Weekend Agenda: Sept. 25-27
The best of this weekend:
FRIDAY
While Killdozer serenades the High Noon Saloon with its tender poetics, a newer generation of Wisconsin heartthrobs can rally behind Appleton's Cory Chisel, celebrating the release of his first major-label album at the Majestic Theatre. Fred Thomas used to make us swoon with the seductive pop of Saturday Looks Good To Me, but he'll be stewing up something a little less hook-oriented with his new project City Center at the Terrace. Doug Martsch has always seemed a little publicly shy about his guitar-hero status, but his band Built To Spill's show at the Barrymore won't find him so bashful.
SATURDAY
Foodie manifesto writer Michael Pollan's Madison romp continues with a morning appearance at REAP Food Group's Food For Thought Festival. And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's show at the Majestic will at the very least bring some turbulence to the night's concert mix, and it's needed: Phish bassist Mike Gordon's playing the Barrymore, and Joshua Radin lays on the mild sauce at the High Noon. After all, without a little balance, the world gets crazy fast, as anyone who attends a free midnight screening of Big Trouble In Little China will tell you.
SUNDAY
Tonight's bill at the High Noon offers by far the finest nerdy sing-alongs of the weekend: Fans of headliners The Weakerthans will lovingly mouth along to lines like "I wait in 4/4 time," and Rock Plaza Central's songs spill over with leader Chris Eaton's far-flung storytelling instincts. Granted, Michael Franti And Spearhead's show at the Wisconsin Union Theater will provoke some feisty lyric-shouting. The only true escape from the power of words, it seems, is in the tonal sandstorm that psych-rock group Sleepy Sun will raise at the Frequency.
