On Repeat Cheer-Accident

Listening to a Cheer-Accident song is like toppling over a box full of riddles and non-sequiturs, yet these bursts of experimental pop invite newcomers to join the strange revelry, instead of letting them drown in their own bafflement. The Chicago band (which plays Sunday, Feb. 8 at The Frequency) has been around in some form or another since the early '80s, stamped with a playfulness (and perhaps a free-jazz influence) that makes it feel separate from a lot of the widely revered indie-rock acts who've emerged from the city. They've always been willing to hurl together a giddy mix of chromatically tilted guitars, synths, even horns, flutes, and strings, and rhythms that feel complex but not overly disciplined. Unwilling to clench those buns and make anything too self-serious or restrained, the band produced its most recent album, Fear Draws Misfortune. Voices rise up together into high-pitched choruses of eerie mischief in the middle of abrupt, twisty passages built on slyly controlled splatters of instrumentation. “Blue Cheadle” (which you can stream below) builds up into quite a chaotic spiral with a catchy calm at its center, even as the band lets out chants of “Blue Cheadle! Blue Cheadle!” (who knows?), the guitar figures taunt and prod, and someone trembles and roars his way up and down a piano’s keyboard. Way to combine “maddening” and “fun” in the same fractured sentence.

Available at: Cheer-Accident’s website; Amazon; iTunes.

"Blue Cheadle" by Cheer-Accident