JEB LOY NICHOLS 6/19, SCHUBAS; 6/20, GUINNESS FLEADH This Texas boy has an aesthetic that can politely be called cosmopolitan–he once shared a house with Neneh Cherry, producer Adrian Sherwood, and Ari Up from the Slits. That worldly fusion is evident on his promising 1997 debut, Lovers Knot (Capitol), where he blends down-home balladry, light R & B, and sultry jazz into a suggestive rural soul. Nichols’s slice-of-life lyrics are not particularly remarkable–certainly they’re no match for the intense stare he wears on the album’s back cover–but they’re made more substantial by unusual arranging touches, say, a blast from John Medeski’s Hammond organ here, a barrage of Cyro Baptista’s percussion there. The end result comes off easy, but never insultingly so.
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HATE FUCK TRIO 6/20, METRO Sam Destefano, leader of the Hate Fuck Trio, is a literature grad student who seems to have put together this band as an outlet for his repressed fascination with very short words. On the Denver quartet’s–yes, quartet’s–You Know, For Kids (Shaky), the jokes are predictable and the targets are easy: the rich (“A Lizard Named Muffy”), the wasted (“Fucked Up Monkeys” and a cover of the Frantics’ “My Dad’s a Fuck’n Alcoholic”), and the pop (“Double OO’s Seven”). Perhaps because it’s summer and they need the money, the Hate Fuckers have even invented a rival band for themselves: Bob’s Lawn Service, whose roster happens to be identical to their own. It’s a pity that parental-warning stickers and liquor laws are bound to keep these guys away from the audience most likely to appreciate them–I can’t imagine anybody over 14 staying excited about this record for long.
ROADSIDE MONUMENT 6/23, LOUNGE AX; 6/27, FIRESIDE BOWL With song titles like “Iowa Backroads” and “Crop Circles”; the note-perfect lull ‘n’ pound of its second album, Eight Hours Away From Being a Man (Tooth & Nail); and Bob Weston’s name on the back cover, I coulda sworn on a stack of war-torn Bibles that this rock trio was local, but in fact it’s from Seattle. There are traces of influence from other places–guitar filigree that wanders stoned across the tarmac like the Meat Puppets, a noise break that taxis into takeoff position like the Geraldine Fibbers–but overall when these guys come visit Chicago, it’s like they never left.
