Recommended If You Like Portlandia

Very few creative endeavors “make it”; far more toil in relative obscurity, only sometimes earning a fan base and a living wage for their art. Many of these little- or under-known acts, though, are the inspiration for or the compatriots of those bigger acts that make it. And so, The A.V. Club’s Recommended If You Like, where we start with a popular group —Mumford And Sons, for example—and run down a few acts that the bigger group's fans might be into.

For this edition, we’re taking a slightly different approach. IFC's Portlandia is written by and stars two musicians-cum-humorists—Carrie Brownstein of Wild Flag and Sleater-Kinney, and Fred Armisen, best known for his work on Saturday Night Live, but no stranger to band life, having gotten his start in the Chicago-based post-hardcore group Trenchmouth—so The A.V. Club found it suitable to give the show the RIYL treatment. The cast of Portlandia recently embarked on a national tour in celebration of the première of the show's second season, and will be stopping by the The Hideout tonight, Jan. 18.

Crisis of Conformity/Jens Hannemann: Complicated Drumming Technique
Fred Armisen’s musical background has influenced his comedic career. Some of his most enduring SNL characters have some sort of musical twist (be it the tom tom-wielding Venezuelan nightclub comic Fericito or Garth, of Garth & Kat, the unprepared, bullshit-artist musical duo). Local indie label Drag City has released two of Armisen’s high-concept musical projects over the last handful of years:  Crisis of Conformity’s Fist Fight, a 7-inch single parody of/love letter to ’80s hardcore, and DVD send-up of instructional music videos, Jens Hannemann: Complicated Drumming Technique. Both the 7-inch and the DVD make more sense with some familiarity of these worlds; the dated political references on Fist Fight and low production values and bizarre jargon of Complicated Drumming Techniques will hit punk rock nerds and drummers the hardest. Much like the hyper-specific sketches on Portlandia, the beauty and hilarity of these two projects are in the details.

Think Tank
Think Tank and its monthly sketch show Pistol Party stand out in the overcrowded scene of local sketch comedy groups in the equally important fields of writing and production quality. Their ever-growing collection of online sketches featuring the four core members of the group, as well as some of Chicago’s finest stand-ups, explore the universe crafted by alt comedy godheads Mr. Show and Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! with sketches like “Local Campaign Spots,” but find equal joy in exploring the Raymond Carver-esque banalities of life in Lombard, Illinois in the recurring series “Pretty Good Weekend.” Portlandia fans in search of some Chicago-based absurdity would do well to start here.

Exquisite Corpse
Billed as a “monthly sketch comedy party,” Exquisite Corpse is a showcase of sketch comedy and other material curated by Claymore Productions, a group of writers and performers based in Chicago. The conceit of the show is that all the material featured is to be performed for one night only, live at Stage 773, with an edited version available for streaming on Claymore’s website. Each episode of the live Internet sketch comedy show is curated by a different writer and director, giving every individual event its own unique feel. Many of Exquisite Corpse’s sketches journey into much darker territory than the normally lighthearted Portlandia, but operate within the same heightened reality, where all it takes is a new T-shirt to change a young man’s life.

Exquisite Corpse Short Video: The Tool T-Shirt from Claymore Productions on Vimeo.

The Puterbaugh Sisters
The Puterbaugh Sisters’ stage show is something of a pastiche of the last 100 years of popular culture, crafting characters out of the lingering impressions left by old-timey vaudeville tropes, breathy 1940s noir femme fatales, washed up lounge acts, and cocaine-fueled, disco-loving Boystown clubbers. Almost always performing as a duo, usually on straightforward stand-up showcases, their live performance is built to stand out. A love of costumes, wigs, and silly accents permeates all things Puterbaugh; these ladies are the perfect entry into the local stand-up scene for Portlandia fans looking for a little something extra with their comedy.