On October 26, frisky Chicago indie rockers the Trenchies dropped their debut album, Addie’s Got a Famous Dad, but the lineup of the emerging band is in flux. Drummer Thom Weiss has moved to Virginia for grad school, and bassist Claire King (Weiss’s girlfriend) has stepped back from the group too. But when the Trenchies headline Schubas on Thursday, November 9, to celebrate the new record, King and Weiss will be onstage. “It’ll feel like a nice reunion,” says front man Logan Ludwig.
Ludwig says the Trenchies’ brief history began in February 2022. Ludwig had learned of Weiss through a friend of a friend, and Weiss repeatedly invited Ludwig to jam. When Ludwig agreed, he met up with Weiss and King to play. “Then we started writing,” Ludwig says. “And then we were like, well, maybe this could be a band where we book shows instead of us just messing around.” Ludwig invited an acquaintance named Andrew Pridmore (who plays guitar and keys) to join the new group. They started gigging anywhere they could—including at comedy clubs.
Humor helped Ludwig jell with his new bandmates. He says he can be shy about sharing ideas, but his collaborators liked his songwriting, which helped him loosen up. “I think we all, right off the bat, were very encouraging of any sort of humor,” Ludwig says. “Even humor in the way you play—like if you play a guitar solo, you kind of sabotage it or you go crazy on the whammy bar. We were very, like, ‘Anyone can do whatever they want.’ That shaped people to really let their identity come out.”
Addie’s Got a Famous Dad contains some of the Trenchies’ earliest material, including the lanky funk number “New Shoes.” “Some of the songs, we felt like they had lived a whole cycle and they were ready to be recorded,” Ludwig says. They recorded most of the album in a single day during a summer tour, using a Nashville studio called the Doghouse. Engineer Chris Silverio (who mixed and mastered the Trenchies’ March EP, You Are Listening To) is friends with King’s father and offered the band a deal.
Weiss left the band at the end of that summer tour, and King intends to join him in Virginia. Bassist Sydney Cramer and drummer Robby Kuntz have started playing with the Trenchies, but for Thursday night’s show, the band’s core lineup will be the same as it is on the album—Weiss, King, Ludwig, and Pridmore. The Trenchies will also be joined by both of their utility players: originally auxiliary percussionist Josh Morgenlander and multi-instrumentalist Hayden Marth, who adds vocals and acoustic guitar as well as percussion. They plan to bring more guests too—specifically, puppets their friend Fletcher Pierson has made for them to use in music videos. “It’ll be pretty silly and theatrical,” Ludwig says. “It’s gonna be a lot of fun.” Tickets are $15 ($13 in advance), and the show starts at 9 PM.
Half the lineup that recorded the new Trenchies album is no longer a regular part of the band.
For a fair chunk of the 2000s and 2010s, local four-piece Sybris were one of Chicago’s most explosive rock bands—and among the critics who gave them props was the Reader’s Miles Raymer, who in 2008 hailed their “jumbo guitar tones and uncomplicated songwriting” and said their tunes “wouldn’t sound out of place on a mix tape next to Nirvana or early PJ Harvey.” Sybris released an awesome Dungeons & Dragons–themed EP in 2013, then drifted apart when their label, California-based Absolutely Kosher Records, folded due to debt—and frustratingly, at the time the band had a third LP, Gold on Hold, already in the can. Earlier this year Sybris began posting old photos on their Instagram page, then dates for a few reunion shows. Gossip Wolf caught them at Wicker Park Fest this summer, and vocalist and guitarist Angela Mullenhour, guitarist Phil Naumann, bassist Shawn Podgurski, and drummer Clayton DeMuth (the same lineup as in 2013) played together so well it seemed like they’d never broken up!
On Friday, November 1, Sybris released a video for “Dead,” the lead single from Gold on Hold. It features all four members serving drinks at a bar called Purgatory, using the pain of a service-industry existence to construct a metaphor for the afterlife. “There are times when the choice to have the will to live is made out of a very specific strange and joyous spite when you watch people you love actively choose death,” says the band’s press release. “Ain’t nothin’ more life affirming than death sometimes.” Speaking of choosing life, Gold on Hold is finally due for release in February 2024, via the relaunched Absolutely Kosher. Good to have y’all back!
Gold on Hold is due in February 2024 from the relaunched Absolutely Kosher Records.
Gossip Wolf is a longtime fan of hypnotic local postpunk trio Luggage, whose clipped and gnashing jams use subtly crafted shifts in tone and volume to elevate musical tension to almost unbearable levels—imagine a two-day hangover that’s somehow totally enjoyable. Guitarist and vocalist Michael Vallera, bassist Michael John Grant, and drummer Luca Cimarusti (a Reader contributor) dropped their newest album, Hand Is Bad, in September, further refining everything they already do expertly. On Saturday, November 11, at the Hideout, they play a double record-release show with fellow locals Axis: Sova, who released the new Blinded by Oblivion on Ty Segall’s Drag City imprint God? in October.
Luggage’s Hand Is Bad was recorded by Jeremy Lemos at Electrical Audio.
More than 30 years since its heyday, shoegaze has re-emerged as a vital movement in U.S. indie rock. Among the many artists finding new ways to approach the style’s amniotic wall of sound are Chicago’s Twin Coast. In September they issued a standout single called “Wake Up Older (We Will),” where they rough up the lush hum of shoegaze with serrated distortion and aggressive squeals of feedback. On Friday, November 10, Twin Coast open for Pity Party (Girls Club) at Cobra Lounge, and two days later at Schubas they open for Brooklyn-based outfit the Ladybug Transistor, who are part of the freewheeling Elephant 6 psychedelic-pop collective. Tickets to both are $25 (the Sunday show is $20 in advance), and they start at 6 PM and 7 PM, respectively.
Twin Coast are the duo of Reid and Kira Isbell.
Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
