that Unabridged is the BEST bookstore in the Chicago area where a shopper can buy the latest issue of a magazine, a copy of children's classic Goodnight Moon, or newest title, and pick up the latest literary fiction & non-fiction sensation, all in one stop.

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The Bloom and the Blight is the work of a band that has matured and redefined itself, and the album is imbued with a palpable sense of personal catharsis. Opening tracks "Halcyon Days" and "Song of Songs" illustrate the type of build to explosion that's omnipresent throughout the album, and the prowling "My Love Won't Wait" - with a menacing chorus underscored by a pounding backbeat - is an epic, booming anthem. The gentler "Broken Eyes" - all voices, guitar, harmonica, and tambourine - has already become a fan favorite with its rousing, harmony-filled final verses, while the cinematic "Ride Away" soars on Adam Stephens' raspy howl and Tyson Vogel's relentless drumming. The songs have a dark side and a dynamic sonic heft, yet a sense of salvation and resolve courses throughout: an urgent, emotional poignancy stemming in part from Stephens' recovery from a serious van accident in 2010.

Produced by John Congleton (The Walkmen, Explosions In The Sky, St. Vincent), The Bloom and the Blight moves away from Two Gallants' more folk and blues-based past, representing the duo's ferocious live show and their past steeped in punk and grunge. The album simultaneously maintains the thoughtful storytelling and eloquent lyricism for which the band has become known, and contains gorgeous, quieter moments like the finger-picked ballad "Sunday Souvenirs" and the dreamy, unearthly "Decay" (the first Vogel-penned song on a Two Gallants album).

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Now we’re born again,” sings Zach Rogue on the closing track of Rogue Wave’s fourth studio album, Permalight.

The dreamy acoustic lament lasts just over a minute but in sound and spirit it neatly sums up everything that comes before it. A punchy, deceptively effervescent set of multi-instrumental pop tunes, the Northern California band’s latest set represents a giant breakthrough for Rogue and his longtime musical partner, drummer-keyboardist-vocalist Pat Spurgeon.

“The record sounds, for lack of a better word, fun,” the frontman says.

It’s an astonishing change of direction, to say the least. Formed by Rogue in 2002 after he lost his tech job and parted ways with the Oakland rock group Desoto Reds, Rogue Wave has a reputation for crafting classic, inward-looking pop songs highlighted with psychedelic guitars, pastoral sound effects and intricate rhythms.

On tunes from the new album like the title track “Permalight” and “Good Morning,” however, Rogue Wave steps away from expectations. Rogue says the former was written as a left-field sequel to Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration,” with synthesizers that simultaneously sound brittle and blissful. “Stars and Stripes” builds on a deep groove before spilling over in a raging chorus. Clubby beats are prominent but the album doesn’t sit still for long. “Per Anger” is a straightforward rock tune that takes its cues from Pixies’ loud-quiet-loud dynamic.

Then there’s the album’s unofficial centerpiece, “I’ll Never Leave You,” a simple acoustic tune that finds Rogue coming to grips with the overwhelming emotions that come with young fatherhood. Like many of the songs on the album it’s rooted in Rogue Wave’s triumph over seemingly constant peril – including the tragic death of a former band mate and constant health issues – and the band’s undying determination to push forward.

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For seven years now, Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s – led by singer and songwriter Richard Edwards – have been creating music that swirls with fear and doubt and tension and beauty. Their music was born out of Indianapolis with the lushly melancholic The Dust of Retreat (2005), came of age with the bittersweet duo Animal/Not Animal (2008), and most recently arrived with the primal Buzzard (2010).

Edwards saw Buzzard as the beginning of a “panic pop” trilogy: albums filled with a gnarled version of the pop music of his childhood, loosely tied together by the concepts of aging and starting over. For the second installment, he took his notebook full of song fragments and went to the place that held some of his most vivid memories of calm, a mere five months after Buzzard’s release. Subsisting only on aloe vera extract and clam chowder, Edwards spent 26 days burying himself in sand, sleeping outdoors, and finishing a batch of songs inspired by childhood, fatherhood, and bad stomach pain. Calm evenings bore panicked music.

Because when Margot ended the touring cycle for Buzzard, which included multiple headlining tours and a run supporting The Twilight Singers, Edwards was ill. Plagued with stomach pain, he boarded a bus and headed to Pismo Beach, CA. Over the years, Pismo had unintentionally become an oasis during Margot tours. The Nukes' battered black school bus, as if divinely inspired, always found its way there. They would spend a night or two by the fire, listening to music, eating clam chowder, drinking beer and recharging. With each tour, the band’s collective narrative grew and the town became more mythical, especially on bad days; “Pismo” was conjured up and whispered into the ears of a grumpy, hung-over drummer, the guitar player sighed it while replacing blown tubes, the keyboard player chanted it in his sleep, the bus’ engine grunted it. A place to rest. The end of the road.

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Chicago singer-songwriter Xoe Wise has just released her sophomore album, Archive of Illusions, which reached #41 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart, and was immediately placed in the music store’s “New and Noteworthy” section.

Originally from a small town on the ocean in North Carolina, Wise moved to Chicago to pursue a music career. She burst onto the scene in 2009, collaborating with Ethan Stoller on her debut album, Echo. Stoller has contributed music to the DVD extras and promotional materials of several major Hollywood films, including V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin and Sherlock Holmes. Echo was released in October of 2010 to critical acclaim. Chicago Innerview recognized Wise as “easily the singer/songwriter and pop counterpart to Columbia native Chaz Bundick’s (a.k.a. Toro Y Moi) laconic chill-wave synth ballads.” The Chicago Tribune’s Redeye described her single “Dear Sendai” as “spiritual.”

Xoe Wise has performed at venues ranging from Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles to Hard Rock in Nashville. She has shared the stage with such artists as Lisa Loeb, Greg Laswell, Tyrone Wells, and more.

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Reinvention can be a bitch. But for the men behind The Draft - three-fourths of whom recently crawled from the wreckage of the now-defunct, legendary post-punk outfit Hot Water Music - taking a powder was never, ever an option. Instead, frontman/guitarist Chris Wollard, bassist/spokesman Jason Black and drummer George Rebelo - the nucleus of what became this new band - stared down their collective doubts and insecurities, flipped off their detractors, recruited a new guitarist in longtime associate Todd Rockhill and took the next evolutionary step.

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With accesories and regimines being more exciting than some females these days, it's nice to know that some of us can still rap. Rhymesayers has its hands full with this one, but part of that is because she has boobs. Psalm One, the self-proclaimed "fuck a" fem-cee is gearing up for her second offering, the follow-up to 2006's critically acclaimed "The Death of Frequent Flyer". After telling academia to piss off, then inviting it into the bathroom again, touring, male-to-female-to-female contact, manicures and dirt baths, Psalm is doing the unthinkable: letting you in. With the skills that are hardly anything but stellar, new production, old friends and the world by the tight and curlies, it's on once again. And what more could you ask for? She's not your prom date; she's the one you hung out with at prom in the back of mom's volvo, got blasted and talked about all the people with their noses in the air and thumbs up their asses. And she plays drums. Go figure.

Bassel & The Supernaturals officially released "Dreamer" at The Empty Bottle in Chicago on February 28, 2013 as part of a humanitarian effort for Syria during an intense civil war that has drastically affected Bassel's family along with millions of others. Bassel Al-Madani is a Syrian-American souljazz artist born/raised in Northeast Ohio, currently residing in Chicago, IL. Despite facing intense challenges in recent years (including a massive apartment complex fire and car theft), he has been frequently recording and touring the nation since 2008.

"Dreamer" was engineered at Hinge Studios in Chicago, IL during the summer of 2012. The album was an independent effort by Bassel & The Supernaturals, and the funds generated from their presale campaign helped to support their recording experience, a 3-week US tour, and a charity donation to Syria.

Bassel released "Submerged" as a solo effort in 2010 at Used Kids Records in Columbus, Ohio. Shortly after the conclusion of a four-week tour supporting his first LP, he was invited to perform at the Pelotonia opening ceremony with The Counting Crows and Augustana.

Bassel's self-titled EP was released in 2008, featuring the production talents of Sinkane (Ahmed Gallab), who has actively performed in groups such as Yeasayer, Caribou, Of Montreal, and Born Ruffians.

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Olympia is an album of transformation. Though it has only been two years since Austra’s 2010 debut Feel It Break, it presents a quantum evolution in the Toronto-based band’s sound, structure and style.

After three years of non-stop international touring with the likes of the XX, Grimes and the Gossip, when it came time to record Olympia, Austra had evolved into a complex collaborative effort between its six members. “Previously, I would flesh out songs before I brought them to the band, but this time I left them bare and let the others fill them in” explains Katie Stelmanis, the principal songwriter/vocalist.

Olympia is also the first confessional record for Stelmanis as evidenced by the heartfelt lyrics of piano driven lead single “Home” (stream now). “Home” expresses the anxieties of waiting up all night for a lover to return. “I was mad and upset and the song just wrote itself,” says the singer. The album touches on a range of sentiments that stem from a relationship ending, a relationship beginning, and friends’ struggles with addiction and motivation. Despite the sometimes dark lyrics written in collaboration with band member Sari Lightman, Olympia is bubbly and buoyant— fundamentally a dance record, which Stelmanis says was the band’s aim all along. “We are really into dense harmonies and big beautiful melodies, but I also love techno and dance music. I wanted to bring those elements together.”

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We have a tendency to take consistency for granted. Like a sunny Southern California day, Pinback have delivered record after record of mightily addictive indie pop since their inception in the late 1990s. Perhaps too melancholic and thoughtful to function as escapist entertainment, that same sense of depth is what made them one of the most reliable bands in indie rock’s three-decade history.

On one hand, their fifth album, Information Retrieved, is the logical and accessible realization of a sound Pinback have been developing and refining for over a decade. However, that consistency that we’ve taken for granted is what makes Information Retrieved such a euphoric surprise; their finest and most fully realized album, a dozen years deep into a career that includes bona fide modern classics like “Good To Sea” and Summer In Abaddon. Simply put, this is better than we ever could have expected. They could have coasted on automatic pilot to another lauded album that likely would have made it onto plenty of year-end lists, but instead they shot the moon, and the result is a major triumph.

The touchstones are still there: Zach Smith‘s stunningly unique bass guitar acrobatics driving both rhythm and melody in lock-step unison; the incredible immediacy of Rob Crow‘s voice that could make a phone book sound compelling; and the musical and lyrical interplay between the two of them that made Pinback so special in the first place. The difference now is their exquisite control over dynamics and a greater emotional resonance throughout. It’s the most complete and soulful Pinback album by a fair distance, the finest moment in the career of a band whose unfettered brilliance we’ve come to count on, but will never again take for granted.

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Some artists are able to articulate a vision at the very beginning of their career, while others hone their craft over time, growing into their vision as they mature.

"I am definitely in the latter category," explains Drew Holocomb, a Tennessee-born, duck hunting, French speaking, bourbon drinking, 1st edition book collecting, golf playing Eagle Scout with a Masters degree in Divinity from Scotland's University of St Andrews (he wrote his dissertation on "Springsteen and American Redemptive Imagination") who has spent the better part of the past decade as a professional musician -- recording, writing, and touring with his band Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors.

Since releasing their first album, 2005's "Washed In Blue," Drew & The Neighbors (Ellie Holcomb, Nathan Dugger, Rich Brinsfield) have established themselves as a formidable indie act, selling more than 75,000 records, playing more than 1,500 live dates, selling-out headline shows, and touring alongside such varied acts as The Avett Brothers, Ryan Adams, Los Lobos, NEEDTOBREATHE, Susan Tedeschi, North Mississippi Allstars, Marc Broussard, and more. Their songs have been used in countless television shows and commercials, most notably in TNT's Emmy Award winning 2011 Christmas Day "NBA Forever" spot, which paired the song "Live Forever" with a mesmerizing montage of past and present NBA video footage.

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